They watched a deaf man almost beheaded in their own community. On their doorstep!
And did NOTHING!
NOTHING!!!
I will never understand how the performatively anti-racist Republican-minded people in Belfast failed so badly to make something meaningful out of a terrible situation last night.
Some spoke openly about how stretched the RUC/PSNI appeared to be, yet the organised Republican response amounted to little more than online posturing. Last night put on full display the neutering of working-class Republican areas in the years following the Good Friday Agreement and the St Andrews Agreement. Communities that once had political instinct, discipline and direction now too often have only slogans and moral vanity.
There is another hypocrisy here too. Some of the loudest performative anti-racist "Republicans" spend much of their time speaking about unionists as though they should be deported wholesale because they are "planters". It does not strengthen your opposition to racism when you also make disparaging remarks about Protestant people, Ulster Scots culture and heritage or Protestant religious denominations. Bigotry does not cease to be bigotry simply because it is dressed up in Republican language and accompanied by shallow NGO talking points.
An utterly outrageous situation. It is little wonder that, in the eyes of many, organised Irish Republicanism is on its death bed.