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I don’t know why you are being downvoted. My parents grew up during a similar ethno-religious insurgency and the scars of growing up not knowing whether your parents or siblings would get back home safe because of sociopathic individuals on a powertrip continue to haunt them and our entire family to this day. When exclusive affiliations consumes your entire identity, this can become a dangerous combination

Also, a meta commentary @dang - why are a number of comments against the IRA being downvoted? There were no saints in the Troubles and it’s startling to see comments opposing an actual sectarian terrorist group being downvoted to oblivion.

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> I don't know why you are being downvoted.

Ditto, though I'm more inclined to suspect my War on Terror comment. "Terrorist" - similar to "witch", "*igger", "atheist", "commie", "homosexual", and a number of other terms which change over time - seems mostly a label to stick on a person or group in order to proclaim that it is "okay" to hate, dehumanize, commit atrocities against, etc. them. For all too many folks, their "Licence to Hate" is one of their most precious possessions.

he had managed to "out" several Protestants as such - in circumstances rough enough that being outed immediately lead to their being murdered

I haven't downvoted you. But this story (ie that told by your interlocutor) doesn't sound credible to me. The fault line in Northern Ireland isn't religious, but between (Irish) nationalists and (British) unionists, for which Catholic and Protestant identities are only proxies.

There is a long history of Protestant involvement in the Irish nationalist movement, up to and including the Troubles. The lead trainer for the IRA during that period (whose name I'd have to look up) has given interviews emphasizing that religious identity was not a valid criterion for target selection. If I remember correctly the interview is in the first or second episode of the recent BBC series on the Troubles.

I don't see conflict between your facts and mine. The old man I knew clearly had a number of "traditional, Catholic bigotries". He was also clearly pro-Catholic & anti-protestant when talking about the history of England, France, Germany, etc. And far too admiring of Germany's National Socialist movement of the 1920's - 1940's. And other "clearly not PC" opinions.

If you're not familiar with this cluster of memes, give a quick read to a far-better-known example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin Though my old acquaintance differed from Fr. Coughlin on a number of points.

Vs. any IRA leader, speaking to a wider audience in the media, would have obvious PR reasons to downplay the religious aspects of the conflict. Nothing special about this.

Also worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian_violence_among_Chris... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Irelan... The history of Ireland has very clear, hellishly brutal Catholic vs. Protestant roots for the more-recent Troubles.

I'm intimately familiar with the history, thanks. I'm not expressing doubt in you, but about your acquaintance, and whether religious identity alone was enough to get other people murdered on the spot as he told you. Also it's hard to square his support of national socialism in Germany with support for the IRA, as Irish nationalists tend toward being old-line socialists/trade unionists.

Irish nationalists had opportunistically friendly relations with Germany during WW1 but not really during WW2, and most Irish that traveled to the Spanish Civil war fought on the Republican side, though some threw in with Franco because of his support for the Catholic church.