Yeah, sure buddy.
Your pals in the Mafia pick on the weakest and most vulnerable in society to benefit themselves. The IRA took on the most powerful in their society on behalf of the weak, generally at great personal cost and never to their individual gain.
Nonsense. A part of the IRA the UVF were about gangsterism and criminal protection rackets. Don't white wash that part. It was real and it's been extensively documented and acknowledged.
Documented by who?
The fact you are even comparing the UVF and the IRA is mental.
While the UVF and UDA were walking around with pet lions and smuggling drugs into the country IRA volunteers were living on a fiver a week and smuggling guns in to fight a war.
How many drug dealers and criminals do you know that died a death like Kevin Brady, or Pol Kinsella, or fought and died like Francie Hughes, or have a story like Gerry Kelly's, or suffered like Marion and Dolores Price and Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, or have the bravery of Jim Bryson?
Which volunteers enjoyed money and wealth and comfort in the same way that the hoods who celebrated on here do?
Then what about the little lucrative Dublin racket of taxing and extorting local gang lords the Real IRA currently seems to spend a great deal of their time at? I find it a bit hard to believe all that is for the greater good of their "cause". On the contrary, personal profit and gain seems to be the order of the day nowadays. All of the examples you quote seem to be a thing of the past, because at the moment several IRA brigades have more in common with any organized criminal group than with a bunch of paramilitary freedom fighters. Now I don't give a fuck. They can extort any crime lord they want to for all I care. It just has to be acknowledged that when it comes to the current state parts of the IRA are in, William "Braveheart" Wallace's, they're not.
how else is a paramilitary group supposed to fund their operations? Not disagreeing with your assertions, mind, but they do need money if they ever hope to reach their political goals. I have no doubt that a fair number of IRA members continue to strive for the political goals, but there are surely more than a few opportunists who are using the illegal activities of the IRA to enrich themselves without any fucks to give for "the cause".
I guess it all depends on what you're willing to reconcile morally for a goal that may never be reached. I suppose it also depends on what crimes are being committed. As soon as they started bombing public places and killing civilians I couldn't support them in any way other than acknowledging their complaints are legitimate; But, at the end of the day, their methodology is not and that's where I start to side with PB on the issue.
I can separate the action from the complaint to view it objectively, but pragmatically, too many innocent people were (are?) dying on all sides.
