Merriman Summer School: Paying closer attention to the political rhetoric in the North is the key to understanding the ongoing violence there, it was suggested at the Merriman Summer School yesterday.
There is a tendency in the Republic to underestimate how dangerous some of this language is, and the extent to which it contributes to the unionist "inability" to come to terms with peace in Northern Ireland, according to Susan McKay, the award-winning journalist and author.
She accused the unionist political parties of encouraging a "waiting for the barbarians" mentality by perpetuating a sense of fear and terror in the Protestant population about the IRA, while in private admitting they know the IRA is not a threat.
They are "guilty" of deliberately frightening constituents into being loyal to a politics which is "very short on ideas for governing in peace time".
She said the actions and attitudes of some of the violent extremists among the unionist population in the North are "influenced" and "sustained" by fiery language from the political mainstream there.
"Respectable Protestants" were washing their hands of unionist violence, she added, when their rhetoric and language made them at least partly culpable for it. This crossover between the "extreme and the mainstream" is "crucial" to understanding the state of unionism today.
In a lecture entitled Reporting the North - Telling the Truth or Blackening the Name, she said a problem with reporting on unionism in Northern Ireland is that much of the time one is "reporting things people claim haven't happened". She criticised the damaging effects and the "twisted influence" of these denials, lies and silences about violence.
She drew attention to what she called the practice among unionists of referring to any reporting of their activities as "blackening" the name of Protestantism.
She called on journalists reporting on conflict in Northern Ireland on both sides of the Border to be more responsible in reporting the things they "see to be happening" and to make more of an effort to go into the mindsets of people that cause violence.
"Righteous indignation" about IRA violence, while refusing to admit violence on the unionist side, made it harder for the unionist movement to come to terms with the IRA and the peace process.
The "low-level violence" which was ongoing in the North was contributing to increasing segregation and ghettoisation in Northern Ireland, she said.