Sir, - In his disgraceful article (Opinion, July 14th) John Waters perpetuates the very tribalism from which we in the North are trying to escape. If it is fascist to throw a petrol bomb into a Ballymoney home and incinerate children, it is no less fascist to plant a lethal bomb in a Shankill fish shop.
If fascism is violent, fanatical, rapid nationalism, then Sinn Fein/ IRA is no less fascist than loyalist paramilitaries committed to a "British" Ulster. The fact that such a group may be currently in a ceasefire does not render it less fascist. I would remind Mr Waters that, after the failure of the Munich putsch in 1923, the Nazi Party switched to legal methods to achieve power and overthrow democracy.
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, Waters appears as fascism's ally. He ascribes the "sickness" of both societies, North and South, to the fault to the interfering, occupying British. In his twisted logic it seems that these nasty foreigners even incite Irish priests to become paedophiles!
The lifeblood of fascism is precisely this abdication of individual responsibility. Fascists claim to act in obedience to "authority", charismatic, traditional, cultural, religious, or whatever, and this appeal enables them to blame "the enemy" for their own wrongdoings. They can pass the buck because they refuse to work out their own truths for themselves.
The murder of the three children was an appalling act which cannot be excused. The same is true of all the atrocities that we in Northern Ireland have suffered over the years at the hands of extremists on both sides. To talk about one set of bigots refraining at the moment from "descending to the level of its enemies" is frankly obscene. - Yours, etc., Brian McClinton,
Lisburn, Co Antrim.