It was Gerry Adams who stirred me into entering a war that I could have so easily ignored from my cosy middle-class suburb.
My hero became my leader, he embodied the struggle, the strategy and the endurance that the long war demanded. His clinical ruthlessness, his unbending demeanour and his personal dignity were traits that were admired by even his most ardent enemies at a time when republicans and republicanism were under fire.
In the post ceasefire years, I got to know him, not closely but well enough to confirm the old adage that you should never meet your heroes. Unlike Martin McGuinness, I found Gerry A quite a disagreeable person. Martin always had a smile and a handshake, a most charming man. Gerry was cold and demanded veneration.
To question Gerry now is a deeply uncomfortable reckoning. There is guilt in it and a sense that I am betraying my past self. Like Michael Phillips, when I look in the mirror, the young man, who gave so much, fleetingly looks back at me and wryly informs me that I should have known better.
In castigating The Beard, it hurts and it shames because it necessitates that my past and my present collide reopening old and painful wounds. Silence, however, would extract too great a cost from my conscience and impede my journey of healing.
There is unique pathology which takes hold of men (mostly men) who have survived history and helped shape destiny. The Emperor Caligula, Stalin and Bonaparte all exhibited the personality traits associated with “God Complex”. God complex is a phenomenon that does not manifest itself as insanity but in an unnerving conviction that events and history can be shaped according to their will.
Deus Vult: God Wills It
Adams, remapped Republicanism, throughout the last period of our conflict. Every road, the armed struggle, negotiations, decommissioning and the peace process ran back through his leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein.
His function now, while no longer Presidential, remains of critical importance to the Sinn Fein project and also his careful curation of his own memory. Writing his own epitaph pre-mortem requires the redrawing of moral and historical boundaries.
Denial and reinvention are now his most trusted weapons. He was adjacent to the IRA but not intimate (allegedly) and therefore not accountable for their actions, he alone had the vision for peace, and he alone possessed the knowhow and cunning to deliver it; and Saint Gerry delivered.
Adams’ gerrymandering of history is slowly unravelling, with every legacy investigation and every time the unburied dead bear inconvenient witness, the truth emerges bit by bit. His commentary increasingly demonstrates that his god complex cannot tolerate such disruption to his well-managed eulogy.
The Andytout News affords Gerry A a weekly platform to share his insight with its few hundred readers, a column which is more akin to a papal edict than an opinion piece in a low brow tabloid. Like the Pope, Adams, who now claims to speak “ex cathedra”, writes with the cadence of infallibility and an arrogant conviction that he is immune from error and shall not be challenged or contradicted. Infallible by definition rather than by argument, for his flatterers, if Gerry says it then it must be so.
While the Church has largely moved away from the idea of Papal infallibility, Gerry surrounds himself with a group of sycophants who cater to his ego and uphold his sense of being infallible. These people are not fools (not all of them), rather opportunists who have learned that proximity to power and wealth necessitates the suspension of curiosity.
Their brownnosing is as dishonest as it is corrosive, but it offers them the comfort of a rationale that the bloodshed while regrettable was also unavoidable, and that the final settlement vindicates us all of guilt or blame. The duty of the gaggle of Adams’ flatterers is to accept the myth, applaud the amnesia and nod through the contradictions while genuflecting at the altar of the peace process.
There is a cost to this parasitic arrangement, and as always it is paid by the victims outside the room, those whose experiences and memories do not align with the infallible former MP for Belfast West. There are claims that critical examination threatens to undermine a nearly 30-year-old ceasefire, and that those who seek transparency or accountability and the truth are opponents of the never-ending peace process.
Saint Gerry does not tolerate heresy, not because heresy is wrong but because it is a reminder that believing in Gerry was always optional and dissent from his teaching may well expose him as an ordinary and fallible human.
No Big Suprise - No Shit Sherlock
In his latest Papal Bull, Adams broaches what should have personally been an awkward subject: Kenova. Unlike the Catholic Church, Adams and the Movement have yet to learn that public opinion can be quickly swivelled by humility, an unconditional admission of guilt and a meaningful apology.
Adams’ piece offers a familiar choreography, written as a bystander, someone who was not central to the creation of the Internal Security Unit and therefore not diminished by its actions. He resurrects the ghosts of Brian Nelson, the securocrats and the RUC to confirm his analysis that the “Kenova revelations come as no big surprise”.
Adams deploys his gravitas and privilege to blame the Brits and assert that, just like the Stevens Investigation, the Brits hindered the Kenova investigation team. No explanation is given as to why the IRA refused to cooperate with Kenova even though the movement now endorses the legitimacy of British policing in this part of Ireland. No clarification is given as to why Sinn Fein provided political cover for Scap for years.
Kenova is contextualised within the comfort zone of British culpability through its perfidious intelligence agencies, yet no similar analysis is provided on the machinery deployed by the IRA to maintain internal security.
Stakeknife was an IRA Volunteer, he did not operate independently. Every single act of torture, interrogation and every single execution was at the behest of the IRA and primarily the IRA Army Council who directed the ISU. In an epistle where Adams could have and should have displayed a modicum of humility and contrition, he chose the detachment and arrogance of the infallible.
More importantly what is absent from the Adams opinion piece is any acknowledgement of the people who carried the cost of the ISU. The men and the women who were abducted, interrogated, brutalised and murdered. Families who continue to demand the truth, real people whose suffering is as real as those families championed by the horde of “relatives’ groups”. When their relatives were murdered by the IRA (not the Brits) families were told by the IRA that they had to absorb their grief and not “create a fuss.” These are the families Adams continues to ignore. His omission of an apology was not an oversight, it was not a neutral position, it was a continued exercise of his power and further demonstration of his god complex.
Similar to other infallible leaders such as Stalin, Churchill et al, Adams’s legacy will be tarnished over time. However diligently Adams and his flock of sycophants attempt to launder the record, history will not be kind to him. No amount of slick suited libel lawyers can supress forever what is already known. Adams was not a peripheral figure nor a passive observer of events that ran beyond his control. He was the leader of a ruthless guerrilla organisation, that included the ISU and the consequences of that leadership are his to own.
For those of us that once believed.
My hero became my leader, he embodied the struggle, the strategy and the endurance that the long war demanded. His clinical ruthlessness, his unbending demeanour and his personal dignity were traits that were admired by even his most ardent enemies at a time when republicans and republicanism were under fire.
In the post ceasefire years, I got to know him, not closely but well enough to confirm the old adage that you should never meet your heroes. Unlike Martin McGuinness, I found Gerry A quite a disagreeable person. Martin always had a smile and a handshake, a most charming man. Gerry was cold and demanded veneration.
To question Gerry now is a deeply uncomfortable reckoning. There is guilt in it and a sense that I am betraying my past self. Like Michael Phillips, when I look in the mirror, the young man, who gave so much, fleetingly looks back at me and wryly informs me that I should have known better.
In castigating The Beard, it hurts and it shames because it necessitates that my past and my present collide reopening old and painful wounds. Silence, however, would extract too great a cost from my conscience and impede my journey of healing.
Q. What is the difference between Gerry Adams and God?
A. God does not think he is Gerry Adams.
There is unique pathology which takes hold of men (mostly men) who have survived history and helped shape destiny. The Emperor Caligula, Stalin and Bonaparte all exhibited the personality traits associated with “God Complex”. God complex is a phenomenon that does not manifest itself as insanity but in an unnerving conviction that events and history can be shaped according to their will.
Deus Vult: God Wills It
Adams, remapped Republicanism, throughout the last period of our conflict. Every road, the armed struggle, negotiations, decommissioning and the peace process ran back through his leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein.
His function now, while no longer Presidential, remains of critical importance to the Sinn Fein project and also his careful curation of his own memory. Writing his own epitaph pre-mortem requires the redrawing of moral and historical boundaries.
Denial and reinvention are now his most trusted weapons. He was adjacent to the IRA but not intimate (allegedly) and therefore not accountable for their actions, he alone had the vision for peace, and he alone possessed the knowhow and cunning to deliver it; and Saint Gerry delivered.
Adams’ gerrymandering of history is slowly unravelling, with every legacy investigation and every time the unburied dead bear inconvenient witness, the truth emerges bit by bit. His commentary increasingly demonstrates that his god complex cannot tolerate such disruption to his well-managed eulogy.
The Andytout News affords Gerry A a weekly platform to share his insight with its few hundred readers, a column which is more akin to a papal edict than an opinion piece in a low brow tabloid. Like the Pope, Adams, who now claims to speak “ex cathedra”, writes with the cadence of infallibility and an arrogant conviction that he is immune from error and shall not be challenged or contradicted. Infallible by definition rather than by argument, for his flatterers, if Gerry says it then it must be so.
While the Church has largely moved away from the idea of Papal infallibility, Gerry surrounds himself with a group of sycophants who cater to his ego and uphold his sense of being infallible. These people are not fools (not all of them), rather opportunists who have learned that proximity to power and wealth necessitates the suspension of curiosity.
Their brownnosing is as dishonest as it is corrosive, but it offers them the comfort of a rationale that the bloodshed while regrettable was also unavoidable, and that the final settlement vindicates us all of guilt or blame. The duty of the gaggle of Adams’ flatterers is to accept the myth, applaud the amnesia and nod through the contradictions while genuflecting at the altar of the peace process.
There is a cost to this parasitic arrangement, and as always it is paid by the victims outside the room, those whose experiences and memories do not align with the infallible former MP for Belfast West. There are claims that critical examination threatens to undermine a nearly 30-year-old ceasefire, and that those who seek transparency or accountability and the truth are opponents of the never-ending peace process.
Saint Gerry does not tolerate heresy, not because heresy is wrong but because it is a reminder that believing in Gerry was always optional and dissent from his teaching may well expose him as an ordinary and fallible human.
No Big Suprise - No Shit Sherlock
In his latest Papal Bull, Adams broaches what should have personally been an awkward subject: Kenova. Unlike the Catholic Church, Adams and the Movement have yet to learn that public opinion can be quickly swivelled by humility, an unconditional admission of guilt and a meaningful apology.
Adams’ piece offers a familiar choreography, written as a bystander, someone who was not central to the creation of the Internal Security Unit and therefore not diminished by its actions. He resurrects the ghosts of Brian Nelson, the securocrats and the RUC to confirm his analysis that the “Kenova revelations come as no big surprise”.
Adams deploys his gravitas and privilege to blame the Brits and assert that, just like the Stevens Investigation, the Brits hindered the Kenova investigation team. No explanation is given as to why the IRA refused to cooperate with Kenova even though the movement now endorses the legitimacy of British policing in this part of Ireland. No clarification is given as to why Sinn Fein provided political cover for Scap for years.
Kenova is contextualised within the comfort zone of British culpability through its perfidious intelligence agencies, yet no similar analysis is provided on the machinery deployed by the IRA to maintain internal security.
Stakeknife was an IRA Volunteer, he did not operate independently. Every single act of torture, interrogation and every single execution was at the behest of the IRA and primarily the IRA Army Council who directed the ISU. In an epistle where Adams could have and should have displayed a modicum of humility and contrition, he chose the detachment and arrogance of the infallible.
More importantly what is absent from the Adams opinion piece is any acknowledgement of the people who carried the cost of the ISU. The men and the women who were abducted, interrogated, brutalised and murdered. Families who continue to demand the truth, real people whose suffering is as real as those families championed by the horde of “relatives’ groups”. When their relatives were murdered by the IRA (not the Brits) families were told by the IRA that they had to absorb their grief and not “create a fuss.” These are the families Adams continues to ignore. His omission of an apology was not an oversight, it was not a neutral position, it was a continued exercise of his power and further demonstration of his god complex.
Similar to other infallible leaders such as Stalin, Churchill et al, Adams’s legacy will be tarnished over time. However diligently Adams and his flock of sycophants attempt to launder the record, history will not be kind to him. No amount of slick suited libel lawyers can supress forever what is already known. Adams was not a peripheral figure nor a passive observer of events that ran beyond his control. He was the leader of a ruthless guerrilla organisation, that included the ISU and the consequences of that leadership are his to own.
For those of us that once believed.
⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.
