Thread by @NiallStanage

In light of today's events, I'm making an exception to my dislike of multi-tweet threads and my reticence about getting into personal history.
Maybe it will at least illuminate some dangers...

I was born in Belfast in 1974. The conflict known as "The Troubles" was by then -- depending on when exactly you date its start — five or six years old. It took a generation before the worst phase of the conflict was brought to an end, in 1998, with the Good Friday Agreement.

During the course of that conflict, more than 3,600 people were killed. The deaths overwhelmingly took place in a territory with a population of roughly 1.8 million.
That population is significantly smaller than that of Brooklyn or Queens.

Incendiary rhetoric from politicians was far from the only reason why that conflict occurred, but it was a factor.
In my opinion, the worst personification of that tendency was the late Rev. Ian Paisley.

Paisley was a fundamentalist preacher, an ambitious politician and a demagogue. His demagoguery was built on telling the majority Protestant pop. that they were 1) under attack from a subversive minority; 2) being sold out by establishment politicians & 3) he could save them.

Any echoes in the current climate, d'ya think?

Before The Troubles burst into full effect, Paisley spoke in a working-class Protestant heartland, called out specific addresses and, according to one definitive biography, said "Do you know who lives there? Pope's men, that's who!"
A riot ensued.

Twenty years ago, I wrote about a prolonged confrontation between Protestant marchers at Drumcree Church and Catholic residents of the nearby Garvaghy Road.
I watched Paisley address the Protestants, roaring into the night air.

In the days afterward, Protestant paramilitaries firebombed a nearby home. Three young boys, Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn, were murdered.
They were aged 10, 9 and 8. irishnews.com/news/northerni…

Paisley, as he always did, insisted that he bore no responsibility for this, or for other acts of violence.
Those denials were treated with derision by many people, not least some loyalist paramilitaries who believed following him had landed them in jail while he skated away.

My point is not that Paisley=Trump.
Or that Ireland = America
But the place where I grew up remains scarred and less-than-normal more than 50 years after the Troubles began.

There are two things I know:
1) Politicians' words can be like throwing lit matches on petrol
2) If that fire takes hold, it's a hell of a job to extinguish it again.
So.
Be careful, America.
That's all.