Here's the truth about Sinn Féin-IRA. They're not Irish. They're not even human, writes Kevin Myers. Actually, they're cyborgs, sent from Zog, a bilious, green, warlike planet in the Andromeda Nebula, and all they know about human conduct is what they observe.
And when they haven't actually seen or heard how humans behave, no inner voice tells them what's right and what isn't. They gaze into the pulsing plastic valve that is their organisational heart, and they find nothing: no moral compass points in the right direction, no gyroscope guides. In the absence of conduct which they can replicate, they don't know what to do.
Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin candidate for next year's European elections, is certainly from the planet Zog. Mainland Europe - attend, O Zoggians - is the area between the Caucasus and the Atlantic. Not all of it is in the European Union yet, though most of it wants to be; but a far more unifying experience than the present is the experience of Nazi tyranny.
Some countries were spared that horror. Switzerland and Sweden were. So too, consumed by another tyranny, was Finland. Spain and Portugal had already been seized by semi-fascist dictators. Everywhere else fell under the Nazi flail. Millions vanished into camps, never to be seen again. No darker period has ever befallen the civilisations of Europe, and those who freely aided the Nazi cause are today very properly reviled.
One of those who chose to back the Third Reich was the Irish traitor and Nazi collaborator Sean Russell. He had made contact with the German intelligence organisation, Abwehr II, in February 1939, shortly after Hitler had publicly promised that, in the event of war, the Jews of Europe would be exterminated. Russell cemented his relationship with the Nazis during a visit to Berlin in May 1940 as France, the Low Countries and most of Scandinavia were vanishing from the ranks of the free.
Russell was put on a U-boat to Ireland, with the purpose of creating a pro-Nazi puppet state here, and assisting in the defeat of Britain.
Happily, he died before he could to do any damage, and the filthy wretch was buried at sea. It is to the enduring shame of Dublin Corporation that it subsequently permitted a statue to this evil pro-Nazi stooge to be erected at Fairview.
Now all this is familiar to the readers of The Irish Times; but it is clearly not familiar to the Zoggians of Sinn Féin, who gathered last weekend at the same statue to honour Russell's contemptible memory. The keynote speaker was Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin candidate for the European Parliament. She clearly knows as much about the feelings and history of Europe as about the flora and fauna of Tierra del Fuego.
If by some extraordinary freak she were to be elected, what would she say when she met her fellow MEPs? Would she talk about her party's great role in the gallant struggle of 1939-45, and the tragedy of the defeat of its Nazi allies? Would she buttonhole cuddly little German MEPs, wondering aloud into their ears whether there was any chance of reviving that wonderful entente that came so close to success back in the good old days? At the EU bar, would she break into a jolly rendition of Horst Wessel, a beer tankard in her hand?
Nor is Zoggian ignorance confined to their understanding of history. With breathtaking indifference to human feeling, the Zoggians continue to hold some of the bodies of the "disappeared", without apparent regret or remorse. Instead, we hear from them the rumble of mimicked indignation on other topics - for that human emotion is one which they have mastered very well indeed.
Yet who can blame the Zoggians for failure to behave according to human rules, when they are never publicly told what those rules are? How they must have listened with looks of Zoggian joy on their aubergine faces as Tommy Gorman and John Hume on RTÉ recently discussed at length what the unionists must now do to restore trust to the peace process.
The unionists? But it wasn't the unionists who broke into Castlereagh barracks. It wasn't the unionists who imported guns from Florida. It wasn't the unionists who illegally visited FARC-land. It wasn't the unionists who launched an intelligence operation against their own head offices, and against the NIO's communications with the British, the Irish and the US governments. No: it was the bloody Zoggians.
Yet who can blame the Zoggians for not understanding our rules when no one tells them what they are? Thus Sinn Féin-IRA gather at the statue of Sean Russell, Nazi collaborator, stooge of the Third Reich, and friend of the Holocaust, and mumble Zoggian gibberish at one another, and no Government minister condemns them.
Moreover, why is the statue of the quisling Russell in a public park in Dublin? Removing statues or changing street-names to suit the particular mood of a particular time is poor practice. So: I despise Cathal Brugha, but I wouldn't change the street named after him.
Russell is different. He was a true enemy of Irish freedom. He took the side of the Holocaust, and - happily - perished serving Hitler's cause. And Dublin Corporation, with a predictably nationalistic cowardice, has chosen not to remove the last remaining monument to a servant of the Third Reich in the entire EU. No wonder the weird, chartreuse Zoggians, tottering through the surf with crates of AN-94 automatic rifles on their backs, meanwhile yodelling about their democratic rights, haven't got a clue how the rest of us behave.