Paramilitary thinkers and spokesmen have suppressed moral sensibilities to create a free space for acts of redemptive violence. A human being who dies a painful death in a bombing incident or is maimed for life, is transformed into a casualty of war, to be regretted like all casualties. This is moral corruption, leading to the death of the soul. Undergirding everything is the myth of redemptive violence. It is what works.
Violence appears to be the nature of things, embraced by people on the right and on the left.
Only by the use of violence can we achieve our rights, justice, freedom from oppression. The myth of redemptive violence inundates us on every side. It is certainly not peculiar to the IRA, to Ireland, or to paramilitary groups generally. One can only allude here to its impact on the foreign policies of many countries, on militarism, the Cold War up to recently and on human relationships. The myth of redemptive violence has structured a whole way of thinking and feeling about Irish history, and about our relationships to our traditional enemies.