Are there any links between Northern Ireland’s paramilitary groups and white supremacist groups in the US?. Other than quite a few Irish names within the white supremacist groups, I haven’t been able to find any direct links between them and the Republican or Protestant paramilitary groups.
I wouldn’t have thought white supremacists would have been attractive to Irish Republicans politically or vice versa.
Protestants might have had more luck but I couldn’t remember reading or hearing anything specific about their dealings with far right groups other than arms from a group in Belgium.
Canada appears to have been fruitful for them though;
That summer the Provisional IRA, by then already well supplied with weapons from Irish-American sympathisers in the United States, successfully negotiated the delivery of arms from Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in Libya. Loyalists did not enjoy the advantage of direct state sponsorship that the Provisionals had with Libya and briefly the Dublin cabinet, nor did they possess a well-connected diaspora in the US
The UVF had more success across the Atlantic. Canada, and the Toronto region in particular, represented one of the few foreign sources of support for Ulster loyalists. The city has a small but significant Ulster Scots diaspora, and is home to a network of Orange lodges. When Gusty Spence escaped from Crumlin Jail in 1972 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were placed on alert following reports that Spence was hiding out in the city having entered the country through Montreal. The RUC said at the time, “We [have] to follow up all possibilities. There are many Orange sympathisers in Toronto”
Thanks Pushkin. I hadn’t thought of the Canadian connection.
I always think of the Orange Order as an Irish, specifically Northern Irish organisation, but it has roots all over the world.
It was a bit surprising to see Africans or native Americans with a sash for sure.
AFAIK, the Republicans tend to identify themselves with the left.
It seems there are efforts by extreme right groups in England to capitalise on racist and Islamophobic trends in some Loyalists but it’s not clear whether that extends to organisational links to the known paramilitary groups:
https://www.isdglobal.org/the-far-right-in-northern-ireland/
Yes, their left-wing political roots were in the back of my mind. But I always thought of the IRA as gangsters, thugs and general opportunists much like Sinn Fein. I thought perhaps there may have been links. But the Protestant connection seems much more probable if there is one.
Paramilitaries raise funds to equip themselves by various disreputable/criminal means, and there’s no doubt that there are local bosses in both communities for whom maintaining control over whatever lucrative illegal activity is probably far more important than what ordinary citizens would regard as political achievements.
But, especially since the Good Friday Agreement, their relationship with overt political parties is by no means obvious, to put it mildly, especially as younger, post-1998, generations move into leadership, and Sinn Fein and the DUP have become mainstream parties and partners in governing NI.
AFAIK the “continuing” paramilitaries start up new front parties - and though they’re an ongoing nuisance, they are still “groupuscules”.
There have been links and overlaps in membership between loyalist groups and UK right-wing movements such as Combat 18 and National Front for decades. I can remember news reports about it when I was at school, which would have been late eighties.
The foreign VMO and South Africa (the Blowpipe affair) connections I think were a bit unusual and exotic whereas links with other British fascists were fairly everyday.
Yeah, great company they kept.
Yes, it says quite lot about the whole Northern Ireland situation when you look at the delightful assortment of scum the Loyalist and Republican paramilitary groupings associated with.