Four Legs Bad … Sectarianism and Progressivism in Northern Ireland

Although Northern Ireland has long considered to be a paradigmatic case of ethnic conflict – a place apart from liberal democratic norms – much of its politics continue to replicate trends found elsewhere. The hollowing out of policy programmes works to shield decision-makers from accountability and denude voters of agency.

Outwith policy options a kind of anti-politics takes hold whereby the stuff of debate degenerates into platitudes and virtue-signalling. Of course, that is part and parcel of the performative dimensions of politics, but in a deeply divided society, it means critical issues such as enduring sectarianism become either effaced or weaponized.

In Northern Ireland, progressive politics claims to be somehow au-dessus de la mêlée, but it simply reproduces the identity claims-making ethnic tribune parties – and on balance stays close to those claims of republicanism, as if one kind of ethnic politics is bad and another good.

Progressive elitism

Beyond some fringe environmental issues or aspects of the migrant debate, there seems little to divide the parties of government. They all disagree to varying degrees with Westminster-driven policy direction but when it comes to policy design and policy making on questions of regulation and distribution, the picture is monochromatic.

Perhaps having discerned a gap in the opportunity structure of Northern Irish politics, the civil society group Progressive Politics Northern Ireland (PPNI) has set itself up as a critical vehicle in opposition to representative democracy.

Progressive Politics NI has around 26k Facebook followers but only follow around 100 sites, including demonstrably and consistently anti-Israel groups such as United Against Racism. I note that there they follow exactly zero unionist parties or politicians or even any commentators who speak about unionism. They state that

We are not from or supportive or any one particular party or politician … We … want to see a more open, forward thinking … progressive place for us all to live.

Yet, the group’s displacing of policy in favour of populist principle proclamation only works to reproduce the vacuum at the heart of the consociational system.

One of the key characteristics of anti-politics is a snide superiority: A cynical dismissal of politicians as craven idiots – the Private Eye view.

Unfortunately, when groups such as PPNI only sneer at unionism, that works to reproduce nationalist prejudices. Given that huge swathes of unionism depends on the working class – the huge area of Belfast from the Lagan to Cherry Valley for instance – this is simply bourgeois elitism. It’s also structurally sectarian.

Progressive sectarianism

Sectarianism is a deeply problematic and contested term. Anti-sectarianism seems preferable: It is everything and everyone that rejects the exclusivist counting of who’s in and who’s out that constitutes religio-ethnocentrism.

Anti-sectarianism isn’t about the snide looking-down on people who vote for ethnic tribune parties or the 90+% of parents who opt to send their kids to single-identity dominate schools.

APNI are the key example of what anti-sectarianism is not. They define themselves as somehow above two-traditions politics but are the epitome of the middle ground rather than a third way; they benefit from consociationalism but argue against it; they accept Irish language schools but argue for inclusion; they want integrationist schools but have little to say about the fact of parental rights.

In other words, as with PPNI, APNI is politics without policy.

APNI have done well out of vacuous protest, but, ultimately, politics without policy is a real and a material concern. This is because policy is fundamentally about re/distributing and/or regulating to end or ameliorate social inequalities and injustices. Substituting that with a derisory pathologizing of unionism is the very definition of sectarianism. This snide subculture masquerades under the name of progressivism, but it is very definition of sectarianism.

Progress as Anti-Politics

PPNI are worthy of reflection because they encapsulate the triumph of anti-politics. As Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld have argued, a defining feature of the US is the erasure of policy difference. Polarization is rampant, the party machines have never been stronger in terms of organization, discipline and money-making, and personality and celebrity politics reign. This is a self-reproducing process Scholzman and Rosenfeld argue, because people are presented with everything they find most off-putting about party politics. Activists wanting to make things better tend to work outside of the party system.

What differentiates Northern Ireland is that this alternative to representative politics tends to reinforce sectarian division. It is not just that APNI and PPNI are inconsistent in omitting to critique republicanism: There is a clear bias against unionist positions without a policy rationale. The univocal criticism of Israel within that alternative environment is a clear manifestation of that.

As Anthony Julius pointed out in his book Trials of the Diaspora, it is obviously antisemitic to speak of genocide against the backdrop of the Holocaust: Comparing the worst history of the Jews to their contemporary history. The same argument is made by Julius against the South African comparison.

I have yet to see an example of an anti-Hamas post by PPNI; APNI ape the republican and New Left stigmatizing of Israel tout court. At the time of writing, their posts are an anti-Pengelly video and a pro-Hamas/Gaza video.

Conclusion

In a recent interview with the FT, Michel Houellebecq disavowed cynicism and the ‘scorn of the elites’: ‘It’s dangerous to mock people … I mean, you can mock them, but there are limits’. I think the limits are usefully captured in Slugger’s mantra of playing the ball, not the person.

Slugger seems like a verb, but it turns out it’s a noun; this is clear when we see that progressive politics isn’t really a way of describing politics. Like all cliches and platitudes, it’s a verb without direction, without an object. Except, unfortunately, that’s not all it is – for the continued displacing of the question of how policy would impact society – and the two main communities – means that the performance of progress only works to pour scorn on unionists for having the audacity to be unionists.

Cillian McGrattan lectures in Politics; he is a member of the Malone House Group – but he writes for Slugger in a purely personal capacity.