What is it that possesses someone to say something gratuitously offensive like the following:
Former IBRC chairman Alan Dukes has said it was not his intention to imply that everyone who lives in the border area would turn to violence.
The former Fine Gael leader is under fire for comments he made in the RTÉ documentary Quinn Country.
The three-part series examined the career of businessman Sean Quinn.
In the documentary, Mr Dukes said: "I'm not saying they're different animals to the rest of us.
"But whether they have Provo links or whatever it is, it is something that is nearer to the way they think that it would be to somebody in South Tipperary."
It's a bizarre generalisation. And as noted by some indicative of certain attitudes that were normalised during the conflict. And attitudes that were deeply pernicious in delaying moves towards a cessation of violence - for example think of what the phrase 'a tribal time-bomb' speaks to with regard perceptions on the part of some in the South towards those in the North? Painting those at or north of the border as atavistic functioned quite literally as a delegitimisation of voices from Northern Ireland and an effort to marginalise them within or sideline them completely from the life of this state.
And there's a broader issue. Dukes is out of front line politics near enough a generation, but it's not just political. Consider how these sort of attitudes must have been carried into cultural, social and other spheres.
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