Racism and Northern Irish "Loyalism"

I'm currently in the UK so this a UK-themed post. I used to live in Glasgow and when I turned up there as a "hayseed" English country boy, off to uni in the big city, I knew absolutely nothing about the Scottish spillover of Northern Irish sectarian/football politics. Only when I asked my Glaswegian summer-job colleagues who these noisy blokes, with their flutes and drums, were marching past the end of my street each summer weekend morning, did they explain to me that Glasgow also has Orange marches. The graffiti on the toilet walls in the University library was a further education in Scottish sectarian hatred (I was always oddly pleased that scrawlings in the bogs on the social science and philosophy floors of the library weren't quite as unpleasent - further evidence that social science is clearly good for people). One of my tutors was involved in anti-racist organising in the city and told me how right-wing extremist groups like C18 were recruiting amongst Rangers fans (for those who don't know Northern Irish/Scottish politics, Rangers is the Glasgow football club idenified with Protestantism and the Loyalists in Northern Ireland; as opposed to Celtic which is a Catholic club and hence seen as sympathetic to the Republicans in NI)- as she put it "they start by hating the Catholics, they move on to hating the Jews and end up with hating all blacks."

In this context this story from early this last week about the linkage between increasing racist attacks in NI and Loyalist paramilitaries (read - "psychopathic gangster thugs") is hardly suprising although it is still depressing. Hence the story from later in the week about Loyalists yet again trying to kill each other makes you wonder as to whether there is some type of cosmic-justice after all.