5th October 2026
Scratch a Liberal, a Fascist will Bleed!
The Orange Order have always been a fascist organisation, because Loyalism is inherently a fascist and imperialist ideology. Founded in late 1795, the Orange Order had been created after the Battle of the Diamond in Loughall, after two decades of violence in response to an uptick in Catholic employment in the Protestant dominated weaving industry in Amargh. The gentry also feared that the Protestant and Catholic tenants would rise up against their Landlords, and began to sow division. Soon after Loyalists expelled over 7000 Catholics from their homes, an event known as the Armagh Outrages, one of the first of many Loyalist pogroms.
The Orange Order's very ideological foundations are rooted in fascist behaviours: Protestant economic and cultural supremacy, intimidation, and a history of pogroms spanning centuries, which continue to this day.
In an attempt to appeal to unionists, the SDLP have tripped over themselves in conflating respect for the Protestant community, Protestant identity, and Protestant heritage, with respect for the fascist ideology of Loyalism — a frankly insulting attempt to appear as the cross-community moderate. While Claire Hanna briefly got photos taken at Garvaghy Road (a measure she couldn't afford to not take lest her vote share plummet), on talk shows she stands high on her pedestal above the masses in her cloak of moderate, sensible, and nuanced politics. The realities of Claire Hanna and the SDLP in general are so divorced from the situations on the ground that it becomes clear what their real motives are — to portray themselves as the adults in the room at the expense of the Republican community.
The liberal social democrat is always the enemy of the workers, no matter how much they may posture, bribe, or advocate for a different coloured flag. Claire Hanna's history of attempting to link the SDLP to Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael should make any worker run in the opposite direction, and they know this! Their voter base is the nationalist bourgeoisie and labour aristocrats who seek an extra flow of super-profits from lower corporation taxes and increased austerity measures, classic neoliberal policies that were birthed out of fascist economic principles.
Nobody is disputing whether playing the flute or the Lambeg drum is part of Irish culture. Ireland's very mythology is based on invasions, immigration, and assimilation, and Protestants are a part of that shared heritage. What people are disputing is why the Orange Order are permitted to regularly harass and intimidate Catholic and migrant communities out of 'respect for heritage'. In poor attempts to be anti-sectarian, the SDLP have not only blindly accepted the sectarian statelet but re-enforced its very ideological justifications, something that comes as no surprise to any Republican aware of the SDLP's soft-nationalist, assimilationist history.
The SDLP do not care for Irish nationalism bar gaelicising street names and changing the colours of the flag. True Irish nationalism comes from dismantling the sectarian statelet, as well as smashing Britain's economic rule over Ireland, something that only Socialist-Republicanism can achieve.
"I nominated my local Grandmaster for a royal honour, I went and took tea with him and his lodge to celebrate, such is my respect and esteem." - Claire Hanna
As Naoise Dolan rightly put it, "There should be no Orange Order marches at all, simply because there should be no Orange Order."
When you clean the blood of the countless thousands burnt out of their homes over the centuries, you can see clearer that the SDLP's flag isn't the tricolour — it's the butchers apron.