The Irish protocol.

Are those of an 'Irish Identity' blocking this?

'Polarising the 'British only community'?

The idea that you are born and bred in Ireland and are 'British only' is in and off itself 'polarising'.

Being honest is not prejudiced or polarising.

These belligerents have to face up to their behaviour and insisting you are 'British only' is an insult and intended to be.

What you are looking for is appeasement.

No identity denial whatsoever.

It is like somebody born and bred in Dublin insisting they are 'Meath only' because their great great great grandparents were from Meath.

Ridiculous and intended to insult another identity. Calling that out is not excluding anyone.

And include rascist and sectarian bonfire and OO culture just to appease?

Your politics are all over the place.

As is usual you ignore the 'only' part to facilitate moral high grounding.

In other words you appease him or her.

Sorry, not going to happen here.

If I see something designed to be sectarian, racist or insulting I will call it out.

And I dont need the permission of somebody who would accept rascist sectarian 'culture' for fear of causing offence.

You claimed that objecting to the racist sectarian parts of their culture was a problem for Irish people FFS

Hold on a second here, the ancestors of modern day Unionis were quite content to be seen as Irish up until the 19th century. You had the United Irish men, predominantly Presbyterians and the Anglican ascendancy who had to be coerced into agreeing to the act of Union. Why did they change? Well you had to look at the situation at that time. Catholics were still being persecuted by the Penal laws, land ownership was almost entirely in the hands of Protestants even though they made up only 25% of the population. It was not an equal society and the Catholic majority were at the bottom of the heap.

Over the course of the 19th century, Catholics started to gain more equality, something that most Protestants were horrified at and tried to stop at every turn. You have to understand that Catholics were seen as inferior and very much an underclass. In response, Protestants started to pivot away from anything that associated them with these inferior Catholics and adopt the British identity instead. So much of Unionist dislike of being Irish is based around a hatred of the Catholic Church and that was well in place long before Catholics had any sort of power in Ireland. The Gaelic revival of the latter half of the 19th century only served to re-inforce the idea of the Irish identity being unacceptable to Unionists.

Trying to blame it on the Irish is silly beyond belief, I think there is also an inherent belief(though they will never admit it), that they recognise they funked Catholics over big style and the fear of the majority population wiping them out in revenge is part of the psyche, much like the fear many whites had in South Africa when democracy was introduced.

We restrict people's rights to assert their identity all the time when that assertion of identity doesn't mesh with the standards of a modern Western society.

Not to draw a direct comparison of course, but for example female genital mutilation would be argued as expression of their cultural identity by those who wish to do it and I'm guessing you're not up in arms shouting about Exclusionary Nationalism when we legally forbid and culturally refuse to condone that?

While obviously not in the same league by orders of magnitude, a great deal of that which surrounds Orangeism you're arguing that we include, support and actively join in on actually propagates the type of Exclusionary Nationalism you claim to argue against.

While I certainly believe that 11th/12th celebrations and Orangeism can and should have a place in a Unified Ireland, arguing that there needs to be some degree of reform around them before we embrace it as part of our shared history and culture on this island certainly isn't Exclusionary.

Encouraging and joining in with the performing of anti-Irish songs, the burning of anything perceived to represent Irish culture and engaging in intentionally provocative actions isn't inclusionary, it is appeasement.

Without those elements (or even an active attempt to remove those elements), I could certainly see myself fully supporting 12th marches akin to those in Rossnowlagh.

I'd apply the very same standard and expectation for events representing Irish culture.

I don't disagree with anything much here, I think you're right in in basically asserting that "we" need to move towards them, as much as they need to move towards "us". Seems reasonable.

See my earlier comments about the pointlessness of re-litigating the wrongs of the past.

There is an interesting point there though, we did have centuries of the whole island having a British-Irish identity and presumably the communities who now are "British-only" at that time were comfortable as "British-Irish". Then sometime after partition that comfort disappeared. I don't think it silly to suggest that a large part of the reason for this is that the efforts of the majority on the island to define irishness as something exclusive of any British connection had the effect of alienating the British-Irish from identifying in any way as Irish.

After all this still goes on today. Speaking Irish is considered more truly Irish, despite it being empirically less Irish in most ways. Referring to people as partitionists as a way to insinuate they are milquetoast Irish. Look at the language used on this thread, where accommodating a British-Irish identity is referred to as appeasement. I think it would be very disingenuous to suggest that this does not have a huge effect on pushing plenty of unionists away from an Irish identity.

I also think it's childish to use words like blame in this context. Blame is irrelevant, we need to be looking forward at solutions rather that backwards for blame.

Nobody I have seen on these threads has an issue with a British/Irish identity.

The issue here is espousing a British only identity when you werw born and reared in Ireland.

It's nonsense

Have to ask, what is your problem with the Irish Language? Would unionists for a change reach out to the other side for once and enact the ILA. It's a language ffs, why are some unionists so insecure. When there is a United Ireland, i hope unionists remember how many compromises they made to the Nationalist community because I sure will.