The liberal crowd have been indignant over the Moygashel bonfire. Whining lefties who probably wouldn’t be able to assemble an IKEA bookcase for their volumes of Lenin have been complaining about the skill of plain Ulster folk who’ve built a massive bonfire out of pallets which may or may not have been nicked from Tesco.

They do not have a word to say about the skill, artistry and creative vision required to put a boat filled with effigies on top of the structure so that people can cheer the idea Muslims and refugees being burned alive. True, they can see the IDF doing that every day of the week, but it’s more of a thrill when it’s on your doorstep. And of course there is the live music which always accompanies these things.

And it is not in the slightest bit racist. If people want to see it that way they should lay off the hallucinogenic tofu. As the organisers themselves say:

“Moygashel Bonfire Committee has said that the bonfire “topper” should not be seen as “racist, threatening or offensive” and it is “expressing our disgust at the ongoing crisis that is illegal immigration”.

If expressing your disapproval of people by suggesting they be burned alive isn’t legitimate cultural and political expression, then what is? Anyway, the cops have known about it for well over a week and they think it’s ok.

Let us have a look at what people have been saying about it on the Belfast Telegraph Facebook page.

Warren Jenkins reckons that it is a message of outreach across the sectarian divide and is defending Christian values. “There is a different kind of war about to erupt here in Northern Ireland that unites Catholic and Protestant people. This will be a Christian Crusade where the fight will be to take back our nation in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom. We are a Christian Nation and the war will be to preserve it.” Part of the message hadn’t quite got through to whoever spraypainted “all Taigs will be crucified” on a rather soiled looking mattress at another bonfire recently. But here is a work of artistic expression with a definite Christian reference from the potential new Banksy.

Warren is slightly at odds with Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh John McDowell who replied with Leviticus (19:34): “the stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”.  

But everyone’s a critic when it comes to art. Jonny Gardiner reckons “This is not realistic at all!!! You could fit at least another 20 in that boat”. Jonny’s tongue in cheek comment is representative of about 40% of the people expressing opinions on the bonfire.

The point I think the wokerati are missing is that magnificently crafted works of public art like this actually represent progress for loyalism. In the past they were so annoyed about not being able to march in an area where they were unwelcome that they burned three Catholic children alive.  A few shop dummies is mild stuff by comparison. Think of it as a way of expressing a fundamental aspect of Ulster loyalism in a controlled way. Isn’t that progress?

Heinrich Heine famously said, “Those who burn books will in the end burn people”. It probably didn’t occur to him to think about the Nazis burning representations of people they didn’t approve of.