IAN Paisley is, always was -- and, at the age of 87, surely always will be -- a hateful, rabble-rousing bigot, whose contribution to life in Northern Ireland was, for more than 50 dark years, overwhelmingly and shamefully negative. The furore now because the long-time Democratic Unionist Party leader says Dublin and Monaghan were asking for it as 33 innocent people were murdered in 1974, or words to that effect, is just more manufactured outrage from people who deliberately chose to forget what he was like.

It's hardly a revelation how these people think, after all. Shinners believe IRA members gunning down unarmed men were "doing their duty". Paisleyites think the South got what it deserved for its attitude towards Northern Ireland. To a man, they're all total and utter . . . well, I won't say the word. But listening to their litany of excuses and whataboutery would be enough to make any decent person's skin crawl.

The wonder is not that Paisley said what he said -- in reportedly his final ever interview, given to veteran journalist Eamon Mallie -- but that anyone can be bothered going through the charade of pretending to be surprised or horrified or outraged at his words. If they are, then they haven't been paying attention. Or maybe paying too much attention to the wrong voices who decided, in the last decade or so, to gloss over the reality of what Ian Paisley, now Lord Bannside, has always been about and to paint him instead as the new hero of pragmatism and bridge-building.

Of course, it suited certain political purposes to pretend Paisley was a changed man. Once it was decided by the British and Irish governments, egged on by whisperings from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, that the only chance of one big sexy settlement in Northern Ireland was to bring in Sinn Fein and the DUP from the margins and have them make peace together -- in the tent, peeing out, rather than outside the tent, peeing in -- then it would obviously be necessary both to find new villains of the piece whilst simultaneously colluding in a charade that Sinn Fein and the DUP were pussycats, purring for peace.

So they made a very deliberate decision to shaft moderates in the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists, helped by the Agreement itself, which encouraged voters to head to the extremes in order to maximise the power for their "side" in a sectarian headcount.

Sinn Fein went along with this revolting act, because why wouldn't they? They were getting what they wanted. The DUP played along with it too, for the same reason. The Paisleyites had ranted and raved for decades, creating instability, wilfully and wickedly sowing division; but now they were top dog it was all suddenly hunky dory. The Presbyterians were too namby pamby for him,so Paisley formed a breakaway sect to better trumpet his Old Testament fundamentalism.

He couldn't lead the Ulster Unionists so he ran off to form the DUP. The very moment that the DUP gained supremacy amongst unionist parties, having been in the halfpenny place for decades, they suddenly did a 180-degree shift and jumped aboard, despite denouncing David Trimble only two years earlier for agreeing to power-sharing. It was cynical politics at its worst.

Paisley even tells Eamon Mallie now that he was sympathetic to the civil rights movement, although he spent decades crucifying unionists who dared to seek any middle ground with their nationalist neighbours. From Terence O'Neill to David Trimble, he scuppered one unionist leader after another, as his incendiary rhetoric about betrayal led stupid young loyalists not only to their own deaths but to brutally taking the lives of others.

The mystery is why observers, flagged up by a supine media, played along with it too, pushing the fantasy that Paisley, one of the most antagonistic public figures ever to walk these islands, had suddenly become a cuddly grandfather figure. Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley were no longer sworn enemies, scorching the earth of Northern Ireland as they battled for supremacy. They were the Chuckle Brothers, sharing a laugh and a joke as they healed the wounds of the past.

The media knowingly colluded in airbrushing Paisley's past as effectively as Shinnerbots in the media were pushing the line that the IRA's fight was all about "equal rights".

When Paisley resigned as First Minister of Northern Ireland after his symbolic first year in office, the tributes were saccharine, nauseating and dishonest. McGuinness actually said of the DUP leader: "I think he will be fondly remembered by the people of Ireland, North and South."

Those who dared instead to remember honestly what he was and what he stood for were accused, as usual, of not being at one with the "spirit" of the blessed peace process.

We were supposed to not notice how, in the wake of the murder of 21-year-old Paul Quinn -- beaten to death with iron bars by members of the South Armagh Brigade whilst Paisley was First Minister -- the DUP's self-styled scourges of republican violence had barely a peep to say about it, not wishing to upset their new co-partners in devolved government, who were desperately underplaying it as a minor detail of the post-peace paradise.

Keeping the panto going with his fellow chuckle brother was more important to Paisley than standing with victims. Enemy of the IRA? He ended his public life as he'd always lived it: as the IRA's greatest asset. One act of good authority didn't change that.

Ian Paisley's comments about the Dublin and Monaghan bombings are simply a reminder that he will only be "fondly remembered" by other bigots or those who have lost their minds.

Irish Independent