The longtime leader of Irish Republican Army’s political wing used the most toxic of all racial slurs Sunday night, only to quickly delete it.

Gerry Adams, who heads the Sinn Fein political party in Ireland, posted on Twitter that he was watching a Quentin Tarantino movie.

“Watching Django Unchained- A Ballymurphy N–-r!” the tweet read, only Mr. Adams actually used the infamous word.

“Django Unchained” stars Jamie Foxx as a bounty hunter who kills slave owners and, like many of Mr. Tarantino’s movies, freely uses the N-word.

Ballymurphy is a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast where, in 1971 at the height of the Northern Ireland “Troubles,” members of the British Army conducted raids looking for IRA members and in the process, killed 11 people.

In 1971, Mr. Adams was a leader in the Irish republican movement, elements of which engaged in bombing attacks and assassinations against a perceived unjust government (the British army, the Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant guerrilla army). The point of Mr. Adams’s tweet is therefore likely an identification with Mr. Foxx’s vigilante character.

However, reaction on Twitter was overwhelmingly negative.

The very first response was “Cmon Gerry, as a public figure, can’t be using that language. Cop on.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty, an Irish-American columnist for The Week and other conservative outlets wrote “Gerry Adams survived the RUC, the UVF, and British intelligence. This tweet he may not.”

Within 20 minutes of publishing, Mr. Adams‘ tweet had been deleted. Shortly after that, Mr. Adams tweeted again as if what just happened hadn’t happened.

“Time 4 leaba. Oichey oichey xozzzzzzzz,” he tweeted, which in Gaelic means “time for bed, nighty-night.” An Irish tweeter named Darragh replied “dont act as if that didnt just happen gerry.”

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