This is a genuine question, not a covert rant.

Nationalist and loyalist paramilitary groups are frequently lumped together as "Irish" terrorists, which is a curious description from many angles. The main one obviously has to do with loyalists, who are:

- British citizens carrying British passports and fully identify as British, rejecting any label of being Irish

- Living in the UK in estates decked out with Union flags

- Of an ultranationalist, pro-British ideology

- Supportive of the British empire, Brexit, various foreign wars

- Killers who specifically target people who they deem a threat to the union or are simply not on board with their ideology (random citizens). They also bombed Monaghan and Dublin, towns in a foreign state, for the sake of terrorizing the population and securing Northern Ireland's place in the union.

So why are they called Irish terrorists? Do terrorists have to come from Britain directly in order to be considered British terrorists?

It seems like propaganda to me to lump them in with the IRA/INLA as if they were all one and the same, as if to associate "Irish" with violence and terrorism. Besides general bigotry, it appears it could be a tactic to distance the British state from responsibility or a sullied reputation; it sets the stage for intervention as a "peacemaker" between the two, when they were in reality an ally of the loyalists.

A lot of the rhetoric at the time insisted that Northern Ireland was rightful British territory ("as British as Finchley" etc.), and yet when it is convenient, all of a sudden the place or its people are Irish, so which is it? Is this a known propaganda tactic that has been pointed out or critiqued?