Sinn Fein is a very legitimate political party, with the goal of uniting Ireland. While they have ties to the former PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army), they were hardly involved in the violence.

Many of the posters here are attempting to criminalize the IRA. Don’t forget that it was the British Army that fired into a crowd of students that fateful Sunday, it was the British that had “colonized” Ireland 800 + years ago and it was the British, and their Unionist lackeys that persecuted the Republicans.

Much different, actually. Unlike Sinn Fein, none of the American political groups you list has been recently affiliated with an illegal armed group that lacked significant popular support but used terror bombings and political murder in an attempt to control govt policy and foment holy war against its religious and ethnic adversaries. A better comparison for Sinn Fein might be with the Colombian narco-terrorists, some of whom ultimately joined the legitimate political process.

Now, as peace seems to be relatively free-flowing in Northern Ireland at the moment, nobody rocks the boat and the past is left to be the past. Both Republicans and Unionist terrorists were given the luxury of a clean slate.

Unfortunately, in the past, there were some Americans only too keen to help support the IRA (through the likes of NORAID), no doubt encouraged by the notion of ‘quaint’ Irish freedom fighters and the family legend that ancestors fled Ireland for the US, if only to get away from those awful Brits. Of course, all that money went on to support an organisation that bombed my home town and targeted thousands of innocent civilians. Quaint, eh?

Also, many other political stickers are plastered nearby for your reading pleasure while parked in a traffic jam.

hehe

Or for that matter, any number of ostensibly peaceable Islamist organizations.

“Hizb-ut-Tahrir
Uniting Muslims. Uniting the world.”