The Provisionals are not Griffith's heirs, writes Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice.
Any claim by the Provisional movement to be the inheritors of the legacy of Sinn Féin founded by Arthur Griffith in November 1905 is as bogus and discredited as, say, their claim not to have been involved in the Enniskillen bombing or their president's claim never to have been in the IRA.
What we are witnessing this weekend is the start of an attempt to fool the gullible into accepting a brazen falsehood in terms of fact.
The Sinn Féin party founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, as any historical study will show, developed and mutated and divided into the mainstream parties of the independent Irish State. Those who combined to build it into the representative party of Irish nationalism carrying mass support between 1917 and 1921 never abandoned the democratic principles on which it was founded.
As nationalists and republicans, they believed that legitimacy derived from popular support and not from ideological purity. Griffith, Collins, de Valera and Cosgrave all, in their own way, believed that the cornerstone of the independent Irish State which they brought about was the ongoing support of the people of that State and the democratic control of its institutions by the elected representative of that people. Each, in his own time, used representative democracy and the rule of law to progress the establishment firstly of independence and subsequently of a republican constitution for Ireland.
For the Provisionals to claim any right of succession to the actions of Arthur Griffith in 1905 is pure fantasy and sinister propaganda. The founders of independent Ireland would have been shocked to see the cynical rip-off of the name of their democratic movement by the Provos.
We have seen in the last 40 years the communist takeover of the bogus Sinn Féin party, creating in turn Sinn Féin (Gardiner Place), Sinn Féin the Workers' Party, and the Workers' Party. The process of subdivision went on in parallel, yielding Sinn Féin (Kevin Street), Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) and Provisional Sinn Féin.
Gerry Adams's claim to be president of the party founded by Arthur Griffith is as sham and as bogus as the same claim made by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh of RSF. Each of them is president of a party using the label. But nothing more. Neither of them is the political successor of Arthur Griffith.
Nor, for that matter, is Seán Garland the secretary-general of the party founded 100 years ago next November by Griffith.
The truth, of course, is that the attempt by the Provisionals to hijack the centenary of Griffith's Sinn Féin is nothing to do with any empathy with Griffith or what he stood for or stood against.
It is to do with popularising the delusion that the Provisionals, in the guise of the IRA, are the legitimate government of an all-Ireland republic founded in 1916 and betrayed by the vast majority of the Irish people.
Contrary to popular belief, the 1916 Rising was not a "Sinn Féin rebellion" (as the British and unionists described it). It was an IRB rebellion. And the IRB mainly went pro-Treaty some six years later.
The Provisionals believe that the Provisional IRA is the legal successor to the First and Second Dáils and that the actions of the IRA are the legitimate actions of the Irish people authorised by their lawful government.
That is why Gerry Adams maintains that the shooting of Jean McConville in the head and the shooting down of Jerry McCabe at Adare, among countless cowardly atrocities, are not crimes.
The Provisionals require their members to believe that the IRA will continue to be the lawful government of Ireland until it hands over its powers to the elected government of a 32-county socialist state.
Their internal documents reveal that this doctrine is the cornerstone of their movement - requiring acceptance as an "ethical fact" by all volunteers.
Sinn Féin, as part of the Provisional movement, silently but relentlessly acts on that "ethical fact" as justification for the IRA's actions. The party, as the Independent Monitoring Commission has pointed out, has a joint leading elite with the IRA and defers to the IRA, never criticising it.
The Marxist agenda of leading Provos is carefully concealed and only hinted at it in the use of the euphemistic term, "socialist republic".
Hints are to be found in Sinn Féin's close relationship with the FARC (the guerrilla wing of Colombia's communist party), the maintenance of a full-time party representative in Castro's communist Cuba, and the use of Marxist images by Ógra Sinn Féin. All of the leading ideologues of the Provos are classical Marxists.
Those views have nothing at all to do with pre-independence Sinn Féin.
In one sense, the Provos' attempts to celebrate the centenary of Arthur Griffith's foundation of Sinn Féin are a shabby, pathetic and threadbare charade, and should be treated as such. So much more Provo mendacity.
But at another level this attempt should serve as a warning to all democrats. Truth, lives, rights, and even history are expendable in pursuit of the Provos' goals.
They rob; they kill; they mutilate; they torture; they extort; they arm; they spy; they lie; they rewrite our history - all in our name.
They are seeking our benediction for their campaign by every propaganda means at their disposal.
The great majority of Irish people - North and South - do not want the Marxist socialist republic which they are planning. That majority voted overwhelmingly in simultaneous referendums to endorse the principle that a united Ireland will come about only by the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland freely given.
They put reconciliation of Orange and Green on this island in priority to paper unification. That decision is still not accepted by the Provos.
If the generation that built Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin from modest beginnings into the vanguard of the Irish movement for independence and democracy were here to witness their legacy being hijacked by the Provos, they would warn the Irish people to turn their backs on the Provos.