Every year around the Twelfth, like clockwork, sectarian and racist tensions are ratcheted up. Look at what this past weekend has laid bare. Bonfires played host to despicable displays of Islamophobic hatred, attacks on political representatives and parties and the usual glorification of paramilitary organisations.
Tragically, a man fell to his death from the top of a bonfire in east Belfast. In the north of the city, a bonfire beside a children's playground was draped with a grotesque anti-immigration poster featuring images targeting Sinn Féin, the SDLP, Alliance and People Before Profit.
In Carrickfergus, houses boarded up for their own protection were daubed with anti-Islam graffiti, while homes were burned to the ground in Greenisland.
If this isn't reason enough to move beyond bonfire sectarianism, what is?
Despite the state so often going out of its way not to name the role of paramilitaries in violence and disorder around the Twelfth, their pernicious and persistent role in stoking division and organising pogroms is as clear as day.
'Normal' politics at Stormont, Westminster and the Dáil has failed people right across this island. Every working-class person, regardless of their background, should be angry about poverty, the housing crisis, violence against women and the myriad of other issues heaped on deprived communities.
These scenes should be condemned without hesitation. What we urgently need now is a movement of working class people, drawn from every background, ready to stand together and challenge sectarianism head on.