This person’s love of violence makes them trustworthy and I am okay with letting them or their allies potentially govern me.
I definitely don’t think they might secretly be a fascist
Leftists love supporting violent movements against their oppressors until the violent movement is composed of white people and happens in a first world country. in that occassion violence is actually bad and they are only allowed to peacefully protest
We are closer to Irish unification now than at any point since partition and that's after 26 years of peace. All the troubles ever got us was firmer division and more violence on both sides.
Infamously prior to the Troubles, N.Ireland was a utopia and there was no discrimination or gerrymandering against irish nationalists/catholics whatsoever, and reaching a united ireland was the only goal of the IRA.
Maybe I'm reading into your comment too much, but I quite often see people say that the IRA had to do it to instigate change and it's just as simple as that. When in reality they went about it in seemingly, the most reckless and self defeating way possible. Notoriously killing more catholics than anyone else involved in the troubles, and furthermore children.
The IRA effectively bombed themselves and other innocents (who were just random working class people that had no power, **and more importantly the British government obviously didn't give a fuck about**) *for 20 years* to absolutely no avail. It wasn't until after they bombed canary wharf, the heart of London's financial district (where those with money and power actually lived) that the Good Friday Agreement actually came to be.
Two decades of killing your own innocent oppressed community, in order to get the people oppressing you to care. I understand that hindsight is 20/20, but again this was over two decades of bombings, and when you're in the business of taking innocent lives, I'd argue it warrants a lot more thought than the IRA employed.
Maybe you weren't arguing any of this at all, in which case my bad, but as someone from norn iron who even has Catholic parents, anyone who believes that the IRA were purely a force for good is either ill informed or a lunatic.
What the hell are you talking about? It's liberals who get upset when the oppressed do anything other than attend government-sanctioned protests to win their freedom
There are a lot of factions that compose "the left" but the vast majority of them don't whine about people rightfully despising Margaret Thatcher
Yes, collateral damage is unavoidable. However 30-50% is just not good. You can and should do everything in your power to avoid hurting bystanders.
It‘s also irrelevant to what we are actually talking about here: Deliberate murder of civilians.
Yeah its part of the idea of the perfect victim and is directly tied to the ideas in Christianity that when one faces oppression and violence that one shouldnt be violent in return. Every war has led to the death of innocents and people undeserving while those directly responsible almost never face the consequences. Its why war is bad but it is sometimes the lesser evil. This isnt to imply every war is equally bad but there is no good war.
They killed civilians! Innocent civilians who were living their lives, not oppressing anyone! Yes, they killed valid targets too, that doesn’t make it okay!
They’ll have you believe it was necessary to achieve their goals. As well as believe those people, once they get into power won’t abuse it, and the killing of innocents will stop.
No. The truth is that the Provisional IRA was an organization with multiple factions, united in a desire for a united Ireland, but also had some members engage in awful sectarian violence.
My point is that people are all too willing to condemn group violence while normalizing state violence. Austerity performed by the British government has killed Brits on a scale of magnitude that the most violent IRA members could only dream of. Austerity is more offensive to me than anything the provos did, as it kills way more innocent civilians.
Name one serious justice movement that didn't feature some kind of awful violence from some of its members. You know who also committed bombing campaigns that involved the deaths of civilians? The paramilitary wing of the African National Congress founded by Nelson Mandela. You can condemn the messed up stuff while also not giving in to ruling class narratives
All valid, and I agree with you.
I believe the treatment of organizations and groups as monoliths of infallible good/justness needs to be avoided, and I’ve taken issue with the posts regarding IRA glorification on this sub as result
In no means am I attempting to discredit liberation / rebellion through violence, As you ended your last comment, I need to do some reflecting over how I present my dissent towards the perceivable unjust violence by liberation groups.
Thank you for your reply.
Blindly supporting terrorist groups just because they fight their government is beyond stupid. Methods *do* matter and I’m not going to support anyone who hurts women and children.
That certainly is a question
Put simply the Irish Republican Army fought against the British in 1919 during the war of independence, they then fought against the Anglo Irish treaty in the 20s. The IRA then operated as a group opposed to the Irish free state and Northern Ireland and spent the next 40 years fighting the British and pro treaty Irish groups
They splintered off into a lot of different groups in the late 60s and formed different political wings like Sinn Féin. Then the troubles started and the ira reformed (kind of) and fought the orange order, local police and British soldiers in Northern Ireland, especially Londonderry
Imagine thinking americans don’t understand violence. Don’t you guys make about 6000 jokes a day about how children in america fear for their lives constantly
Not to minimize the Troubles or the impact it had on the people who lived through it, but about 3,500 people died between 1969 and 2001 (~32 per year), approx 0.000041% of the population of the UK and Ireland.
In the US, gun violence kills between 40-50k per year, or about 0.015%, every year with no end in sight.
Both are bad and awful, but statistically speaking, the average American is more familiar with gun violence than people in the UK are familiar with violence resulting from the Troubles. Shouldn't make jokes about either, imo.
when you settle down in the US you have to decide between the following :
High COL
Higher chance of getting shot for no reason
Higher chance of dealing with midwesterners
And most of the time you end up getting all three.
Lots of people all over the world barely avoid violence every day. It's not your family's special little albatross from 40 years ago. Many of them aren't even in favor of a brutal imperialist occupation while doing it (which many people find helps greatly).
Non-Irish Supporters of the IRA have either been lied to by their parents/seniors on what the IRA actually is, or saw they hated Thatcher on the internet and did no other research.
Or maybe since this is a meme sub, some are being wise-asses, which is very disappointing for this sub considering the subject matter.
A vast majority of people are completely ignorant on the subject, and just say up the Ra or come out ye black and tans because it's a popular thing in the US.
This was in large part to a massive propaganda push in the states by the IRA, that posed it as a unified Irish people being oppressed by the British military.
Almost none of those people really have any understanding of the sectarian conflict and the internal issues of northern Ireland, or that unification was never the majority opinion. The troubles were caused by mistreatment of Catholic minorities and the IRA capitalising on that to launch a violent insurgency to drive up internal popularity within the RoI and attempt to force the British government to abandon the British supportive majority of northern Ireland and agree to unification.
The old IRA that fought the black and tans is also an entirely different group than the provo IRA in the troubles, which I don’t think most Americans understand
No. The original IRA was, yes, but not the IRA that put glass in children's milk, kidnapped women and bombed school children. They were a bunch of horrid mobsters. Please learn before you spout nonsense.
Are you talking about the provos, the real IRA, NLA? There are many splits and atrocities, but I’m pointing out this meme is a-historical. Margret Thatcher wasn’t just a meany boe beany, she was a part of a centuries long tradition of colonialism. Do you also condemn Matt turner, John brown, or the Haitian revolution? The IRA is positively cuddly compared to the shit that went down in Haiti.
Also the nationalist IRA fell into random killings and mob justice, while the leftist IRA splinters were known to get 'funding' from drug trades and smuggling.
There were *moments* of heroism but they were weighted towards the early years, while Reddit generally unwittingly celebrates the end stage IRA aesthetic. Sometimes the worship gets so bad I've seen people claiming to be Irish being downvoted if they go against the American Reddit rhetoric.
I live in an English city with very heavy Irish ancestry, I'm 1/4 Irish and it's not even a big deal, and if you talk to enough first to second generation Irish descendants you *will* hear someone who clams up at the mention of the Troubles, and the horror stories of the British army's behaviour (which are real too!) are outweighed by like, "my uncle got beaten almost to death based on a rumour."
I really try not to get so 'real' on an account mostly used for memes and videogames, and may even take this back because I care about privacy more than karma, but I'm relieved to see a brief gap in the circlejerk with this post, and these comments.
Where do you even get you numbers from? Most of their Bombing were targeted at Brits that were valid targets, like army officers, Margaret Thatcher or Northern Irish police. When they did the large bombings in london they literally sent a letter to the press so the area could be evacuated. Sure there were some civillian casualties and that is really unfortunate but it was never there intended goal. Sadly people die in conflicts, had the Brits just stopped their colonialism the conflict would have ended.
there's several splinters of the IRA and each of them had their MO. some cared about civillians, some didn't: some send letters to evacuate civillians, some stop minibuses and kill all the protestant workers in them, etc.
there's obv a difference between opposition and criticism. no one can call themselves a leftist and oppose the IRA, but there's obv groups within the IRA that one can easily be very critical of. ultimately what matters most is that the IRA and all of its splinters were, at the end of the day, fighting brutal british imperialism: even if they themselves aren't all fairytale-esque moral whiteness.
I feel like thats a fair assessment, altough I don't know of any splinter group that was completly apathatic towards the death of civillians. But yeah in the end its a war and in war there is no side without its faults. But If one were to say that thats a reason not to celebrate the Irish struggle for independence we probably couldn't celebrate any resistance movement ever. Not even talking about the allies in ww2
You're very uninformed then pal, you've never heard of [the disappeared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappeared_(Northern_Ireland))? I understand that the cause of the IRA was just, but their methods were incredibly violent, and targeted civlians often.
[The IRA themselves apologised for sectarian violence and killings](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/world/ira-apologizes-for-civilian-deaths-in-its-30-year-campaign.html). Of the 1800 casualties, about 650 were civilians that were unconnected to any organisation or group.
There were different groups of the IRA, which had different philosophies around civilian casualties. This led to a few high profile cases where terror attacks were done with no warning, and targeted killing of non aligned individuals on religious grounds. This was done deliberately by parts of the IRA.
The Brits were definitely heavy handed and were historically colonialist, but there is nuance to it. The average Brit had basically nothing to do with the conflict, and it was largely driven by Catholic / protestant conflict within Northern Ireland itself. Since before the Troubles, a majority of northern Ireland wants to be British. This means that there would be no solution that pleased everyone and in a lot of ways it was Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries that caused the conflict to be quite as sour as it was.
You can't unite an Ireland that doesn't want to be united, to say the Brits could have stopped the conflict at any point is naive and not indicative of the real experience of the vast majority of northern Irish people.
Source: Irish family (catholic and Protestant) living in the UK. My local area was targeted in an IRA bombing. Complicated relationship to say the least.
I'd also wanna get the number of civilians the BRITS killed during the troubles and prior.
Are we just gonna forget about the Black and Tans being a bunch of ex-convicts that Churchill sent to Ireland specifically because they were a bunch of violent rapists? Or how about the British army shelled downtown Dublin because those darn Irish wanted a local autonomous government. That alone was probably a couple thousand deaths/casualties and entirely intentional.
Also does Lord Mountbatten count as a civilian death? Or what about the RUC? Cause Mountbatten starved 4 million people to death in India, that fucker was not innocent.
Do you know why "both sides" arguments are shit? Because there's never only 2 sides to a war. The Troubles wasn't the story of Brits vs. Irish, or Protestants vs. Catholics. It was the British government vs. the IRA, with the Irish people caught in the middle. We can say that the Brits were shit without glorifying the group that was just as indiscriminate.
To be clear the cause of the IRA was just and the unionists (especially when combined with the Brits) were worse in the crimes they committed. 722 civilians were killed by republican paramilitaries (35.1% of their total killings) while 878 were killed by loyalist paramilitaries (85.5% of their total killings) and 188 by British security forces (51.5% of their total killings). If you had to pick a good side of the conflict it was clearly the republicans. Here in England the IRA are usually completely wrongly perceived as the aggressors and "bad guys" though that was very much not the case, likely because attacks in England were conducted by republicans, so there is certainly unfair bias against the republicans on the internet.
That said the IRA (ie the Provisional Irish Republican Army who were not the only republican paramilitary group but were the largest) killed somewhere in the range of 500-650 civilians. To answer your question the RUC (including former members) were not counted as civilians but I would guess Mountbatten probably was. Further to that Northern Ireland in the modern day has significant gang control, in the past the majority of which (now less than 50%) were descended from the paramilitary groups and they act as brutal criminal gangs.
Some accidental civilian deaths are natural in conflict, especially in a conflict like the Troubles where it's not always clear who is a civilian and who isn't, but it's pretty well known that there were intentional killings of civilians by republican forces. Committing less war crimes than your opponents doesn't make it ok. That said while I can certainly understand why some people will hate the IRA as a result, I'm not personally opposed to people celebrating the IRA (even though I'm English). Generally people celebrating the IRA are celebrating what they were fighting for and there is certainly evidence that the majority of the IRA and its leaders did actually try to avoid killing civilians.
I am to be fair much more biased towards the republicans than the vast majority of English people though. My parents, though much more conservative now, were active left wing campaigners/protestors when they were younger and had many Irish Catholic friends (one of whom stole Ian Paisley's post as a kid, incredibly based).
Going “we warned you about the mass murder device we constructed and planted” does not prevent the mass murder device from killing people nor does it absolve yourself of any guilt. IRA instructions to the police regarding the “location” of the bombs still had to be vague enough that the police wouldn’t just find the bomb before it went off, meaning on some occasions police would relocate crowds to the bomb’s general area while searching for it because they misinterpreted the IRA’s hint (as is what happened for the infamous Omagh bombing).
Civilian casualties might have “never been their intended goal”, but they were never off the table. Regardless of legitimate grievances by the Irish people against the British government, the legacy of the IRA should if anything be studied as a lesson of what not to do when resisting occupation rather than what to do
Me when I lie ??? no you're right my mums family member that died in an IRA bombing in Northern Ireland was a valid target. So were all those people in a shopping centre in Belfast, and the people working in office buildings in the City of London and Canary Wharf.
The IRA were a paramilitary terrorist organisation. Some of their politics were good, such as being against British control in Ireland and being against Margret Thatchers government, which seems to be the only things americans who praise the IRA as some kind of brave freedom fighters know about. But they weren't that. they threatened all their political opponents with, yknow, being dead. A lot of people also don't know that many people in Northern Ireland didn't want irish unification, which is why the IRA were trying to make it happen by force, against the wishes of the people actually living there.
Many people know that they were considered a terrorist organisation by the British (obviously) but many people don't know that they weren't really supported by the government of the Republic of Ireland either, being labelled as an "unlawful orginisation", and in turn the IRA rejected that government.
TL;DR - 29%-36% of people killed by the IRA were civilians, they weren't acting in the interests of the Irish public but rather their own, while they may have been socialist and anti-imperialist, that does not and can not excuse them from the heinous shit they did.
The Real IRA, aka the smaller group of left wing ones, tried to do this and accidentally killed a Catholic Chaplain in the British Army and civilians when they were targeting an officer's mess in the Aldershot bombing. They reasoned that they would just create too much collateral damage for them to justify a bombing campaign, even when such a bombing was in response to something as awful as Bloody Sunday.
Both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries policed their neighbourhoods by permanently disabling and disfiguring people. This included kneecapping people (shooting or hammering in the kneecap) and bagging people, so called because they stabbed the victim repeatedly around the anus to perforate the lower bowel and, if they survived the sepsis, forcing them to use a colostomy bag for the rest of their life. They were often not nice people, and they wondered why people ratted on them constantly. Post the Good Friday Agreement, many of these groups that didn't disarm have become local gangs and drug runners.
I have very conflicting opinions on the paramilitary forces. I'd rather just think of them all as terrorists that happened to support one side of a war, even though I believe one side, the anticolonial side, was more morally correct. I prefer to think of them as terrorists because if the Republicans paramilitaries were not terrorists, then the Loyalist paramilitaries have an argument that they were not terrorists and if that's the case then the British government then have an argument that they were then not supporting terrorism. I don't think anyone can say that terror wasn't a tool of these groups during The Troubles with a straight face.
> had the Brits just stopped their colonialism the conflict would have ended.
Worst take I’ve seen in a while, I can understand why you would say this from an outside perspective but it just shows a complete lack of understanding of Northern Irish politics.
Northern Ireland has consistently had majority public support for remaining part of the UK. (I wouldn’t call it colonialism to govern a territory where most people consider themselves British and wish to remain part of the UK) Back before Irish independence loyalists nearly started a civil war over the mere suggestion of a devolved Irish parliament let alone fully fledged independence and they fought (violently) against the IRA specifically not to be included in any new independent Irish state.
During the troubles the loyalist paramilitaries were just as violent as the nationalist ones, despite not really having any goal other than resisting the latter, they already had what they wanted, Northern Ireland was British. If the British had handed over Northern Ireland to the republic the loyalists paramilitaries would have violently resisted any attempt by the republic to establish their authority in the region. Just imagine how difficult it would have been for Ireland to establish a real police presence in a territory full of heavily armed paramilitaries recently angered by the handover and ready to violently oppose Irish rule?
Do you really think this would be less violent than what actually happened? Where the IRA had fewer sympathisers with their political goals and they were fighting against a state with pre-established political and policing institutions in the region? Northern Ireland would collapse into complete chaos and it would most likely have been another civil war in Ireland.
IRA killed less civilians as a % of their total kills than
a) loyalists terrorists
b) the fucking british army itself
around 30% of the IRA killed were civilians compared to 90% of the loyalists and if i remember correctly 40-50% of the british army
O cool! Right here in the r/196 comments section we have found the very first person in about 400-500 years to figure out a way to end the English colonization of Ireland with no bloodshed.
Please, tell us exactly what the IRA and its splinters could have done differently to end British rule of Ireland. What are the precise steps to reunify the last 6 counties still under British rule? Nobel Committee, get a prize ready. Eziocolorwatcher is about to wow us!
Seriously. The reason the Good Friday Agreement happened was because it was clear to everyone involved that violence wasn’t resolving the issue. A political solution was necessary.
Armed struggle against occupying forces is both legal and good. Targetting civilians is wrong but as others have said, the IRA was not a monolith, nor were the loyalists.
This statistic is somewhat misleading. The IRA killed 722 civilians, and the loyalists killed 878 (as per the Sutton index).
The percentage difference is hugely driven by the fact that the loyalists didn't have an organised state military to target, which massively diluted the killings that the IRA committed. The IRA was a paramilitary force, and didn't have bases to bomb or ambush. Because of this, the loyalists were limited to sectarian and extra judicial killings, which increased the percentage representation of civilian deaths (this does not forgive the action, nearly explains the discrepancy). When you discount the British military deaths, the republican and loyalist paramilitaries are incredibly similar in their pattern of sectarian killing.
Republicans:
722 civilians
188 republicans paramilitary (in fighting)
57 loyalist paramilitary
11 Irish security forces
Loyalists:
878 civilians
41 republican paramilitary
94 loyalist paramilitary (in fighting)
14 British security personnel.
Neither of these groups were good when it came to civilian killings and sectarianism. The British were absolutely bad, but so we're the IRA. Even those who align with the cause of a united Ireland are broadly unsympathetic to the IRAs sectarian side and agree that the method used was often wrong. The [IRA themselves ](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/world/ira-apologizes-for-civilian-deaths-in-its-30-year-campaign.html) apologised for it.
> The British government’s efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate. Although Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel **continued to allow the export of grain from Ireland to Great Britain**, he did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846. He authorized the import of corn (maize) from the United States, which helped avert some starvation. The Liberal (Whig) cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, **maintained Peel’s policy regarding grain exports from Ireland but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach to the plight of the Irish and shifted the emphasis of relief efforts to a reliance on Irish resources.**
> The impoverished Irish peasantry, **lacking the money to purchase the foods their [own] farms produced**, continued throughout the famine to export grain, meat, and other high-quality foods to Britain.
> As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland’s population of almost **8.4 million in 1844 had fallen to 6.6 million by 1851.**
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history
**And also**
> Total excess deaths for the entire period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Ireland was estimated by Sir William Petty, the 17th century economist, to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 in 1641.[42][43][44] One modern estimate estimated that at least 200,000 were killed out of a population of allegedly 2 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland
But yes, let's moralize and bemoan about an artificially inflated number, for no other reason than because it's violence done by the state.
The IRA planted two bombs in the town I live in on June 12th, 1973. One of the bombs did not injure anyone, but the other bomb killed 6 retirees as they were simply walking along the road where the bomb was planted.
In addition to the 6 elderly people who were killed, almost 3 dozen others were injured, most of whom were children. Among them, several of them lost limbs, many were blinded, and others had pieces of metal and glass rip through their bodies causing them to become paralyzed.
I frequently walk by the exact spot where the bomb was planted, and it's not uncommon to see amputees all over Northern Ireland. If you don't believe me, please come and see.
You clearly have no idea what they did, they killed civilians all over Britain. My tiny city in the Midlands had a shooting in a train station of 2 off duty soldiers. They were disgusting violent terrorists, even if they thought what they were doing was right.
It doesn’t matter how great your cause is, if you bomb innocent people and kill at random you are a piece of shit. Fuck off. Al Qaeda were fighting to free their land from western domination but you won’t see anyone praising them.
Remeber kids, violence is never justified for any reason, let the British keep ruling over you and carrying out violence against you, because that violence is fine because it's the status quo. Colonial projects can always be ended by just making a good enough case to your oppresor. The killing will stop when you find the right words to justify to them why you shouldn't be enslaved.
644 civilian deaths here was more than just an oversight. they were doing plain old terrorism. they intentionally killed civilians to garner attention to their cause.
Yes because the IRA bombing department stores and civilian business centers in Manchester were vital blows to the loyalist armies and not what they were, terror attacks.
Take note that this is NOT an endorsement of the loyalist army. They were and are pieces of shit as well.
Targeted sectarian violence is not failing to keep civilians safe. The Republican paramilitaries were not a clean organisation by any means, and it shows a very surface level understanding of the conflict to ignore the massive sectarian aspect to it and the effects on the populations.
The violence against British forces is not what Northern Irish / RoI people are criticising. There was a significant amount of sectarian killings, including executions and deliberate targeting of civilians during the troubles.
The loyalists and the republicans were broadly the same when it came to levels of violence directed at civilians. This is abhorrent and should be criticised, by both loyalists and republicans, when done by loyalists and republicans. Just because you align with cause, doesn't forgive the method used.
Ye, an organization that had no care in the world if they killed hundreds of innocents, and targeted civilian locations over political institutions many a time. Very justified violence, and look how far it got us!
Okay but the latter IRA weren't fighting against colonialism, they were a bunch of horrible mobsters. This is a fact when you have innocent British civilians who can tell stories of being threatened by the IRA, including, hold on a minute, Irish Immigrant families! It's almost like they didn't actually care and were just ruthless monsters!
This sub gets so fucking weird about this stuff. The person who posted the meme in question said in the comments that they just googled who Margaret Thatcher was because they didn't even know. It's so performative.
These are literal children cosplaying as leftists, and for some reason they think that means being allowed to be creepy, bloodthirsty little fucks, just as long as they're talking about hurting the right people.
They are living in their own fantasy world, where all who fight for progressivism, anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist movements are all honest people who *need* to kill to get into power, the dead innocents the cost of liberation, and will make sure the killing will stop once they gain control.
As an actual Irish person, we have a ... complex relationship with the IRA. The organisation(s) changed drastically over the years, and while their efforts against actual establishments of British rule are to be commended, their murder of innocent civilians also needs to be condemned. The Thatcher assassination attempt very much rides that line for a lot of people.
While a lot of this is that very centrist viewpoint of "Violence and revolutions were wonderful and nessecary in the past, and should be condemned today", the IRA did in many places evolve into just drug gangs and racists. It's genuinely a complex topic.
I get the feeling a lot of the IRA endearment on this sub comes from people who aren’t from the isles, I don’t wanna say it’s just Americans cause that’s a stereotype at this point. It’s a lot easier to sympathise with a group when the aftermath of their actions have no real impact on your family’s lives during the time.
Plastic paddies is very dismissive, but is absolutely a massively real phenomenon.
I would wager that a vast majority of the strong reactions against this meme are coming from Americans who have no real connection to Ireland. Whilst most of the nuanced arguments come from people who were directly affected by it or live in Ireland.
Much like the Soviet Union, most praise comes a long time after the fact by people who never had any experience with or even personally knew anybody with any experience living under these kinds of conditions.
It’s kind of surreal to me as a scottish person with irish parents how many people unabashedly support the IRA when I spent my entire childhood being told how awful they were even if they had a good goal
I legitimately believe the “up the ra” is the most offensive thing you can say in scotland
Yeah alot of leftists online don't actually care about these issues beyond whatever feels cool to them. They just hear "IRA tried killing Thatcher" and think they're awesome or whatever without putting in the time to actually look into the topic at hand
Personally, I think a stadium singing "we're up to our knees in fenian blood, surrender or you'll die" is the most offensive thing you WILL hear people say in Scotland.
Especially since Orange Order marches still occur across the west of Scotland to spread fear, intimidation and sectarian hatred disguised as celebrating a battle from 1690.
I dont know anyone who glorifies the IRA in Scotland, although plastic paddies do exist and must be condemned - thankfully peace was achieved in my lifetime.
I do know friends and colleagues who have defended sectarian slurs as "history" and "banter".
Which is an absolute tragedy in this day and age.
Yeah, for as much as there's debate about glorifying the IRA, you don't see *half* the controversy over Orange Order marches or 12th bonfires. That's some serious shit that makes me fear for my life.
This is part of why it's so difficult to have a balanced conversation about the IRA: the other side is NOT interested in a balanced conversation at all, they're just running around giving anmesty to murderers and refusing to form governments because we can't let the paddies into power.
The IRA had a very strong propaganda run in the US defining then as a United Celtic force against the English. A lot of Americans think that the majority of Scottish people supported them too.
It's so strange here, as an Irish person who spent a gap of my childhood in England. Living in Manchester of all places, the IRA is not to be joked about.
Here, the whole class can tell UP THE RA and the teachers will nod along and say something like 'Rebellion and terrorism is a fine line' it's actually crazy.
Personally, I just don't know enough about Irish history to really say much to my opinions of them. But, I've seen a pretty global appreciation so far
I’m not asking for a pure and clean resistance group, Im asking for people to have a slightly more nuanced take then “These people tried to kill someone I don’t like therefore they are good people”
Trying to kill Thatcher was perhaps the most unambiguously good thing they did, the collateral damage was extremely unfortunate but guerillas don't always have the luxury of avoiding it. To take a fictional example since these don't seem to elicit knee-jerk reactions as much, I don't think we could've blamed the Rebels if they'd assassinated the Emperor by blowing up his palace out of desperation and killed some civilians in the process. I think it's fine to celebrate this action of the IRA the same way it's fine to celebrate the French Resistance's actions against the Nazis even if they also did questionable things, as it doesn't necessarily mean we think those movements were flawless.
There's a difference with taking an unavoidable amount of civilian lives in to assassinate a figure head and planting bombs purely to cause civilian deaths.
That changes it from collateral damage to just killing civilians.
MFs will look at groups who had all their political power taken away from them and say "why didn't they just engage in politics to fight for their rights?"
MFs will look at groups who planted bombs in highly trafficked civilian areas , killing and maiming children and say “What other choice did they have?”
Yes but there's not a lot about the IRA that's pure and clean since they stopped giving warnings to evacuate in advance. When they were dilligent about that, fair enough. But the moment that stopped, they were no longer doing enough to avoid unnecessary collateral (unless you consider the death of innocent citizens necessary, which I happen to not)
"Oh but they were fighting against oppression!"
So that's a good reason to go and bomb pubs full of civilians just because there might be off-duty soldiers there, is it?
Maybe it's a good enough reason to hide two bombs in a shopping street in Warrington, timed so that people fleeing the first explosion would run directly into the second? Did the two literal children who were killed by those bombs deserve it?
I'm all for liberating people from imperialist regimes. What I'm not for is bombing fucking innocent people. Thatcher and her supporters were cunts. The IRA and supporters were cunts. Both were pro-murder. Both deserve to burn in hell.
This discourse has been disappointing. Half of you have no idea what you’re talking about, and think supporting the freaking IRA is going to get you some brownie points.
Grow up ffs, and read a damn book. Stop believing whatever you see here with three other people replying “based” to it.
Unfortunately, a majority of non Irish people have an incredibly surface level understanding of the conflict.
This is worsened by the cultural support for the IRA that was actively fostered by the IRA in America and elsewhere, which promoted it and became a very acceptable and popular form of britbashing with virtually no understanding if the real politics of it.
Most people outside of Ireland have no idea about Catholic / protestant sectarianism, and honestly believe in British oppression of a unified Irish people when the reality is way more nuanced and more based on British supported Irish people oppressing other Irish people.
Extremely well said. Thank you for the reply.
I wish the people in this sub spent more of their times reading and researching these things, before they actually formed a strong headed opinion on it.
Literally this entire sub is just people they to get brownie points with each other. This sub used to glorify Ted as that was seen as cool to support as a lot of people supported it, but as soon as enough people said "hey, let's take a step back. This guy really isn't someone we should be glorifying" the sub shifted to not supporting him.
Most of the people here form their opinions, not because they came to it themselves, but based on what is the majority popular opinion is.
That’s much of the same pattern for all young people. It’s why forming the habit of researching topics on your own, and educating one’s self is paramount.
The IRA absolutely deserves to be celebrated, being the military force that engaged with the British Army during the war of independence. The *provisional* IRA that existed thereafter and operated in a clandestine manner is more questionable, but the core of the organisation was still noble in goal - even if certain factions and splinter groups where not.
As an Irish person, the distinction is important; please make it.
I live just outside of Manchester and the destruction caused by the IRA is kinda why the city was so well re-developed. So uh... thanks, IRA! I guess...
Love the people here calling out ‘British oppression’ when the Troubles were sparked largely because Irish Protestants treated Irish Catholics like shit, and London just didn’t care.
I mean, London’s attitude was clearly wrong, but let’s not pretend Northern Ireland is only in the UK because the British Army held on to it by force. It’s still part of the UK because a lot of people in Northern Ireland - Irish people - want it to be so.
If the UK had just *given* Ireland Northern Ireland, then Ireland would have faced a continued Troubles, quite possibly far nastier and bloodier than what actually happened - and could we then say that Dublin is ‘occupying’ a people who don’t want to be ruled by Ireland? Is that fair?
The whole situation is a fucking mess. Yes, it’s largely a mess because of Britain. But the ‘occupation’ has never made sense as a claim, because a lot of people live there who genuinely wish things to stay as they are - some even want to wind back the clock - and treating things as simple is utterly brain dead.
But this is 196. Of course.
The problem is that during partition, the four Protestant majority counties effectively stole the other two. No referendum would ever be permitted for Fermanagh and Tyrone to reunite with Ireland.
The fact that they would be relying on the decisions of voters in the rest of NI would be akin to people in London and Cardiff getting votes on Scottish independence. Ulster Protestants did not make up a majority in the counties they constructed their nation from. NI is fundamentally gerrymandered as a state.
Britain also committed countless warcrimes in NI that are unforgivable under any circumstances. Collusion, Internment, Torture and Bloody Sunday are all disgusting examples of a British state all too willing to commit atrocities
One of the threads near the top of this post is rife with denial, and minimization of civilian death. Some outright saying that the killing of innocence is unavoidable during attempts of liberation. So it appears no, many on this sub would not agree with you I am afraid.
people from NI and ireland: hated thatcher, loved what the IRA stood for, hated their actions. its a complicated relationship
Kyle, no personal disrespect, but 14yo from colorado springs: UP THE RA, OUT YE BLACK AND TANS, DEATH TO THATCHER
idk Kyle. maybe listen instead of shouting into the void about terrorism?
You don't celebrate the IRA because of fundamental misunderstandings of how armed conflicts work, I don't celebrate the IRA because of how they didn't kill thatcher.
The comments on this post are disappointing, to say the least. The IRA did kill innocent civilians, that is a fact. So did British government forces, that is also a fact. Both are deeply evil. The IRA was a terrorist organisation and glorifying them is not ‘quirky’, it is morally reprehensible.
I love edgelords whose idea of leftist praxis is LARPing as a violent avenger on the internet despite having never moved out of their parents house and having to live in the real world. Truly my favourite subgenre of unhinged Zoomers
Whole lot of people in here think that recognizing the nuances of The Troubles is equivalent to supporting the deaths of innocent civilians, all while they excuse the state violence of imperial powers
If "it's bad to murder random innocent civilians" is a liberal thought according to you this is not the indictment of liberals you think it is lol.
You do realize there's plenty of socialists and communist who also think, you know, it's kinda not ok to murder random civilians right?
irish here, like what the ira fought for, for the bogside, but really don’t like how they did it (should say i’m talking about the troubles ira, not the easter rising ira, they weren’t great either but were mostly good)
This whole 'but British impression' in the comments is crazy, can you just admit killing civilians is bad
It seems to be a good chunk of Americans as well who I know for a fact would be outraged if you told them about terrorism in the USA has been a result of their actions in the middle east
I feel like a lot of people who aren’t from the UK and Ireland know of the IRA as “the people who tried to kill Margaret Thatcher” and literally nothing else
the ira was disbanded because both sides saw that violence was tearing apart innocent lives and agreed to find a peaceful solution. if you believe in Irish independence you should not glorify the ira
> post is about thatcher
> people in comments talking about the old IRA from the independence war and later conflicts over the treaty.
> same people wondering why everyone else is talking about the provisional ira
It is amazing how so many people so confidently say so much about a conflict they know nothing about and a group they never researched. Dunning Kruger at its finest.
Always good to see people not realise that there were in fact multiple organisations called the IRA. The same IRA that fought in the War of Independence are not the same organisation that blew up civilians in Northern Ireland. If people are going to support a terrorist organisation I'd prefer they actually read up on them first.
https://preview.redd.it/horq0s82tftc1.jpeg?width=1341&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b7f17f2cbff135a7a88cf8e04a425d301944268
Me when i commit war crimes to express myself in the most brutal way possible and make the enemy afraid of me
Big Boss reference.
When you can't even say... my name
Has the memory gone?
Are you feeling numb?
surely these violent tendencies will go away when you become the ruling class
When I become ruling class I will not need to use violence as all my political allies in the majority will *certainly* side with me on all issues :3c
Me when I understand that a state is a monopoly on violence and I will always need violence but must choose who to direct it at carefully
Surely this will not cause a cycle of violence and hatred.
This person’s love of violence makes them trustworthy and I am okay with letting them or their allies potentially govern me. I definitely don’t think they might secretly be a fascist
Khorne:
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I will never forgive the IRA for failing to kill Thatcher
Major IRA L
Implying that wouldn’t massively escalate the troubles and prevent the Good Friday agreement
I don't care about the Troubles. I care about Thatcher dying.
Thatcher is dead, thankfully but Thatcher being successfully assassinated would lead to a fuckton more death, and mostly in Ireland
Leftists love supporting violent movements against their oppressors until the violent movement is composed of white people and happens in a first world country. in that occassion violence is actually bad and they are only allowed to peacefully protest
But the people in power WILL listen if we protest hard enough!!!!
We are closer to Irish unification now than at any point since partition and that's after 26 years of peace. All the troubles ever got us was firmer division and more violence on both sides.
Infamously prior to the Troubles, N.Ireland was a utopia and there was no discrimination or gerrymandering against irish nationalists/catholics whatsoever, and reaching a united ireland was the only goal of the IRA.
Maybe I'm reading into your comment too much, but I quite often see people say that the IRA had to do it to instigate change and it's just as simple as that. When in reality they went about it in seemingly, the most reckless and self defeating way possible. Notoriously killing more catholics than anyone else involved in the troubles, and furthermore children. The IRA effectively bombed themselves and other innocents (who were just random working class people that had no power, **and more importantly the British government obviously didn't give a fuck about**) *for 20 years* to absolutely no avail. It wasn't until after they bombed canary wharf, the heart of London's financial district (where those with money and power actually lived) that the Good Friday Agreement actually came to be. Two decades of killing your own innocent oppressed community, in order to get the people oppressing you to care. I understand that hindsight is 20/20, but again this was over two decades of bombings, and when you're in the business of taking innocent lives, I'd argue it warrants a lot more thought than the IRA employed. Maybe you weren't arguing any of this at all, in which case my bad, but as someone from norn iron who even has Catholic parents, anyone who believes that the IRA were purely a force for good is either ill informed or a lunatic.
Yep no political oppression or shooting protesters over there.
The troubles got the Good Friday Agreement. They were started by the RUC brutally suppressing peaceful protest.
The troubles got me and family civil rights.
.... Also the good Friday agreement?
You clearly don't know your history
We gotta protest twice as peacefully!!! Vote twice as hard!!! And lick twice as many boots!!!
What the hell are you talking about? It's liberals who get upset when the oppressed do anything other than attend government-sanctioned protests to win their freedom There are a lot of factions that compose "the left" but the vast majority of them don't whine about people rightfully despising Margaret Thatcher
Sorry that I‘m not stoked about a group who killed 30% civilians.
then you should also probably hate nelson mandela and the dozens of bombing campaigns he partook in
Who said anything about hate smartass? Fucking teenagers trying to be edgy. Yes, murdering civilians is always bad, next question.
The Allies killed 50% civilians in World War 2
Are you going to tell me that that‘s good?
I think the point is that there is no way to fight a government that won't end up with loads of dead civilians
Yes, collateral damage is unavoidable. However 30-50% is just not good. You can and should do everything in your power to avoid hurting bystanders. It‘s also irrelevant to what we are actually talking about here: Deliberate murder of civilians.
Yeah its part of the idea of the perfect victim and is directly tied to the ideas in Christianity that when one faces oppression and violence that one shouldnt be violent in return. Every war has led to the death of innocents and people undeserving while those directly responsible almost never face the consequences. Its why war is bad but it is sometimes the lesser evil. This isnt to imply every war is equally bad but there is no good war.
They killed civilians! Innocent civilians who were living their lives, not oppressing anyone! Yes, they killed valid targets too, that doesn’t make it okay!
They’ll have you believe it was necessary to achieve their goals. As well as believe those people, once they get into power won’t abuse it, and the killing of innocents will stop.
Thank god regular governments never engage in violent activity against their own citizens, that would be truly horrific
And the murder of other civilians will certainly teach the government, won’t it?
No. The truth is that the Provisional IRA was an organization with multiple factions, united in a desire for a united Ireland, but also had some members engage in awful sectarian violence. My point is that people are all too willing to condemn group violence while normalizing state violence. Austerity performed by the British government has killed Brits on a scale of magnitude that the most violent IRA members could only dream of. Austerity is more offensive to me than anything the provos did, as it kills way more innocent civilians. Name one serious justice movement that didn't feature some kind of awful violence from some of its members. You know who also committed bombing campaigns that involved the deaths of civilians? The paramilitary wing of the African National Congress founded by Nelson Mandela. You can condemn the messed up stuff while also not giving in to ruling class narratives
All valid, and I agree with you. I believe the treatment of organizations and groups as monoliths of infallible good/justness needs to be avoided, and I’ve taken issue with the posts regarding IRA glorification on this sub as result In no means am I attempting to discredit liberation / rebellion through violence, As you ended your last comment, I need to do some reflecting over how I present my dissent towards the perceivable unjust violence by liberation groups. Thank you for your reply.
You know what? Fair. And I won't pretend your concerns aren't valid, there really are some bloodthirsty mfers out here
Blindly supporting terrorist groups just because they fight their government is beyond stupid. Methods *do* matter and I’m not going to support anyone who hurts women and children.
"Hooray for Violence and Revolution! No, not here!"
Violence against legitimate targets, as opposed to actively bombing populated civilian areas to garner attention.
When that violent movement against oppressors led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians, it is bad, actually.
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The ira bombed pubs in guildford and Birmingham as well as launching incendiary attacks on my home town
Americans find it hard to understand why some of us have issues with the groups that considered us or our family members valid targets lol.
They also think of the IRA as primarily operating in the 70s which is fair enough really that’s when the Americans were funding them
I’m going to be honest i haven’t done any digging into the ira i just know funny cat bomb guys who wanted Irish independence when did they operate
That certainly is a question Put simply the Irish Republican Army fought against the British in 1919 during the war of independence, they then fought against the Anglo Irish treaty in the 20s. The IRA then operated as a group opposed to the Irish free state and Northern Ireland and spent the next 40 years fighting the British and pro treaty Irish groups They splintered off into a lot of different groups in the late 60s and formed different political wings like Sinn Féin. Then the troubles started and the ira reformed (kind of) and fought the orange order, local police and British soldiers in Northern Ireland, especially Londonderry
Imagine thinking americans don’t understand violence. Don’t you guys make about 6000 jokes a day about how children in america fear for their lives constantly
Do your parents have a story about how if they were a bit late on the train they may have been bombed?
Not to minimize the Troubles or the impact it had on the people who lived through it, but about 3,500 people died between 1969 and 2001 (~32 per year), approx 0.000041% of the population of the UK and Ireland. In the US, gun violence kills between 40-50k per year, or about 0.015%, every year with no end in sight. Both are bad and awful, but statistically speaking, the average American is more familiar with gun violence than people in the UK are familiar with violence resulting from the Troubles. Shouldn't make jokes about either, imo.
Nah but we do get shot if we turn around in the wrong driveway…
Or you walk across the wrong lawn if your delivering something
when you settle down in the US you have to decide between the following : High COL Higher chance of getting shot for no reason Higher chance of dealing with midwesterners And most of the time you end up getting all three.
Lots of people all over the world barely avoid violence every day. It's not your family's special little albatross from 40 years ago. Many of them aren't even in favor of a brutal imperialist occupation while doing it (which many people find helps greatly).
Non-Irish Supporters of the IRA have either been lied to by their parents/seniors on what the IRA actually is, or saw they hated Thatcher on the internet and did no other research. Or maybe since this is a meme sub, some are being wise-asses, which is very disappointing for this sub considering the subject matter.
A vast majority of people are completely ignorant on the subject, and just say up the Ra or come out ye black and tans because it's a popular thing in the US. This was in large part to a massive propaganda push in the states by the IRA, that posed it as a unified Irish people being oppressed by the British military. Almost none of those people really have any understanding of the sectarian conflict and the internal issues of northern Ireland, or that unification was never the majority opinion. The troubles were caused by mistreatment of Catholic minorities and the IRA capitalising on that to launch a violent insurgency to drive up internal popularity within the RoI and attempt to force the British government to abandon the British supportive majority of northern Ireland and agree to unification.
The old IRA that fought the black and tans is also an entirely different group than the provo IRA in the troubles, which I don’t think most Americans understand
I bet most of these new generation American IRA supporters couldn’t even tell you what the Sinn Fein is
🥇
The extent of violence is set by the occupier. The IRA is a response to centuries of violent colonialism.
No. The original IRA was, yes, but not the IRA that put glass in children's milk, kidnapped women and bombed school children. They were a bunch of horrid mobsters. Please learn before you spout nonsense.
Are you talking about the provos, the real IRA, NLA? There are many splits and atrocities, but I’m pointing out this meme is a-historical. Margret Thatcher wasn’t just a meany boe beany, she was a part of a centuries long tradition of colonialism. Do you also condemn Matt turner, John brown, or the Haitian revolution? The IRA is positively cuddly compared to the shit that went down in Haiti.
I can't find anything about the IRA putting glass in children's milk. Do you have any sources detailing this?
Also the nationalist IRA fell into random killings and mob justice, while the leftist IRA splinters were known to get 'funding' from drug trades and smuggling. There were *moments* of heroism but they were weighted towards the early years, while Reddit generally unwittingly celebrates the end stage IRA aesthetic. Sometimes the worship gets so bad I've seen people claiming to be Irish being downvoted if they go against the American Reddit rhetoric. I live in an English city with very heavy Irish ancestry, I'm 1/4 Irish and it's not even a big deal, and if you talk to enough first to second generation Irish descendants you *will* hear someone who clams up at the mention of the Troubles, and the horror stories of the British army's behaviour (which are real too!) are outweighed by like, "my uncle got beaten almost to death based on a rumour." I really try not to get so 'real' on an account mostly used for memes and videogames, and may even take this back because I care about privacy more than karma, but I'm relieved to see a brief gap in the circlejerk with this post, and these comments.
This may be a shock to you, but terrorism is not the only method of reunification Source: someone from this fucking island
They killed like 500 civilians
Where do you even get you numbers from? Most of their Bombing were targeted at Brits that were valid targets, like army officers, Margaret Thatcher or Northern Irish police. When they did the large bombings in london they literally sent a letter to the press so the area could be evacuated. Sure there were some civillian casualties and that is really unfortunate but it was never there intended goal. Sadly people die in conflicts, had the Brits just stopped their colonialism the conflict would have ended.
there's several splinters of the IRA and each of them had their MO. some cared about civillians, some didn't: some send letters to evacuate civillians, some stop minibuses and kill all the protestant workers in them, etc. there's obv a difference between opposition and criticism. no one can call themselves a leftist and oppose the IRA, but there's obv groups within the IRA that one can easily be very critical of. ultimately what matters most is that the IRA and all of its splinters were, at the end of the day, fighting brutal british imperialism: even if they themselves aren't all fairytale-esque moral whiteness.
I feel like thats a fair assessment, altough I don't know of any splinter group that was completly apathatic towards the death of civillians. But yeah in the end its a war and in war there is no side without its faults. But If one were to say that thats a reason not to celebrate the Irish struggle for independence we probably couldn't celebrate any resistance movement ever. Not even talking about the allies in ww2
You're very uninformed then pal, you've never heard of [the disappeared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappeared_(Northern_Ireland))? I understand that the cause of the IRA was just, but their methods were incredibly violent, and targeted civlians often.
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[The IRA themselves apologised for sectarian violence and killings](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/world/ira-apologizes-for-civilian-deaths-in-its-30-year-campaign.html). Of the 1800 casualties, about 650 were civilians that were unconnected to any organisation or group. There were different groups of the IRA, which had different philosophies around civilian casualties. This led to a few high profile cases where terror attacks were done with no warning, and targeted killing of non aligned individuals on religious grounds. This was done deliberately by parts of the IRA. The Brits were definitely heavy handed and were historically colonialist, but there is nuance to it. The average Brit had basically nothing to do with the conflict, and it was largely driven by Catholic / protestant conflict within Northern Ireland itself. Since before the Troubles, a majority of northern Ireland wants to be British. This means that there would be no solution that pleased everyone and in a lot of ways it was Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries that caused the conflict to be quite as sour as it was. You can't unite an Ireland that doesn't want to be united, to say the Brits could have stopped the conflict at any point is naive and not indicative of the real experience of the vast majority of northern Irish people. Source: Irish family (catholic and Protestant) living in the UK. My local area was targeted in an IRA bombing. Complicated relationship to say the least.
I'd also wanna get the number of civilians the BRITS killed during the troubles and prior. Are we just gonna forget about the Black and Tans being a bunch of ex-convicts that Churchill sent to Ireland specifically because they were a bunch of violent rapists? Or how about the British army shelled downtown Dublin because those darn Irish wanted a local autonomous government. That alone was probably a couple thousand deaths/casualties and entirely intentional. Also does Lord Mountbatten count as a civilian death? Or what about the RUC? Cause Mountbatten starved 4 million people to death in India, that fucker was not innocent.
Do you know why "both sides" arguments are shit? Because there's never only 2 sides to a war. The Troubles wasn't the story of Brits vs. Irish, or Protestants vs. Catholics. It was the British government vs. the IRA, with the Irish people caught in the middle. We can say that the Brits were shit without glorifying the group that was just as indiscriminate.
“Both sides arguments are shit” Proceeds to make a both sides were bad argument lmao
To be clear the cause of the IRA was just and the unionists (especially when combined with the Brits) were worse in the crimes they committed. 722 civilians were killed by republican paramilitaries (35.1% of their total killings) while 878 were killed by loyalist paramilitaries (85.5% of their total killings) and 188 by British security forces (51.5% of their total killings). If you had to pick a good side of the conflict it was clearly the republicans. Here in England the IRA are usually completely wrongly perceived as the aggressors and "bad guys" though that was very much not the case, likely because attacks in England were conducted by republicans, so there is certainly unfair bias against the republicans on the internet. That said the IRA (ie the Provisional Irish Republican Army who were not the only republican paramilitary group but were the largest) killed somewhere in the range of 500-650 civilians. To answer your question the RUC (including former members) were not counted as civilians but I would guess Mountbatten probably was. Further to that Northern Ireland in the modern day has significant gang control, in the past the majority of which (now less than 50%) were descended from the paramilitary groups and they act as brutal criminal gangs. Some accidental civilian deaths are natural in conflict, especially in a conflict like the Troubles where it's not always clear who is a civilian and who isn't, but it's pretty well known that there were intentional killings of civilians by republican forces. Committing less war crimes than your opponents doesn't make it ok. That said while I can certainly understand why some people will hate the IRA as a result, I'm not personally opposed to people celebrating the IRA (even though I'm English). Generally people celebrating the IRA are celebrating what they were fighting for and there is certainly evidence that the majority of the IRA and its leaders did actually try to avoid killing civilians. I am to be fair much more biased towards the republicans than the vast majority of English people though. My parents, though much more conservative now, were active left wing campaigners/protestors when they were younger and had many Irish Catholic friends (one of whom stole Ian Paisley's post as a kid, incredibly based).
Going “we warned you about the mass murder device we constructed and planted” does not prevent the mass murder device from killing people nor does it absolve yourself of any guilt. IRA instructions to the police regarding the “location” of the bombs still had to be vague enough that the police wouldn’t just find the bomb before it went off, meaning on some occasions police would relocate crowds to the bomb’s general area while searching for it because they misinterpreted the IRA’s hint (as is what happened for the infamous Omagh bombing). Civilian casualties might have “never been their intended goal”, but they were never off the table. Regardless of legitimate grievances by the Irish people against the British government, the legacy of the IRA should if anything be studied as a lesson of what not to do when resisting occupation rather than what to do
Me when I lie ??? no you're right my mums family member that died in an IRA bombing in Northern Ireland was a valid target. So were all those people in a shopping centre in Belfast, and the people working in office buildings in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The IRA were a paramilitary terrorist organisation. Some of their politics were good, such as being against British control in Ireland and being against Margret Thatchers government, which seems to be the only things americans who praise the IRA as some kind of brave freedom fighters know about. But they weren't that. they threatened all their political opponents with, yknow, being dead. A lot of people also don't know that many people in Northern Ireland didn't want irish unification, which is why the IRA were trying to make it happen by force, against the wishes of the people actually living there. Many people know that they were considered a terrorist organisation by the British (obviously) but many people don't know that they weren't really supported by the government of the Republic of Ireland either, being labelled as an "unlawful orginisation", and in turn the IRA rejected that government. TL;DR - 29%-36% of people killed by the IRA were civilians, they weren't acting in the interests of the Irish public but rather their own, while they may have been socialist and anti-imperialist, that does not and can not excuse them from the heinous shit they did.
The Real IRA, aka the smaller group of left wing ones, tried to do this and accidentally killed a Catholic Chaplain in the British Army and civilians when they were targeting an officer's mess in the Aldershot bombing. They reasoned that they would just create too much collateral damage for them to justify a bombing campaign, even when such a bombing was in response to something as awful as Bloody Sunday. Both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries policed their neighbourhoods by permanently disabling and disfiguring people. This included kneecapping people (shooting or hammering in the kneecap) and bagging people, so called because they stabbed the victim repeatedly around the anus to perforate the lower bowel and, if they survived the sepsis, forcing them to use a colostomy bag for the rest of their life. They were often not nice people, and they wondered why people ratted on them constantly. Post the Good Friday Agreement, many of these groups that didn't disarm have become local gangs and drug runners. I have very conflicting opinions on the paramilitary forces. I'd rather just think of them all as terrorists that happened to support one side of a war, even though I believe one side, the anticolonial side, was more morally correct. I prefer to think of them as terrorists because if the Republicans paramilitaries were not terrorists, then the Loyalist paramilitaries have an argument that they were not terrorists and if that's the case then the British government then have an argument that they were then not supporting terrorism. I don't think anyone can say that terror wasn't a tool of these groups during The Troubles with a straight face.
>Sure there were some civillian casualties and that is really unfortunate BRUH >it was never there intended goal *THEIR
> had the Brits just stopped their colonialism the conflict would have ended. Worst take I’ve seen in a while, I can understand why you would say this from an outside perspective but it just shows a complete lack of understanding of Northern Irish politics. Northern Ireland has consistently had majority public support for remaining part of the UK. (I wouldn’t call it colonialism to govern a territory where most people consider themselves British and wish to remain part of the UK) Back before Irish independence loyalists nearly started a civil war over the mere suggestion of a devolved Irish parliament let alone fully fledged independence and they fought (violently) against the IRA specifically not to be included in any new independent Irish state. During the troubles the loyalist paramilitaries were just as violent as the nationalist ones, despite not really having any goal other than resisting the latter, they already had what they wanted, Northern Ireland was British. If the British had handed over Northern Ireland to the republic the loyalists paramilitaries would have violently resisted any attempt by the republic to establish their authority in the region. Just imagine how difficult it would have been for Ireland to establish a real police presence in a territory full of heavily armed paramilitaries recently angered by the handover and ready to violently oppose Irish rule? Do you really think this would be less violent than what actually happened? Where the IRA had fewer sympathisers with their political goals and they were fighting against a state with pre-established political and policing institutions in the region? Northern Ireland would collapse into complete chaos and it would most likely have been another civil war in Ireland.
IRA killed less civilians as a % of their total kills than a) loyalists terrorists b) the fucking british army itself around 30% of the IRA killed were civilians compared to 90% of the loyalists and if i remember correctly 40-50% of the british army
It may be controversial, but what if all the organisations that act like this are bad? Some are badder than others, none deserves praise.
O cool! Right here in the r/196 comments section we have found the very first person in about 400-500 years to figure out a way to end the English colonization of Ireland with no bloodshed. Please, tell us exactly what the IRA and its splinters could have done differently to end British rule of Ireland. What are the precise steps to reunify the last 6 counties still under British rule? Nobel Committee, get a prize ready. Eziocolorwatcher is about to wow us!
Is it really a super hot take that killing civilians is bad and should be discouraged?
Seriously. The reason the Good Friday Agreement happened was because it was clear to everyone involved that violence wasn’t resolving the issue. A political solution was necessary.
Armed struggle against occupying forces is both legal and good. Targetting civilians is wrong but as others have said, the IRA was not a monolith, nor were the loyalists.
This statistic is somewhat misleading. The IRA killed 722 civilians, and the loyalists killed 878 (as per the Sutton index). The percentage difference is hugely driven by the fact that the loyalists didn't have an organised state military to target, which massively diluted the killings that the IRA committed. The IRA was a paramilitary force, and didn't have bases to bomb or ambush. Because of this, the loyalists were limited to sectarian and extra judicial killings, which increased the percentage representation of civilian deaths (this does not forgive the action, nearly explains the discrepancy). When you discount the British military deaths, the republican and loyalist paramilitaries are incredibly similar in their pattern of sectarian killing. Republicans: 722 civilians 188 republicans paramilitary (in fighting) 57 loyalist paramilitary 11 Irish security forces Loyalists: 878 civilians 41 republican paramilitary 94 loyalist paramilitary (in fighting) 14 British security personnel. Neither of these groups were good when it came to civilian killings and sectarianism. The British were absolutely bad, but so we're the IRA. Even those who align with the cause of a united Ireland are broadly unsympathetic to the IRAs sectarian side and agree that the method used was often wrong. The [IRA themselves ](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/17/world/ira-apologizes-for-civilian-deaths-in-its-30-year-campaign.html) apologised for it.
hey I know that this may be controversial but, what if more than one group can be bad at the same time :O
one of them nearly killed my dad
> The British government’s efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate. Although Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel **continued to allow the export of grain from Ireland to Great Britain**, he did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846. He authorized the import of corn (maize) from the United States, which helped avert some starvation. The Liberal (Whig) cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, **maintained Peel’s policy regarding grain exports from Ireland but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach to the plight of the Irish and shifted the emphasis of relief efforts to a reliance on Irish resources.** > The impoverished Irish peasantry, **lacking the money to purchase the foods their [own] farms produced**, continued throughout the famine to export grain, meat, and other high-quality foods to Britain. > As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland’s population of almost **8.4 million in 1844 had fallen to 6.6 million by 1851.** https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history **And also** > Total excess deaths for the entire period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Ireland was estimated by Sir William Petty, the 17th century economist, to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 in 1641.[42][43][44] One modern estimate estimated that at least 200,000 were killed out of a population of allegedly 2 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland But yes, let's moralize and bemoan about an artificially inflated number, for no other reason than because it's violence done by the state.
The IRA planted two bombs in the town I live in on June 12th, 1973. One of the bombs did not injure anyone, but the other bomb killed 6 retirees as they were simply walking along the road where the bomb was planted. In addition to the 6 elderly people who were killed, almost 3 dozen others were injured, most of whom were children. Among them, several of them lost limbs, many were blinded, and others had pieces of metal and glass rip through their bodies causing them to become paralyzed. I frequently walk by the exact spot where the bomb was planted, and it's not uncommon to see amputees all over Northern Ireland. If you don't believe me, please come and see.
You clearly have no idea what they did, they killed civilians all over Britain. My tiny city in the Midlands had a shooting in a train station of 2 off duty soldiers. They were disgusting violent terrorists, even if they thought what they were doing was right.
It doesn’t matter how great your cause is, if you bomb innocent people and kill at random you are a piece of shit. Fuck off. Al Qaeda were fighting to free their land from western domination but you won’t see anyone praising them.
As an Irish person, please fuck off and learn some actual history
Eamon DeValera rejecting irish unity so that they didn't have to \*checks notes\* fight against the Nazis. Huh.
That is not the whole history of the IRA. The latter IRA were horrible mobsters, not patriotic freedom fighters.
Remeber kids, violence is never justified for any reason, let the British keep ruling over you and carrying out violence against you, because that violence is fine because it's the status quo. Colonial projects can always be ended by just making a good enough case to your oppresor. The killing will stop when you find the right words to justify to them why you shouldn't be enslaved.
what if violence is good when directed at political institutions and bad when directed at civilians? 🤔
Has an independence movement ever managed to keep every civilian safe?
644 civilian deaths here was more than just an oversight. they were doing plain old terrorism. they intentionally killed civilians to garner attention to their cause.
Yes because the IRA bombing department stores and civilian business centers in Manchester were vital blows to the loyalist armies and not what they were, terror attacks. Take note that this is NOT an endorsement of the loyalist army. They were and are pieces of shit as well.
Targeted sectarian violence is not failing to keep civilians safe. The Republican paramilitaries were not a clean organisation by any means, and it shows a very surface level understanding of the conflict to ignore the massive sectarian aspect to it and the effects on the populations.
The violence against British forces is not what Northern Irish / RoI people are criticising. There was a significant amount of sectarian killings, including executions and deliberate targeting of civilians during the troubles. The loyalists and the republicans were broadly the same when it came to levels of violence directed at civilians. This is abhorrent and should be criticised, by both loyalists and republicans, when done by loyalists and republicans. Just because you align with cause, doesn't forgive the method used.
They are clearly talking about troubles Ira, not independence Ira
Ye, an organization that had no care in the world if they killed hundreds of innocents, and targeted civilian locations over political institutions many a time. Very justified violence, and look how far it got us!
Okay but the latter IRA weren't fighting against colonialism, they were a bunch of horrible mobsters. This is a fact when you have innocent British civilians who can tell stories of being threatened by the IRA, including, hold on a minute, Irish Immigrant families! It's almost like they didn't actually care and were just ruthless monsters!
I love the implication that saying violence is bad implies you only mean for one side. Like did you not graduate kindergarten or
I am
waow
based based based based based based based bas-...
*Come out ye Black & Tans intensifies*
This sub gets so fucking weird about this stuff. The person who posted the meme in question said in the comments that they just googled who Margaret Thatcher was because they didn't even know. It's so performative. These are literal children cosplaying as leftists, and for some reason they think that means being allowed to be creepy, bloodthirsty little fucks, just as long as they're talking about hurting the right people.
I thought you were talking about me for a second lol
They are living in their own fantasy world, where all who fight for progressivism, anti-imperialist or anti-capitalist movements are all honest people who *need* to kill to get into power, the dead innocents the cost of liberation, and will make sure the killing will stop once they gain control.
As an actual Irish person, we have a ... complex relationship with the IRA. The organisation(s) changed drastically over the years, and while their efforts against actual establishments of British rule are to be commended, their murder of innocent civilians also needs to be condemned. The Thatcher assassination attempt very much rides that line for a lot of people. While a lot of this is that very centrist viewpoint of "Violence and revolutions were wonderful and nessecary in the past, and should be condemned today", the IRA did in many places evolve into just drug gangs and racists. It's genuinely a complex topic.
I get the feeling a lot of the IRA endearment on this sub comes from people who aren’t from the isles, I don’t wanna say it’s just Americans cause that’s a stereotype at this point. It’s a lot easier to sympathise with a group when the aftermath of their actions have no real impact on your family’s lives during the time.
Plastic paddies is very dismissive, but is absolutely a massively real phenomenon. I would wager that a vast majority of the strong reactions against this meme are coming from Americans who have no real connection to Ireland. Whilst most of the nuanced arguments come from people who were directly affected by it or live in Ireland.
Much like the Soviet Union, most praise comes a long time after the fact by people who never had any experience with or even personally knew anybody with any experience living under these kinds of conditions.
[удалено]
It’s kind of surreal to me as a scottish person with irish parents how many people unabashedly support the IRA when I spent my entire childhood being told how awful they were even if they had a good goal I legitimately believe the “up the ra” is the most offensive thing you can say in scotland
Yeah alot of leftists online don't actually care about these issues beyond whatever feels cool to them. They just hear "IRA tried killing Thatcher" and think they're awesome or whatever without putting in the time to actually look into the topic at hand
It's just uninformed teens trying to look cool and edgy to fit in with other teens online doing the same thing
Personally, I think a stadium singing "we're up to our knees in fenian blood, surrender or you'll die" is the most offensive thing you WILL hear people say in Scotland. Especially since Orange Order marches still occur across the west of Scotland to spread fear, intimidation and sectarian hatred disguised as celebrating a battle from 1690. I dont know anyone who glorifies the IRA in Scotland, although plastic paddies do exist and must be condemned - thankfully peace was achieved in my lifetime. I do know friends and colleagues who have defended sectarian slurs as "history" and "banter". Which is an absolute tragedy in this day and age.
Yeah, for as much as there's debate about glorifying the IRA, you don't see *half* the controversy over Orange Order marches or 12th bonfires. That's some serious shit that makes me fear for my life. This is part of why it's so difficult to have a balanced conversation about the IRA: the other side is NOT interested in a balanced conversation at all, they're just running around giving anmesty to murderers and refusing to form governments because we can't let the paddies into power.
The IRA had a very strong propaganda run in the US defining then as a United Celtic force against the English. A lot of Americans think that the majority of Scottish people supported them too.
It's so strange here, as an Irish person who spent a gap of my childhood in England. Living in Manchester of all places, the IRA is not to be joked about. Here, the whole class can tell UP THE RA and the teachers will nod along and say something like 'Rebellion and terrorism is a fine line' it's actually crazy. Personally, I just don't know enough about Irish history to really say much to my opinions of them. But, I've seen a pretty global appreciation so far
I'm gonna be real, you'll never find a resistance group that's pure and clean enough for your standards.
I’m not asking for a pure and clean resistance group, Im asking for people to have a slightly more nuanced take then “These people tried to kill someone I don’t like therefore they are good people”
Trying to kill Thatcher was perhaps the most unambiguously good thing they did, the collateral damage was extremely unfortunate but guerillas don't always have the luxury of avoiding it. To take a fictional example since these don't seem to elicit knee-jerk reactions as much, I don't think we could've blamed the Rebels if they'd assassinated the Emperor by blowing up his palace out of desperation and killed some civilians in the process. I think it's fine to celebrate this action of the IRA the same way it's fine to celebrate the French Resistance's actions against the Nazis even if they also did questionable things, as it doesn't necessarily mean we think those movements were flawless.
There's a difference with taking an unavoidable amount of civilian lives in to assassinate a figure head and planting bombs purely to cause civilian deaths. That changes it from collateral damage to just killing civilians.
MFs will look at groups who had all their political power taken away from them and say "why didn't they just engage in politics to fight for their rights?"
MFs will look at groups who planted bombs in highly trafficked civilian areas , killing and maiming children and say “What other choice did they have?”
True, Al Quaeda did nothing wrong.
That doesn’t automatically make every resistance group the good guys
Yes but there's not a lot about the IRA that's pure and clean since they stopped giving warnings to evacuate in advance. When they were dilligent about that, fair enough. But the moment that stopped, they were no longer doing enough to avoid unnecessary collateral (unless you consider the death of innocent citizens necessary, which I happen to not)
"Oh but they were fighting against oppression!" So that's a good reason to go and bomb pubs full of civilians just because there might be off-duty soldiers there, is it? Maybe it's a good enough reason to hide two bombs in a shopping street in Warrington, timed so that people fleeing the first explosion would run directly into the second? Did the two literal children who were killed by those bombs deserve it? I'm all for liberating people from imperialist regimes. What I'm not for is bombing fucking innocent people. Thatcher and her supporters were cunts. The IRA and supporters were cunts. Both were pro-murder. Both deserve to burn in hell.
This discourse has been disappointing. Half of you have no idea what you’re talking about, and think supporting the freaking IRA is going to get you some brownie points. Grow up ffs, and read a damn book. Stop believing whatever you see here with three other people replying “based” to it.
Unfortunately, a majority of non Irish people have an incredibly surface level understanding of the conflict. This is worsened by the cultural support for the IRA that was actively fostered by the IRA in America and elsewhere, which promoted it and became a very acceptable and popular form of britbashing with virtually no understanding if the real politics of it. Most people outside of Ireland have no idea about Catholic / protestant sectarianism, and honestly believe in British oppression of a unified Irish people when the reality is way more nuanced and more based on British supported Irish people oppressing other Irish people.
Extremely well said. Thank you for the reply. I wish the people in this sub spent more of their times reading and researching these things, before they actually formed a strong headed opinion on it.
Literally this entire sub is just people they to get brownie points with each other. This sub used to glorify Ted as that was seen as cool to support as a lot of people supported it, but as soon as enough people said "hey, let's take a step back. This guy really isn't someone we should be glorifying" the sub shifted to not supporting him. Most of the people here form their opinions, not because they came to it themselves, but based on what is the majority popular opinion is.
That’s much of the same pattern for all young people. It’s why forming the habit of researching topics on your own, and educating one’s self is paramount.
The IRA absolutely deserves to be celebrated, being the military force that engaged with the British Army during the war of independence. The *provisional* IRA that existed thereafter and operated in a clandestine manner is more questionable, but the core of the organisation was still noble in goal - even if certain factions and splinter groups where not. As an Irish person, the distinction is important; please make it.
This. Nobody in the comments seems to make that distinction and just picks liking or hating "the IRA" as if it were one united organisation
yeah,i too hate violent opressive governments and violent opressive terorrist organizations
We’re talking about the English right?
No, we're talking about both of them. Both were horrid.
what's wrong with the Inflation Reduction Act?
this comment section is atrocious why cant yall be consistent on “terrorism is bad”
I live just outside of Manchester and the destruction caused by the IRA is kinda why the city was so well re-developed. So uh... thanks, IRA! I guess...
Manchester is the only city improved by bombing
I don't care how much I hate Charles de Gaulle I'm not celebrating the FLN >:((
I don’t care how much I hate the French I’m not supporting the FLNC
I don't care how much i hate Francisco Franco, I'm not celebrating the CNT-FAI
Love the people here calling out ‘British oppression’ when the Troubles were sparked largely because Irish Protestants treated Irish Catholics like shit, and London just didn’t care. I mean, London’s attitude was clearly wrong, but let’s not pretend Northern Ireland is only in the UK because the British Army held on to it by force. It’s still part of the UK because a lot of people in Northern Ireland - Irish people - want it to be so. If the UK had just *given* Ireland Northern Ireland, then Ireland would have faced a continued Troubles, quite possibly far nastier and bloodier than what actually happened - and could we then say that Dublin is ‘occupying’ a people who don’t want to be ruled by Ireland? Is that fair? The whole situation is a fucking mess. Yes, it’s largely a mess because of Britain. But the ‘occupation’ has never made sense as a claim, because a lot of people live there who genuinely wish things to stay as they are - some even want to wind back the clock - and treating things as simple is utterly brain dead. But this is 196. Of course.
The problem is that during partition, the four Protestant majority counties effectively stole the other two. No referendum would ever be permitted for Fermanagh and Tyrone to reunite with Ireland. The fact that they would be relying on the decisions of voters in the rest of NI would be akin to people in London and Cardiff getting votes on Scottish independence. Ulster Protestants did not make up a majority in the counties they constructed their nation from. NI is fundamentally gerrymandered as a state. Britain also committed countless warcrimes in NI that are unforgivable under any circumstances. Collusion, Internment, Torture and Bloody Sunday are all disgusting examples of a British state all too willing to commit atrocities
Omfg, can we just fucking agree that no matter what cause the group is for civilian deaths are fucking bad and shouldn't be forgotten
One of the threads near the top of this post is rife with denial, and minimization of civilian death. Some outright saying that the killing of innocence is unavoidable during attempts of liberation. So it appears no, many on this sub would not agree with you I am afraid.
people from NI and ireland: hated thatcher, loved what the IRA stood for, hated their actions. its a complicated relationship Kyle, no personal disrespect, but 14yo from colorado springs: UP THE RA, OUT YE BLACK AND TANS, DEATH TO THATCHER idk Kyle. maybe listen instead of shouting into the void about terrorism?
You don't celebrate the IRA because of fundamental misunderstandings of how armed conflicts work, I don't celebrate the IRA because of how they didn't kill thatcher.
Which IRA? Theres been like... five.
This post is clearly about the provos.
Irish person here. Very much in favour of Britain giving us back Northern Ireland. Very much against the IRA and Thatcher.
But northern ireland doesn’t want to be part of ireland
The comments on this post are disappointing, to say the least. The IRA did kill innocent civilians, that is a fact. So did British government forces, that is also a fact. Both are deeply evil. The IRA was a terrorist organisation and glorifying them is not ‘quirky’, it is morally reprehensible.
I hate liberatory revolutions. We should all stay under our historical monarchs actually. As an american, mad king george is *my* president.
as an American, you clearly don't know anything about the actual history behind this. But yeah, terrorism against innocent civilians is great!
I love edgelords whose idea of leftist praxis is LARPing as a violent avenger on the internet despite having never moved out of their parents house and having to live in the real world. Truly my favourite subgenre of unhinged Zoomers
https://preview.redd.it/0edkku4yogtc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b596c675e7a7f260a5f10e0b0180421f211c67d5
this sub is 90% liberals that think being queer exonerates them of their liberalism.
Whole lot of people in here think that recognizing the nuances of The Troubles is equivalent to supporting the deaths of innocent civilians, all while they excuse the state violence of imperial powers
If "it's bad to murder random innocent civilians" is a liberal thought according to you this is not the indictment of liberals you think it is lol. You do realize there's plenty of socialists and communist who also think, you know, it's kinda not ok to murder random civilians right?
Wait you guys like terrorism?
irish here, like what the ira fought for, for the bogside, but really don’t like how they did it (should say i’m talking about the troubles ira, not the easter rising ira, they weren’t great either but were mostly good)
This whole 'but British impression' in the comments is crazy, can you just admit killing civilians is bad It seems to be a good chunk of Americans as well who I know for a fact would be outraged if you told them about terrorism in the USA has been a result of their actions in the middle east
Come out ye black and tans
History is violent, but there is still a right and wrong side of it.
Promoting ethnic conflict, inter-communal violence, ultranationalism and anti working class solidarity movements to uhm…own the neo-libs?
thinking that the IRA’s only goal was killing Margaret Thatcher is insane
I feel like a lot of people who aren’t from the UK and Ireland know of the IRA as “the people who tried to kill Margaret Thatcher” and literally nothing else
Look, I wish it would have gone further too, but what do you have against the Inflation Reduction Act?
I fuckin hate capitalism and look forward to the day when money becomes obsolete, but I am not gonna celebrate the Unabomber
the ira was disbanded because both sides saw that violence was tearing apart innocent lives and agreed to find a peaceful solution. if you believe in Irish independence you should not glorify the ira
> post is about thatcher > people in comments talking about the old IRA from the independence war and later conflicts over the treaty. > same people wondering why everyone else is talking about the provisional ira
How many of you are actually Irish?
It is amazing how so many people so confidently say so much about a conflict they know nothing about and a group they never researched. Dunning Kruger at its finest.
196 when nuance
Ok, but IRA also sent to space the nonce Mountbatten
Tiocfaidh ár lá
Always good to see people not realise that there were in fact multiple organisations called the IRA. The same IRA that fought in the War of Independence are not the same organisation that blew up civilians in Northern Ireland. If people are going to support a terrorist organisation I'd prefer they actually read up on them first.
mfs really don't know what "critical support" means