Were the IRAs as terrifying as the media made out? Also, who was really the 'real' one? Did anybody take the commo-marxist one seriously?
>inb4 plastic paddy yanks start posting
Yes.
Imagine everyday OP there was a chance of you and friends getting shot by a sniper on the way to or back to school.
Or your family home being fire bombed or a family member / friend being kidnapped and never returned.
etc etc
>>668473
>>inb4 plastic paddy yanks start posting
You appear to be too late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw
This should tell you everything you need to know.
>>668482
Are you suggesting OP or I to be a yank?
>>668489
OP
What was the entire conflict about anyway? I've only a cobbled together idea from pop media and passing reference.
Sectarian dispute and Irish independence. Why didn't Scotland ignite in the same manner during 20th and 21st century?
Why does Scotland seem to be more pacified and Ireland at one point quicker to agitation?
>>668712
Look up the act of union and James I
>>668747
>quick wiki reading
Ah, ok that makes sense.
>>668712
Essentially, limited resources to go around, and the Ulster Protestant minority kept a stranglehold on it. This got worse as the British Welfare state expanded, Stormont made sure nothing went through an independent British body, everything went through them. So you have a situation where pubic assistance, public jobs, fucking everything, goes to the protestants, which were more wealthy to begin with.
The end goal of this was to maintain political domination of Northern Ireland. The Ulster Protestants felt (not unjustly) that London would throw them in front of a bus if they were offered a half decent price (see: Rhodesia) so they had to maintain political domination on their own. And being smart bastards, they realized the way to do that was through economic domination. So the public assistance gave them new tools to add to their old set of negative inducements (employment discrimination, etc. etc.)
For a brief moment in the 1960s there looked like hope for peaceful change as, inspired by the civil rights movement in America, there was peaceful protest in favor of equal rights, mainly by NICRA.
The Stormont government, and loyalist paramilitaries, responded by violence, because social and economic inequality was the basis of their political inequality, which they thought was the basis of the political autonomy, which was the basis of their survival as a community.
The unrest and repression escalated until Stormont requested the British Army intervened (citing, I shit you not, the danger of the IRA deploying Armored Divisions. Lunatics.)
Initially the British were welcomed on all sides. The catholic community was hoping that they would help pacify Loyalist paramilitaries, and enforce actual British law (which NICRA happily pointed to as their goal).
At this point, it should be mentioned, the IRA isn't really in the picture. The Provos haven't formed yet, and the old IRA was a bunch of old men in London engaged in Marxist navel gazing.
>>668712
Because the Scots converted to Protestantism/Calvinism of their own volition before the Union of the British crowns. The only sectarian violence in Scotland is actually the result of Irish Catholics moving to the mainland during the potato famine of the 19th century.
Not to mention Scotland and England finally unified through peace, rather than conquest like with Ireland, King of Scotland inherits the throne of England creating a Union, and eventually Scotland and England sign a full Union when the Scottish parliament ends up bankrupting itself due to a failed colonial expedition in Central America, the two states had been at peace since the reformation, England and Scotland allying together as the two Protestant states in the West, with the Scottish-French Auld Alliance ending. While Ireland as a Catholic state was conquered by England and never adopted Protestantism, except in the North as the result of settlement from the Scottish lowlands and the North of England
I think this is a subject that's better left to the confines of a history book
>>668774
Hold on. You smell that? Nuance. Mmm, smells wonderful. Now the entire situation makes a bit more sense and less caricatured. Thanks.
>>668793
Why? It's practically a punchline now. The entire situation.
>>668774
Then the British made one of the classic counterinsurgency blunders: They listened to their men on the spot. Americans with the Shias and Kurds, French with the Pied Noirs, Chiang with his warlords. You listen to the people historically amicable to you, with the most experience in the region.
Those people fucking lie, because they have their asses on the line. They're fighting a war, and they want to win it before you leave.
So the British Army response to "Northern Ireland cannot govern because it's plagued by violence as Stormont tries to impose a regime of questionable legality, at best" was to put the Catholic Population under curfew, do mass home searches of them.
And these aren't polite searches either. Floorboards stripped apart, furniture destroyed, while a man points a gun at you and says to lay down on the goddamn floor.
So the British Army showed up and effectively took sides in a fight that wasn't even a fight yet. They imposed a military regime that would defend protestant supremacy with greater violence and less subtlety then the protestants ever did.
So the IRA is basically reconstituted as a response by a community that was already facing assault by the British Army.
At the same time, home rule is suspended. The British Army defends protestant surpremacy, but the actual protestants find they can't take a shit without begging some minister in London to allow it. So the loyalists militias EXPLODE, because now for both sides of the community, terrorism is the only meaningful way you have to influence public policy.
Throw in the Libyan's trololololing and you have a recipe for disaster.
>>668838
And here I was thinking the situation was such that the British army had their hands tied in regards to the manner with which they approach Ireland while being subject to guerrilla action and their own rules of engagement.
>>668862
Nah. The British Army couldn't tie their hands if their lives depended on it, literally.
Remember, they're coming right off nasty, hands off (failed) counter insurgencies in places no one cared about. Their most recent experiences were in Yemen and Kenya. In fact, to illustrate how poorly equipped and trained for this mission the British Army was, in the earliest days, they set up a big bright red banner that said "turn back or we'll shoot".
Except the sign was in fucking Arabic.
>>668461
>Were the IRAs as terrifying as the media made out?
The fact that one of the most powerful countries in the world was the victim of such a persistent insurgency was incredibly demoralizing and quite scary. The recent shooting in Dublin is just one of the many examples of how it's still a major issue.
Think if the "Free Aztlan" movement wasn't just a meme, and that Mexicans in the Southern USA actually organized a local militia and started bombing and shooting up New York and DC in an effort to give the Southwest USA back to Mexico. Now imagine that these groups are receiving large amounts funding and support from Mexicans in Spain or some other country to the point that they essentially control whole towns in the Southwest USA.
That is the issue that the IRA posses to this very day.
>>668882
>Except the sign was in fucking Arabic.
Hold on, am I reading this right. This sign was set up in Ireland not in Africa or ME, right?
>>668897
Yes. Well, initially the sign was set up in Yemen.
Then they packed it up and set the sign up in Ireland like it would still work.
Yes, both sides were primarily made up of hot-headed kids who would shoot you for your name
>>668890
>The IRA is funded by Ireland meme
Fucking Eternal Anglo
>>668712
Scotland did rebel initially but then they realised they could make money off of the tobacco trade and stopped caring
>>668909
That's absolutely cartoonish.
>>668940
Where did I say that?
>>668882
How did those chucklefucks keep an empire for so long?
>>668958
it's almost as if Jared Diamond has a point
>>668954
Once you scratch the surface, The Troubles is also a comedy of errors.
>>668958
Go watch Breaker Morant
>>668712
Funny how everyone falls over themselves to cry about the IRA blowing up horses, but noone gives two shits about the soldiers riding them.
>>668997
They killed the soldiers too? I hope there was infantry with them. Because that isn't NEARLY enough dead soldiers.
>>668461
Well, the original IRA at least started out with noble intentions. However later iterations of the IRA, the PIRA, RIRA, CIRA, are no more than thugs and murderers. I suppose the same could be said for the UVF, but really the whole situation was a clusterfuck.
Nowadays, the IRA are a bit of a joke desu.
>>669000
5 edgy 2 me.
>>668958
Incompetence is the rule everywhere. The British managed to be slightly less incompetent than their rivals
>>668954
>unit about to deploy to NI
>send a request for crowd control banners to some QM in a random store
>sends them boxed up, probably didn't check what sort of banners they were
>arrive at unit, stay in boxes until they're needed
>unfurl banner
>???
