Free Staters and their hypocrisy on their violent, bloody past

[Itchy]

Acknowledging the victims of the Provos were real people must not be allowed

They must be airbrushed from history

Did you know him dublin7, sounds like you did or did you copy paste that out of a newspaper clipping.

He clearly and went and googled the victims

Yeah, this is a lie.

There was great peace around the place for a long time when you were gone. I'll just say that if you are going to post it would be helpful for  the post to roughly be related to the things you are so carefully quoting. Back on ignore for you I think.

[sid waddell]

Acknowledging the victims of the Provos were real people must not be allowed

They must be airbrushed from history

Did you know him dublin7, sounds like you did or did you copy paste that out of a newspaper clipping.

He clearly and went and googled the victims

Yeah, this is a lie.

There was great peace around the place for a long time when you were gone. I'll just say that if you are going to post it would be helpful for  the post to roughly be related to the things you are so carefully quoting. Back on ignore for you I think.

Back on ignore, along with the victims of the PIRA

I can live with being on your ignore list

Sadly the victims of the PIRA can't, they can't live at all

[smelmoth]

it was you who said that you that campaign was legitimate but that you were not happy about the deaths. Its not me who is trying to separate the two. Its you

And? Are you suggesting that someone who feels they had no choice but to take up arms to effect change, must enjoy killing? Is that what you are trying to say?

No. I have never said that. You keep bringing it up as i had said. But I haven't. Illuminating. No end up doing "an Angelo"

Does that mean that those who engaged in it did so because they just wanted an excuse to kill people?

I did not say that and my reason for not saying that is because there will not be a single motivation that covers all combatants or even all combatants on one side. I don't think anyone would disagree that some of the willing participants in the troubles were just wrong'uns who would have ended up in trouble whenever and wherever they where born. That applies to all sides.
Taking a life and meaning to take a life is a pretty big rubicon to cross. If you really want to set out a case that a given individual did not want to take life but did so out of real (actually real not some twisted/imagined self justification) then set it out and I will read it and respond.

Why do you only apply that to the Troubles then? The Old IRA targeted and killed the same and likely a higher proportion of civilians than the PIRA. Safe to assume there were just some bad apples in the basket there too? You say that there is no single motivation, yet you refute my suggestion that it's possible to engage in conflict but not be happy at having to do so, and happy at having to feel you have have no choice but to kill. You are the one arguing that if you engage in armed conflict, you must automatically be happy about killing others. That is utter tripe.
I would argue that just like Francis Hughes, Michael Collins didn't want to be involved in war and involved in killing, but did so because he believe the ends justified the means. Are you suggesting I'm wrong? That Collins just wanted the thrill of killing and hid behind a "twisted/imagined self justification"?

Show me the quote where I have only applied this to the troubles? I am accusing you of making things up and having faux arguments. Demonstrate your credibility by producing the quote or quotes that your argument is based upon.

A belief that the end justifies the means does't justify it. If someone burgles your house to fund their drug habit I am sure that they would feel that the end (getting their fix) justified the means (pilfering your stuff). So that is ok then?

A loyalist who feels that his community is under attack kidnaps and murders a catholic feels he is justified. Is that ok then? Should we have a commemoration for that individual then?

A belief that the end justifies the means is not a justification its a self-justification. Don't fall for it.

An overwhelming majority of northern catholics/nationslists experiencing the same oppression did not take up arms.

And? The overwhelming majority of people didn't join the Old IRA either. I know countless people who weren't members of the IRA but who supported them and provided safe houses and shelter etc.

Ok. You win. Add the number of people who provided safe houses to the number of direct combatants and STILL an overwhelming majority of people suffering oppression didn't engage in an armed struggle.

A vast majority of northern catholics/nationslists experiencing the same oppression did not support those that did take up arms.

Any stats to back up your "vast majority" claim?

Election results during the armed struggle when and where SF ran candidates.
[/quote]

Why so if it was inevitable/there was no other choice? Its simply wrong to say there was no other choice or that the only other choice that catholics/nationslists faced was to sit and do nothing. The majority did not take up arms and their chances of progressing their lot could have been made a lot easier if the armed campaign was not going on around them suppressing life chances and fueling suspicions of community of another.

Of course, it's very easy for someone sitting in the comfort of the south, who to quote Waterford Whispers today "at the last count, lost no relatives", so sit in judgement at how the nationalist community in the north reacted. Particularly when we see how their grandparents reacted to much less provocation in 1921. But like every sanctimonious southerner, when asked what alternative would have brought us to here we are today without armed struggle, there's never an answer. So maybe you can furnish me with one. Peaceful protest? Many sacrifice ourselves in a few more Bloody Sundays?

Again another faux argument.

Within the trouble there is a litany of atrocities that there was not and could not be any justification for. There was no upside to these. How do you account for these? Is it a case that if there is oppression then an armed response is automatically ok and we just have to accept that there will be atrocities along the way.

Has there been an armed conflict in history, anywhere, by any group, where this has not also been the case? The same happened, to a proportionally greater extent, in the Tan War. Do you accept that it was a legitimate campaign by the Old IRA, despite the utter savagery in involved and the high proportion of old IRA atrocities that there can be no justification for?

Your first argument is frankly bollocks. A contention (that I don't dispute) that innocent casualties are inevitable does not excuse them away. If I drive at 80 mph, in the wrong direction and across both lanes of a motorway there will be inevitably be casualties. Hardly an excuse or a rationale though is it?

Your second argument is more interesting. The test that I would apply would be did the acts of the old IRA have popular support (I would say democratic support if there had of been elections), where they assured of achieving their outcome and was there any workable alternative. Happy to consider any act that you think meets all 3.

You have to forge a link between the oppression, the resolution of the oppression and the violent act. Can you draw a link between all the acts that you consider legitimate and how it did or even could address some act of oppression?

I already did. Read up on Canary Wharf, for instance. The above line from you just equates to the claim, again, that the IRA campaign achieved nothing and that what we have today could have been achieved without it. But, again, you offer no step-by-step guide to exactly how. Was there an alternative to conflict in 1921? If not, then how on earth could a nationalist population, living under a more oppressive regime, have had an alternative option. If you think that conflict in the six counties was not an inevitability, then you are far more detached from the reality of what life was like here than even I was giving you credit for.

So that is Canary Wharf chaulked off. Whats up next? Presumably you are going to justify every act?

[smelmoth]

Have the Free Staters on here who are obsessed with the PIRA ever asked themselves why SF are the largest political party in the nationalist community in the north. Have they ever asked themselves why the generations who lived through that conflict and their children don't seem to have any truck with the Provisional campaign and why they return SF to office? No, they think we are all animals clearly, while they sit on their holes in Roscommon and Galway moralising about something they have not the faintest notion about.

So why then for many years, including a post-GFA spell, were the SDLP the largest nationalist party in NI?

Many years? The SDLP were the largest nationalist party in the Assembly elections held a couple of months after the GFA, from every election since then SF have been the largest nationalist party.

So what you are saying is just completely and utterly incorrect and is not consistent with the facts. 6 Assembly elections since the GFA was signed, SF have been the biggest nationalist party in the 5 of those 6 elections. They now have over double the no of MLAs the SDLP have. Why do you think that is? Why do you think nationalist communities who lived through The Troubles and whose families and friends did return SF as their representatives?

Even you will accept that SF did not enjoy mass nationalist support when there was an onging armed campaign?

The PIRA took primacy over SF until that gradually began to shift in the late 80s/90s.

The aim of the republican movement up until the late 80s was to do it by military means.

Just because people voted for the SDLP back then was not to say they did not support or have some sympathy for the PIRA. Whenever it was Stormont collapsed in the late 80s and returned in the 90s, SF had more than trebled their seats. As soon as the political wing of the republican movement took primacy, nationalists had no truck with supporting SF despite their violent past. Why would that be the case?

You seem to be trying to use the fact that people voted for SF after the armed campaign but but not during the campaign as evidence of their support for the armed campaign. Carry on Champion

[smelmoth]

So in other words, SF only gained traction as a political party post-GFA and that their military campaign prior to this achieved nothing for them. I guess they were too afraid to run as representatives at the height of the Troubles.

Would you have stood for a party knowing that you were setting yourself up as a target for a state sponsored assassination? SF members and workers were targeted for their membership. Does that sound like a party that was competing for votes in a fair and level electoral playing field to you?

Another belter.

SF were busy harrassing people outside polling stations trying to stop them voting.

And did republicanism have some sort of embargo on not targeting the lives of political candidates or was it only wrong when other people did it?

So nationalists in the six counties were disengaged form political/electoral involvement because SF? You really don't know the first f**king thing about what it was like to live through conflict, do you.

And this specific argument has nothing to do with the legitimacy or otherwise of targeting political party candidates. The issue is specifically that you wanted to use the electoral performance of SF as a barometer to test nationalist support for the republican movement, even though SF were barely organised as a party and people associated with it set themselves up as assassination targets - so to think that this is a suitable way to gauge nationalist support for republican movement is just plain stupid. My own family, throughout the conflict, supported the PIRA campaign as legitimate. We never engaged in electoral politics until the latter years. That was just the norm for so many. Your problem is that you live in the south and just don't understand why. The problem is that you don't realise the extend to which you don't understand.

You do get it that I lived through the troubles in the north.

Stop making these things up.

[smelmoth]

This has been a great win for the forum republicans.

This thread is a bit like those cabaret clubs in Berlin that did so very much to stop the rise of Hitler

[Angelo]

Have the Free Staters on here who are obsessed with the PIRA ever asked themselves why SF are the largest political party in the nationalist community in the north. Have they ever asked themselves why the generations who lived through that conflict and their children don't seem to have any truck with the Provisional campaign and why they return SF to office? No, they think we are all animals clearly, while they sit on their holes in Roscommon and Galway moralising about something they have not the faintest notion about.

So why then for many years, including a post-GFA spell, were the SDLP the largest nationalist party in NI?

Many years? The SDLP were the largest nationalist party in the Assembly elections held a couple of months after the GFA, from every election since then SF have been the largest nationalist party.

So what you are saying is just completely and utterly incorrect and is not consistent with the facts. 6 Assembly elections since the GFA was signed, SF have been the biggest nationalist party in the 5 of those 6 elections. They now have over double the no of MLAs the SDLP have. Why do you think that is? Why do you think nationalist communities who lived through The Troubles and whose families and friends did return SF as their representatives?

Even you will accept that SF did not enjoy mass nationalist support when there was an onging armed campaign?

The PIRA took primacy over SF until that gradually began to shift in the late 80s/90s.

The aim of the republican movement up until the late 80s was to do it by military means.

Just because people voted for the SDLP back then was not to say they did not support or have some sympathy for the PIRA. Whenever it was Stormont collapsed in the late 80s and returned in the 90s, SF had more than trebled their seats. As soon as the political wing of the republican movement took primacy, nationalists had no truck with supporting SF despite their violent past. Why would that be the case?

You seem to be trying to use the fact that people voted for SF after the armed campaign but but not during the campaign as evidence of their support for the armed campaign. Carry on Champion

If people had a truck with SF's historical links to the Provos, their legitimising of the armed campaign - something they have never tried to deny then they would not vote for them.

Instead they are the largest party under the nationalist community. I don't know why pointing those facts out bothers you so much.

[Angelo]

This has been a great win for the forum republicans.

This thread is a bit like those cabaret clubs in Berlin that did so very much to stop the rise of Hitler

The fact that you have been shown up to be an ignorant hypocrite who tried to diversify away from the subject of the thread has been noted by all contributors.

[smelmoth]

It's quite delicious to see all our resident Provos suddenly coming across as the bastard love children of Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards. 

Their self hatred must be off the charts.

They hate the IRA of the war of independence era because they were led and manned by Southerners

And the key point

They Won

They drove the Brits out of their areas

Something they couldn't achieve in the north

They failed. They wanted to free ireland. They didn't

True, they only managed to free 26 of our counties.

I guess you didn't participate much the 2016 celebrations/commemorations? The Wolfe Tone songbook must make you puke? 

[smelmoth]

Have the Free Staters on here who are obsessed with the PIRA ever asked themselves why SF are the largest political party in the nationalist community in the north. Have they ever asked themselves why the generations who lived through that conflict and their children don't seem to have any truck with the Provisional campaign and why they return SF to office? No, they think we are all animals clearly, while they sit on their holes in Roscommon and Galway moralising about something they have not the faintest notion about.

So why then for many years, including a post-GFA spell, were the SDLP the largest nationalist party in NI?

Many years? The SDLP were the largest nationalist party in the Assembly elections held a couple of months after the GFA, from every election since then SF have been the largest nationalist party.

So what you are saying is just completely and utterly incorrect and is not consistent with the facts. 6 Assembly elections since the GFA was signed, SF have been the biggest nationalist party in the 5 of those 6 elections. They now have over double the no of MLAs the SDLP have. Why do you think that is? Why do you think nationalist communities who lived through The Troubles and whose families and friends did return SF as their representatives?

Even you will accept that SF did not enjoy mass nationalist support when there was an onging armed campaign?

The PIRA took primacy over SF until that gradually began to shift in the late 80s/90s.

The aim of the republican movement up until the late 80s was to do it by military means.

Just because people voted for the SDLP back then was not to say they did not support or have some sympathy for the PIRA. Whenever it was Stormont collapsed in the late 80s and returned in the 90s, SF had more than trebled their seats. As soon as the political wing of the republican movement took primacy, nationalists had no truck with supporting SF despite their violent past. Why would that be the case?

You seem to be trying to use the fact that people voted for SF after the armed campaign but but not during the campaign as evidence of their support for the armed campaign. Carry on Champion

If people had a truck with SF's historical links to the Provos, their legitimising of the armed campaign - something they have never tried to deny then they would not vote for them.

Instead they are the largest party under the nationalist community. I don't know why pointing those facts out bothers you so much.

But I am not making those points. I am making the point about the incorrect assertion that the vast majority of nationalists living in the north, suffering the impression, supported the IRA.

[smelmoth]

This has been a great win for the forum republicans.

This thread is a bit like those cabaret clubs in Berlin that did so very much to stop the rise of Hitler

The fact that you have been shown up to be an ignorant hypocrite who tried to diversify away from the subject of the thread has been noted by all contributors.

Ignorant of what facts?
Hypocritical on which points?

[Rossfan]

This contributor didn't note Shelmoth being "shown up to be......".

[Angelo]

This has been a great win for the forum republicans.

This thread is a bit like those cabaret clubs in Berlin that did so very much to stop the rise of Hitler

The fact that you have been shown up to be an ignorant hypocrite who tried to diversify away from the subject of the thread has been noted by all contributors.

Ignorant of what facts?
Hypocritical on which points?

The thread is about free state hypocrisy on the Old IRA and their violent and bloody past.

Can you sum your comments on the Old IRA and their violent and bloody past on this thread.

If you look back at your contributions, we will see you have instead tried to spam with posts unrelated to the thread. Now why would you do that?

[Angelo]

This contributor didn't note Shelmoth being "shown up to be......".

Deary me.

Dumbo strikes again.

You have not contributed before that post so you were not a contributor to the post you refer to.

Your stupidity never fails to surprise me.

[Applesisapples]

Whilst I'd agree that not only political parties in the South are hypocritical regarding the violence that founded their state, so too are Unionists. The reality is that both Irish jurisdictions were founded on violent rebellion against the government of the time. However your insistence on labelling people from the South of this Island deflects from the point you are trying to make. No need to be so provocative.