The picture of the chap in the Carling Celtic jersey and tracksuit holding a placard with “No To Foreign Games” games written on it was outstanding work by MI5, you’d have to say.
All the perpetually bitter Irish republican types were permanently meme-ified by it.
Most normal folk don’t pass on that shite
I get plenty but just delete
Not worried whether Lizzie died or lived tbh
But won’t forget what was done in her name either
The great Babs Keating made a point in an interview on Newstalk a few years ago talking about a 96 year old woman whose funeral he had been at the night before.
I dont think you’re right at all. I dont think modeling the future of NI based on thr current situation in palestine or Russia or America is valid.
They have decreased in the last 30 years though. Marches and rallies arent as contentious. No reason to think they will rise again. People the world over will be angry for socioeconomic reasons and will get angrier but thats a different matter. We will see the death of king charles within our lives and theee wont be celebration because he’s more of a pathetic fella and wont have presided over anything like what was done in her name.
30 years ago the Troubles were still on. Things are worse than they were 10-12 years ago. Bonfires, fwegs, Brexit, the possibility of a border poll down the line will really stir things up in a big way.
People get angry for socioeconomic reasons and it gets channelled into right wing nationalism and hatred of the “other”. You can dismiss what has happened elsewhere if you like but that’s a recipe for similar happening here. You ignore that the INTERNET foments extremism and enables demagogues and that has real life consequences. We’ve had actual genocides whipped up by social media. It happened in Burma. Trump became US president largely because of the internet and Brexit happened largely because of the internet.
People are also deluded if they think that a significant minority of the CNR community would not use a united Ireland as an excuse to settle scores and/or behave in the exact sort triumphalist manner that was forced down their throats for many decades.
Of course they’re not the same but the point is they are both events which happened because of targeted campaigns against the “other”, using anger as a mobilising force. Their proponents used disinformation, especially online disinformation, to whip up this anger.
In Brexit’s case the groups targeted for othering were immigrants and “faceless liberal elites” and “technocrats” who were portrayed as “oppressors” of the mythical “real people”. Brexiteers even invoked the actual World War II to try and frame the EU as being like the Nazis.
Brexit was also enabled because of decades of anti-EU propaganda in the Tory press like “Up Yours Delors” and the lies about the straight bananas and straight cucumbers and prawn cocktail crisps and all the other lies Boris Johnson wrote when he was a reporter for the Daily Telegraph.
In Burma the Rohingya were targeted for othering and were victims of vicious online propaganda which led to their slaughter/driving into exile.
The events are different but similar techniques are employed to enable the events to happen.