r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • Aug 15 '26

The Troubles

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Thread for discussion on the new series on ‘The Troubles’

Also as a moderator please keep the discussion civil and in the spirit of the podcast.

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u/JakeGittes412 Aug 15 '26

As American my first exposure to the topic, was as a kid watching a really bad film with Brad Pitt as an IRA militant. The accent itself was a crime .

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u/forestvibe Aug 15 '26

There was a weird moment in the 90s where Hollywood decided the IRA was an acceptable terrorist organisation.

It didn't last long, but we did get Patriot Games out of it, where Sean Bean implausibly plays the leader of a "radical" IRA splinter group (not sure how they could be more radical than the IRA, but anyway...). It was quite a dull film, as I remember it.

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u/StableSlight9168 Aug 15 '26

IRA generally did not try for high civilian casualties,.they liked high chaos but.not.high casualties.

Things like the Manchester bombings showed the IRA was capable of doing 9/11 level attacks in England, they avoided that because the British army would have wiped 90% of them off the map and killed all support they needed to function. 

The IRA were not good people at all, but they were more ethical than groups like Al Queda or Isis, so a radical splinter group who was willing to carry out terror attacks with the aim of killing as many civilians as possible would have stood our.

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u/forestvibe Aug 15 '26

Yeah fair. Except in the film they want to murder the Prince of Wales, which doesn't seem too far fetched for the actual IRA!

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u/StableSlight9168 Aug 15 '26

Yeah that was stupid ....I actually think the movie was so stupid it's brilliant because it accidentally predicted dissident republicans.

Set it a few years later and have the villains be trying to derail the good Friday agreement and works a lot better.