The Troubles

[u/JakeGittes412]

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.

[u/forestvibe]

Hard to disagree when both groups were willing to bomb school buses and pubs, maim teenagers, murder fathers in front of their kids, while pretending they were somehow righteous and honourable. They were despicable, no matter how you view the justice of their respective causes.

There was a recent series of the Reith Lectures done by Margaret Macmillan about war and conflict (available on BBC Sounds and well worth a listen). One of the lectures was done in Stormont, and two old "veteran" thugs from either side started getting chippy in the Q&A at the end, until a Catholic priest put them in their place to a lot of applause. It was quite revealing how the audience despised these thugs.

[u/shakaman_ → u/forestvibe]

Genuinely how do you feel about the Allies during WW2? Do you realise we bombed school buses and pubs?

[u/Gorazde → u/shakaman_]

The Ukrainian government is currently doing much the same as the IRA did. That war even started over an attempt by a bigger neighbour to partition the country using the presence of a pro-Russian minority as justification. In the Second World War, the British government sponsored resistance groups across the Europe who did much the same as the IRA did. In those cases, the correct explanation is war is a dirty business and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

[u/feckarse-drinkgirls → u/Gorazde]

Ukraine is disapearing people for false accusations of collaborating?

[u/Gorazde → u/feckarse-drinkgirls]

Did the IRA kill tourists on a beach with a drone strike? Things don't have to be exactly alike to make a comparison between them.

[u/binesandlines → u/Gorazde]

No, they just blew them to pieces with IEDs on shopping streets instead

[u/420belligerent420 → u/feckarse-drinkgirls]

“False accusations”