New to this place of the internet, what do people here think of bobby sands
New here what ppl think of bobby sands?
Zachary Miller
Robert Reed
Based, just like all Irish Republicans past, present, and future.
He's also proof that even non-violent protest will get you scorned and mocked.
Jayden Perry
Bobby was a member of the Provisional IRA, which was founded in 1970 partially as an explicit rejection of Marxism-Leninism (first pic). Instead of Leninism, what they proposed was the Éire Nua program (which was nonsense in comparison).
There is ample criticism of the ideology and methods of Provisional Sinn Féin from a Leninist perspective, and there is a reason why the Soviet Union rejected them and instead endorsed Official Sinn Féin.
The OIRA were an M-L paramilitary and their envisioning of the Troubles was that it was to be a short affair, similar to the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907. This is largely why they went on ceasefire in 1972.
The Troubles were simply meant to be a springboard, where they would they would gain the training, experience and growth to stage a subsequent, larger Revolution at a later date (similar to February 1917).
The PIRA, however, always planned on orchestrating a never-ending campaign where they would not stop until the British did. There was no reason to believe that this would work and it is ludicrous to utilise these tactics in lieu of Leninist military tactics.
They were never going to win, and their actions facilitated a deepening of sectarianism. The Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist working class were terrified of actions like La Mon and Kingsmill.
There is a reason that OIRA never committed similar atrocities, and it is the very same reason why PIRA did : the Éire Nua program and the explicit rejection of Leninist tactics.
The Officials sought to form a small group of highly-trained and well-educated cadres. They received arms, funds and training from both the Soviet Union and North Korea.
The Provisionals sought to form a mass movement with little emphasis on political education, this resulted in handing loaded weapons to angry teenage boys and telling them that one more death is one more step towards the Socialist Republic.
It was inevitable that civilian and sectarian killings were going to take place. This placed us one step away from the Socialist Republic, not one step closer.
The funny thing is, that despite all the bluster, the PIRA ended up completely agreeing with the OIRA after only a few short years. In 1978, the creation of Northern Command and Southern Command effectively facilitated a coup within the Paramilitary.
Southern Command was led by the Old Guard (Seán Mac Stíofáin and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh). When they figured out they had lost control of the paramilitary, they formed a new one called CIRA in 1986.
Northern Command was led by Gerry, Martin, Ivor Bell and Danny Morrison. They placed a much stronger emphasis on electoral politics, and significantly reduced funding to PIRA so they could run more sophisticated election campaigns.
By the time Bobby died in 1981, the electoral machine was already in the works and by the 1986 Provisional Sinn Féin Árd Fhéis the Party decided to take their seats on both sides of the border. Around this time, Gerry was holding secret talks with John Hume. This is widely acknowledged as the start of the Peace Process.
Now, lets look at Bobby. He joined PIRA in 1972, funnily enough the same year that OIRA called for a ceasefire. Why couldn't Bobby join the Leninists? Why is he today associated with Ché Guavara, when he explicitly rejected Ché's ideology and methodology?
Bobby's legacy has been completely distorted by the PSF leadership, they have rehabilitated him to appear as a man who only wanted peace, but he fully believed in Revolutionary Violence. Both his mother and his sister have criticised the PSF leadership.
Keep in mind that the trustees of the Bobby Sands Trust are the exact same individuals who comprised the Leadership of Northern Command.
There are even conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Bobby Sands.
Through declassified British documents, we can see that Thatcher conducted talks with PIRA leadership in 1981, even though both denied it at the time. We can also see that the Thatcher Administration agreed to Three of the Five Demands. This was rejected by the PIRA leadership "after consultation", but very few Hunger Strikers were consulted about the proposal.
The conspiracy theory is that Northern Command let Bobby die on purpose in order to focus on elections in the future. One of the Hunger Strikers even wrote a book about it, agreeing that a conspiracy occurred.
In my opinion, Bobby Sands died for nothing.
We can see this through the career of PIRA co-founder Darkie Hughes. Darkie was so prolific in the early 70s that he would personally detonate multiple bombs every day. He was also the very first Hunger Striker.
Darkie went off the Hunger Strike and survived. In his old age he completely denounced the current leadership of Provisional Sinn Féin, and his criticisms are almost identical to those of Bobby's mother and sister.
This leads me to believe that if Bobby had lived, he would completely denounce his past just like Darkie Hughes.
Brody Torres
Also OP, if you want a Troubles Martyr to look up to then I would suggest Joe McCann. He is everything that I look for in an Irishman.
Hunter Williams
Thanks for this post
Nathan Powell
Thanks, informative post
Hunter Reyes
If the PIRA's tactics were inferior to the OIRA's why did they both meet essentially the same fate? Asking sincerely btw.
Carter Powell
To add to this, the Provos Mainland bombing campaign basically killed any chance of Anglo-Irish solidarity with the NICRA: the moment a bomb goes off in your local pub nobody is gonna turn around and say "oh well these people are justified". Like there was always going to be a reactionary element of the public that was opposed to any catholic rights in Norn (see the Orange Lodge lot in Scotland, and especially in Glasgow) but after Bogside there was a massive reaction from people in Britain of disgust at what had happened. However the provo's Mainland campaign helped justify the tory line that "It was a justified reaction to the IRA". I mean heck Wilson said a United Ireland was the only resolution to the conflict, in 1972. Imagine that say 3 or 4 years later: he would have been denounced as a traitor.
Jonathan Reyes
Adding to this anons question, how was the OIRA better than the PIRA when both seemed to have similar terroristic tactics? Where does the INLA fit into all this? Also I dont know if you're familiar with contemporary Irish politics but any thoughts on the IRSP?
Joshua Parker
Wasnt the NICRA dead before the mainland campaign began
Christian Rogers
nbcnews.com
Sinn Fein's obviously been cuked, who do we support now?
Tyler Wright
Well the turning point was the bogside: the NICRA didn't try to organise following it which led to the armed campaigns from Republicans and loyalists.
Owen Parker
Republican Sinn Fein duh
Nathan Howard
People Before Profit.
Hunter Gutierrez
Hero.
Wish I'd accomplished that much by his age.
Sebastian Jenkins
...
Jaxson Anderson
They're barely even trots tbh.
Aaron Evans
I fully agree with this, I believe that People Before Profit are currently performing the most productive work in establishing the 32 County Socialist Republic.
The Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist working class of Belfast are often categorised as quite conservative these days, however they often voted for British Labour in the 50s and 60s.
As sectarian tensions increased, PUL taste for left-wing economics receded and tribalism became dominant.
During the Troubles, left-wing political parties associated with Paramilitaries (PUP and Republican Clubs) failed to repeat the previous successes of British Labour.
Irish Republicanism was birthed in 1791 in Belfast, by the Northern Presbyterians of the United Irishmen. They knew that a United Ireland could only ever come from the simultaneous endorsement of both Gaels and Ulster Scots.
Provisional Sinn Féin never really seemed to grasp this concept, thus ensuring that they would never receive an endorsement from the PUL community.
Along comes Gerry Carroll, who tops the poll in West Belfast in 2016.
There is a reason why Carroll triumphed where so many others failed, he spoke to the Material Interests of all workers in his Constituency.
PBP managed to organise residents of the Shankill and Falls Roads to work alongside each other for a shared goal.
His electoral success, combined with that of Eamonn McCann, shows that it is possible to work towards a 32 County Socialist Republic without a Paramilitary affiliation.
Nathan Hall
As long as they're not LaRouche-ist, and just like ☭TANKIE☭s acknowledge that Stalin wasn't perfect, while not being Satan, they're cool
Ryder Mitchell
How are they going to fight back, when Porky inevitably fights back?
Caleb Torres
...
Josiah Butler
Aye, as a Mainlander they seem like legit good lads.
Also thoughts on Labour running in Norn? A lot of people are proposing it now.
By forming a United Workers' Front with THE ABSOLUTE BOY ofc.
John Walker
I also want to clarify that I don't care what British Socialists think.
Tony Blair only cared about the "Irish Situation" because he had a family connection and spent his childhood summers in Ireland.
Tony Benn didn't give a single solitary shit about the "Irish Situation" in his early career, he only started caring when it became fashionable.
I couldn't give less of a shit what "the mainland" thinks, I only care about what the people of Ireland think.
Adam Nelson
Wait, isn't modern Ireland the biggest tax haven in the world and a passionate EU province?
Well, at least those nationalist revolutionaries managed an amenable tax structure and large FDI flows without so much bloodshed.
John Ward
Luis Green
Carter James
bad taste
Nathan Collins
The IRA has nothing to do with the Republic.
Isaiah Sullivan
Why hello there making waves, didn't realise you lurked Zig Forums.
How very nice of you to borrow my talking points to disparage PSF in order to promote Solidarity in a thread about John Lyons.
Nolan Brown
dis gon b gud
Connor Anderson
Could you provide a source on that? I'm trying to look it up, but I get nothing.
Anthony Myers
based stickyposter
Anthony Powell
Who are you going to vote for in the upcoming Local and European elections?
I'm currently compiling a list of all left-wing Local Candidates and I'm going to post a pastebin around the Irish internet when it's completed.
Oliver Lopez
The Troubles was literally a proxy war between the US and the UK. MI5 blew up power grids in Protestant areas and blamed it on the IRA. MI5 and some unwitting UVF idiots stopped The Miami Showband at a fake British Army checkpoint, the official story has been twisted, something went wrong with a UVF member protesting the plan to the MI5 agents, MI5 killed the UVF witnesses along with the band and blew the explosives to remove evidence of the sophistication of the device.
The CIA had a camp where they trained young teenagers in the Slieve Bloom mountains to become PIRA assets. The arms shipments were all CIA, Gadaffi didn't send the Soviet gear, that was procured from the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and given to the CIA.
MI5 intercepted a PIRA/CIA plan to bomb a fuel depot in Warrington '93 which happened and some PIRA members were arrested, MI5 deactivated almost all the CCTV cameras in the town center the night before two kids were killed by a bin bomb (Cranberries 'Zombie' was about this incident), one MI5 agent shot and wounded a British police officer who stumbled upon them that night. The two bombs were actually placed by an Irish IRA sympathizer trying to repay gambling debts who was told by what he thought was a British militant communist group (MI5) that he was delivering dead drops of documents for the IRA for a few grand and he actually got his toddler son to drop the parcels in the two bins.
/I am not and never will be suicidal
Christian Sanchez
When I say proxy war, I mean fake enemies. The Troubles was a front for training British/NI Operation Gladio agents in dirty, close in warfare to resist a Soviet occupation.
Jose Anderson
Basically PIRA/CIA = Blue Team (NATO Stay Behind) and British Army/UVF/MI5 = Red Team (Soviet occupiers).
It was a very low intensity conflict. Many were unwitting subjects who were studied. There was American reimbursement for British infrastructure destroyed, which was training for operations behind Red Team lines to see small economic impacts that they would upscale based on destroying things like POL (Petroleum, Oil and Lubricant) sites and sites in city centers, the radioed warnings were to factor out civilian casualties into the economic studies. It was to see which methods were most effective in creating civil unrest within the USSR even if they successfully took over Western Europe and nuclear weapons were not exchanged in a significant amount or at all.
Caleb Sanchez
Post Soviet-collapse attacks - this is just speculation but I believe there was a shift towards planning for manipulating Sunni vs Shia sectarianism. The bombings ended right as the Bin Laden scare began and shortly before 9/11.
Camden Edwards
To summarize: More people died from trouser-related accidents in the UK/Ireland than they did in The Troubles and this was literally the Gladio asymmetric warfare training equivalent of the USAF and other NATO air forces' Red Flag in Nevada.
Jonathan Bell
His heart was in the right place.
Oliver Foster
So what the fuck is this? who is this guy and what is he saying to OP?
Jackson Ross
As was suspected, none of the subsequent posters revealed how they wished to vote in the upcoming Local or European elections.
Every IRA-related discussion on this imageboard inevitably results in a pissing match between butthurt Brits and LARPing Yanks, neither of which have anything interesting to say about internal Irish politics.
Why would an Irish person even share an opinion in this charade? Perhaps we should we forever live in 1971 for the detached amusement of foreigners.
Jaxon Price
The troubles were going exceptionally well, the provos has already proven themselves to be one of the most successful guerilla warfare armies ever, they were even launching large scale successful attacks on England her self, the only problem was the fucking retards in the RIRA, and the OIRA who couldn’t fight for shit, and just killed civilian targets in many cases, and those liberal scumbags in Sinn Fein sold themselves out like cheap fucking whores, to finish up, Sinn Fein hijacked the fight against Britain with their socialist rhetoric, and betrayed the nationalist provisional IRA who had performed exceptionally for years, they were betrayed by their own leaders, and the average IRA man just gave up in the face of immense betrayal.
Ayden Cooper
They are possibly the worst choice on the entire island, those fucking retards hate the average Irishman, and they prove this by ignoring the homeless problem, and encouraging mass immigration into the country which does nothing except fuck up wages, force young Irish to leave in pursuit of better paying work, and the large amounts of immigration makes the housing crisis even worse, and it wouldn’t be so bad if the immigrants actually gave something back, but instead they send all their money back home, and leave this place with slightly lower wages than before forcing the government to bring in even more immigration to make up the numbers instead of encouraging native people to stay. Voting for nobody would be a better choice as all the parties are traitorous scum, the only group worth supporting would be the National Party, but their still small, and the government is making it incredibly difficult for them to register.