Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
10mo ago
Meanwhile, the west is busy deconstructing the same "racist, patriarchal, oppressive social structures" that we are bewildered that the migrants don't adopt.
This doesn't look right to me. The people deconstructing "racist, patriarchal, oppressive social structures" aren't bewildered at the fact that migrants aren't becoming devoted Christians, but the fact that they aren't becoming secular feminist progressives.
Tollund_Man4
4mo ago
Western online feminists love to loudly complain about as a nightmarish dystopia to be avoided, namely a society plagued by enormous numbers of single, sexless and, one can imagine, bitter and traumatized, violent young men
Bitter, traumatised and violent, yes they treat that as a huge problem, but single and sexless? I’m not sure feminism explicitly worries about this, single and sexless men are to be dealt with on an individual level as inconvenient complainers who are to be ignored or shamed - feminism only deals with these men insofar as their situation (whether self-inflicted or not) causes them to step out of line. I don’t think women in general have this attitude but it’s the sense I’ve gotten from any explicitly feminist space I’ve seen.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
I cannot believe I, an Englishman, am looking with envious eyes and a hopeful heart at Ireland.
Regarding the street fights, with the rise of Antifa it didn't take long for right wingers to get violent too. A couple of hundred members of the National Party were attacked at a hotel last year during a conference with an acquaintance of mine being one of 5 hospitalised. Since then everyone knows a confrontation between the far left and right will probably get violent so they come prepared.
Arson has been going on for much longer. I can think of quite a few incidents in relation to this issue in the past few years. If a building has been earmarked for becoming an asylum centre, simply getting rid of the building works pretty well (especially in small towns where that might be the only suitable building for miles around).
A few examples: Kildare, 3 times in Donegal, Leitrim, Dublin.
Although I do remember it being widely unpopular?
Yes, 70% of people responded negatively in a public consultation on the law. When questioned, our Taoiseach (prime minister) said that the public consultation was likely swayed by organised groups of dissenters and dismissed it as unrepresentative, when asked why they did the public consultation in the first place if it was so flawed he answered "because this is a democracy" and that public consultations aren't the way things are decided.
I'm having trouble understanding the idea that "the onus is on the person making the positive claim to provide sufficient evidence to prove their case". It looks obvious why this is a good idea, but it seems completely open to the rhetorical trick of putting the onus on the other party to prove you wrong even if your own case is unproven (perhaps because the question is a hard one and whoever is tasked with proving anything will have a hard time).
What got me thinking about this was an internet argument on immigration and crime. Half a century ago the status quo was restricted immigration and the onus would be on the person advocating for more to prove that it was a good thing, nowadays the status quo is liberal immigration and the onus is on the person advocating restrictions to prove that it is a bad thing. No scientifically relevant change has taken place, only a change in government policy, but one side can now quote a basic principle of science to bolster their case in an argument even if they know nothing more than the other party.
The due diligence question is obviously is this actually a fundamental aspect of science as stated or is it misrepresenting a more nuanced principle?
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best ' older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion).
The most I saw was national broadcaster, RTé, mentioning that he was an Irish citizen who “came to this country 20 years ago”. The exception is GRIPT, a small but quickly growing media company that mentioned that he was Algerian in the headline.
I really think the Aisling Murphy case is worth looking into, the media is making the exact same mistake as before by obfuscating the nature of the attack (it will be a true repeat if they’re brave enough to scold Irish men for toxic attitudes that lead to random attacks against teachers).
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
and today the Aryan people most closely resemble genetically Northern European peoples.
population groups with greater Indo-European ancestry trend as nations with higher technological innovation, economic status, empire-building, and global colonization, all of which follow the modus operandi of the Indo-Europeans
The Greeks and Spanish seem to have a very low amount of Indo-European ancestry according to your graph despite being some of the great civilisations of Europe, am I misreading you somewhere?
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
except from the most conspiratorially-minded places like /pol/
/pol/ really enjoys bringing it up but it's not that obscure. Looking it up on Youtube I see a BBC documentary from 2002, an Al Jazeera documentary, a Jocko Willink Podcast discussion and some small high production value channels giving an animated breakdown.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Even the language war was lost ages ago.
The language was lost even before Ireland gained independence, Irish nationalism is based more on a hope of reviving it rather than asserting it as a fact that already distinguishes us.
So we may be at the start of a new "melting pot" in Ireland, where various white ethnicities meld into one larger white identity, the way it happened in America during the early 20th century. I suspect this process has just begun and will need time to play itself out.
That may happen but the Poles especially are very patriotic and a lot of them either have plans to go back one day or have already done so as Poland catches up economically. They're also surprisingly disinterested in Irish politics, unlike white immigrants in the US who changed the political landscape the Eastern Europeans have mostly kept to themselves (not in daily life, but politically). Having the rights of citizens of an EU member state a lot of them don't even see the point in applying for citizenship.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Yeah I mean it's a principle of representative democracy that politicians aren't just delegates carrying out their constituents wishes, but representatives with the right to go against the crowd and hopefully be vindicated by the time of the next election.
Still, it's an honest politician that says 'I know you don't like it but here's why we must do it', it's more worrying when they deny the fact that people oppose these policies in the first place, or paint everyone who does as far right (he didn't do that here but they've been using that one more and more).
If you take it back to the French Revolution, you saw some of the best political philosophy ever created such as with Rousseau
Rousseau influenced the French revolution but he died a decade before it happened and his best known books predate it by 30 years.
Even Monty Python is more subversive than anything we see today
Sam Hyde's World Peace was pretty funny, definitely subversive, and might have had a great run if it wasn't cancelled.
Ireland
A riot has broken out in Dublin after a man stabbed two 5 year olds, a 6 year old and a woman in her 30s earlier today. The woman and a 5 year old girl are currently undergoing surgery for serious injuries. The man is also being treated for serious injuries after bystanders intervened (I've seen photos and the guy is barely conscious and bleeding from the mouth). The rioters don't have a spokesperson or anything but I think it's fair to say that this is an anti-migrant riot, politicians and police are certainly blaming the far-right for it.
This is all happening right now so this isn't a complete list, but at least one hotel housing migrants, a Luas tram, and multiple police cars have been set on fire. O'Connell Bridge leading on to the city's main street has been blocked a burning bus and there are videos of shops being looted.
Worth mentioning because of the timing - this comes a week after a man was convicted for the apparently random murder of schoolteacher Aisling Murphy in Dublin last year. The man who was found guilty was a Slovakian convicted rapist, but the media went from scolding Irish men for their toxic attitudes to near complete silence once it came out that the perpertator wasn't Irish.
Tollund_Man4
7mo ago
How were they oppressed by Poles? Not disagreeing, I'm just not very familiar with this area of history.
Tollund_Man4
9mo ago
(who are a lot poorer than Americans, yes, if one actually participates in American online forums it would seem impossible to not learn this fact)
I think the scale of the gap is still missed on many, and if you do bring it up people just assume ruinous healthcare and tuition costs level the playing field.
The British Empire
Ireland owes a lot to America for independence. A great deal of this is due to the embittered Irish American community, who were always more radical than the ones living on the island, providing organisation and funding for basically every nationalist political group, but specifically the IRB whose leadership instigated the 1916 Rising. This wasn't yet anti-colonialism per se as it's Americans rather than the American government, but during the 1920s it was America's trumpeting the right to self-determination that implicitly constrained Britain from waging the much larger war that would have been needed to put down the IRA (though tiny in comparison to the one they had just fought in Europe). Michael Collins himself recognised the debt he owed:
The Washington conference was looming ahead. Mr Lloyd George's cabinet had its economic difficulties at home. Their relationships with foreign countries were growing increasingly unhappy, the recovery of world opinion was becoming — in fact, had become — indispensable. Ireland must be disposed of by means of a 'generous' peace . . . Peace had become necessary. It was not because Britain repented in the very middle of her Black and Tan terror. It was not because she could not subjugate us. It was because she had not succeeded in subjugating us before world conscience was awakened and was able to make itself felt . . . What was was the position on each side? Right was on our side. World sympathy was on our side (passive sympathy, largely).
From Collins' Why Britain Sought Irish Peace.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
I think this is a big problem with Irish political tradition.
We have two main forms of immune system against bad policy: precedent, which up until recently was a strong conservative force in Irish politics (despite a revolution we kept the common law and many of the older British institutions), and an aversion to making the same mistakes that the British did.
We do criticise our own politicians for doing wrong, but still some threats just have no precedent in our history and we lack the general suspicion of government that allows the Americans to shout tyranny whenever the government crosses certain lines. If hate speech laws and whatever else the government passes in the next few years are going to lead to some soft form of tyranny, it will have to be a painful lesson we learn for the first time rather than something we wouldn't allow to happen in the first place.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
I could well be mistaken but I was under the impression that, while not inclined to be particularly favourably disposed to the British armed forces, nor were the Irish notably supportive of nationalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, and the anti-British feeling was only virulent among northern nationalists, not especially any more among Irish themselves.
This is all true, but you don't need to be generally anti-British to have qualms about their armed forces. A couple of years back the Irish government ran into some embarrasment over a planned commemoration for the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. People in the Republic were still not comfortable with the idea of honouring a since dissolved organisation which committed atrocities 100 years ago, the government misjudged this and ended up cancelling the event. The memory of the British military is much fresher, and news stories about the extent of MI5 and British Army Intelligence Corps' collusion with paramilitaries during the Troubles still rile people up.
You'd have be, what, pushing 70 to be 18 at the time of Bloody Sunday?
That quote about 100 miles being a long distance in Europe and 100 years being a long time in America seems relevant. Some very old soldiers have been brought to court for their role in Bloody Sunday and the Ballymurphy massacre and that being in the news has brought a lot of memories back.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Here's a somewhat phenomenological idea which I'm just going to throw out there: these people don't recognise anything American about their discourse because it's genuinely not quite the same until there are domestic right-wing American views to contrast with.
The experience of an Irish left-winger is of a civilised country which has shed itself of its own brand of backwards conservatism pointing and laughing at the most recent thing the insane Yanks have gotten up to. No one entertains the idea that there will be any disagreement about this so they voice it freely at work and the like. It's not until a domestic voice gives opposition that the re-enactment of America is complete, the conception of the normal Irish citizen just being a nice person is shifted into Americanised Irish left-winger vs Americanised Irish right-winger, a faithful re-enactment of America involves hating each other after all. It's no surprise that they accuse the right-winger of bringing American politics into it, until the right-winger started to play his role the fact that we were all just re-enacting America hadn't yet become clear.
The real original Irish discourse takes place between old school leftists and a newly minted radical right arguing over which side holds claim to the nationalist cause. This is the stuff that doesn't make any sense in an American context, Americans themselves aren't interested in it, and there is enough substantive thought (a benefit of having a revolution instigated by poets and playwrights educated in the Victorian style) that original debate can be had. It's where everything interesting in Irish political thought happens.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
It is bewildering to consider how little people (apart from the two formed and ongoing "Covid tribes" - lockdown/vaccine skeptics on one hand, zero-covidists still wearing masks on the other hand) care about Covid now, considering how large it loomed for two years
I think it will be a defining moment in Ireland in a non-obvious sense (i.e. aside from the economic damage, govermnent overreach etc). For all the crazies that were involved in the anti-lockdown movement (I say this as an unvaccinated person with many friends in the same boat), and for how weak open dissent was during that time, anti-lockdowners managed to organise enough to build a base of dissidents (in the sense of being enemies of almost every political party) that has outlasted the pandemic.
Protesting isn't very common in Ireland, and when it happens it's usually the farmers, socialists, or some American thing like BLM, but since the pandemic we have seen some pretty big protests against asylum seekers that draw from a completely new base, and with these new hate speech laws I expect to see more. I can't tell if the people protesting asylum seekers are the same people who protested the lockdowns (though this is a common accusation), but in any case dissidents are braver, more energetic and more organised than before. The organising has had to be done from scratch so it's still very poor, but if someone could find a banner to unite these seemingly separate groups there could be some real opposition to the last few years of Irish governance.
Pessimistically, they don't organise but it will still be a defining moment in that in likening future protests to the anti-lockdowners the government has the perfect smear to shut opposition down.
Tollund_Man4
1mo ago
Ireland
In an unexpected change of tune Sinn Féin have come out against the controversial hate speech bill, citing their own experience being on the wrong end of censorship and the refusal to include their proposed amendments to the bill. This is especially strange given that they voted in favour of the bill at every stage of the process so far. Leo Varadkar has accused the party of cowardice and falling prey to "an online campaign of misinformation".
They've also come out against the EU migration pact saying that Irish immigration policy should be decided in Ireland. The migration pact seems like it would solve some of the immigration problems the EU is facing so Sinn Féin's opposition isn't a move to the right on the face of it, but they have said they agree with some parts of the agreement so the objection doesn't seem to stem from their being against stemming the flow of migrants.
Tollund_Man4
5mo ago
Ireland.
Migrant protests are back. Rosslare - a town of 2,100 - has become the site of a 1,000 person blockade of Rosslare Europort after the government announced they planned to house 400 migrant men in the Great Southern Hotel. 300 male asylum seekers are already being housed in the town so this proposal would fairly drastically change its makeup.
Unlike most migrant protests this one has the support of local politicians and started after a breakdown in negotiations between the government and local leaders. With actual political leaders involved it will be a lot harder for someone like Tommy Robinson show up and make it look like this is being organised by foreign provocateurs, clearly the views of locals are what is fuelling this.
I’m not sure how the economic importance of the Europort will come into play, there’s a lot more inventive for the government to settle this quickly but unless they win the public image battle arresting people and going ahead with the original plan won’t be a good look.
Tollund_Man4
9mo ago
The existence of God can be perceived experientially, and is probably a more robust evidence for God than mere philosophical puzzling (Colossians 2:8).
First hand experience is limited as a means to knowledge. Philosophical puzzling can get you out of the rabbit holes that raw experience can leave you in.
I could take LSD and have it revealed to me that some form of atheistic Buddhism is the fundamental reality. What could you say to me in response if you're saying experience can trump reasoning? You'd be preventing yourself from making the obvious refutation that I was experiencing a drug-induced delusion.
Tollund_Man4
10mo ago
I haven't verified the authenticity of this (I found it off some nobody on Twitter, and they were a left-leaning pro-capitulation to these ethnics)
It's on the UNSA Twitter (with a follow-up post saying that the 'we are at war' phrase was a reference to Macron saying the same about COVID.)
Ireland
Some interesting developments in the refugee saga and some more of the same:
(i) The more of the same was a fire at a convent in Longford earmarked to host 85 Ukrainian refugees. This is the first time Ukrainians have been the target as far as I'm aware. Ukrainians aren't considered asylum seekers as they are granted refugee status immediately and don't have to be confined to one place until they are processed, but they do spend some time in emergency accomodation given how hard it is to find a place to rent in Ireland. A local Fine Gael counciller said that he was aware that there were rumours circulating that the building was going to be used for asylum seekers so maybe the arsonists mistakenly targeted this place or maybe they just assumed that if it's going to be used for Ukrainians it will eventually be used for asylum seekers.
(ii) A protest in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary became unusually violent as protesters attempted to block a bus carrying 17 asylum seekers (out of a proposed 160) from entering a hotel that had recently been repurposed as asylum accomodation. The protest was broken up by police (the first time that this has happened besides the Dublin riot) and the fact that some of the asylum seekers were women and children has given the protesters some bad PR.
Roscrea has a population of 5,500 and already has an asylum centre and is hosting Ukrainian refugees in another building so they've got more of a reason to complain than most, the hotel was also closed on short notice last Thursday with job losses and wedding party cancellations. The fact that locals supplied the protesters with food and firewood is a mark against the narrative that these protests are the work of a small group of troublemakers with no links to the local communities travelling from town to town. As far as politicians go local counciller Shane Lee took part in the protest and Tipperary Independent TD (member of parliament) Mattie McGrath criticised the government's handling of the situation.
(iii) Mayo County Council has voted to cease co-operation with the Department of Children, Integration, and Youth:
The motion, spearheaded by Independent Councillor Michael Kilcoyne, calls for an immediate halt to collaboration with government officials until clear plans are in place for the provision of essential services, such as medical care, transportation, training, and delivery schedules.
Councillor Kilcoyne spoke on the importance of equal distribution across national constituencies, challenging the disproportionate burden placed on Mayo compared to other regions.
This is a non-binding resolution from an institution that doesn't control much in the first place but it's interesting to see politicians sticking their neck out for a cause that is popular in polling but extremely unpopular in the media.
(iv) Finally Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that the government will likely take the option of paying money rather than directly taking in migrants under a new EU pact. Dealing with this problem through the EU seems like a good answer to the "international obligation" argument for taking in more migrants, and since the EU is both very popular in Ireland and composed of countries which are far more familiar with the downstream consequences of mass migration this seems like a way to reduce immigration while avoiding the shame of Ireland being seen as racist (whether or not Europeans actually think that about us doesn't matter as much as whether Irish people think they think that).
Edit One more story: Chainsaw-wielding man jumped out of van and threatened security guards at Dublin 4 building earmarked for migrants.
Culture War in Ireland
The Enoch Burke saga is coming to a close, with the courts deciding not to prosecute him for trespass for repeatedly showing up at the school he was fired from over a dispute about gender pronouns (he aggressively questioned the principal on the matter and she claimed it was assault, it's not clear what really happened), though his fines have reached 74,000 euro and he has already spent time in jail for contempt of court. The Burke family are conservative activists so this wasn't just about him trying to get his job back, he was trying to draw attention to the issue and he succeeded massively given that this is the first big news item I can think of regarding this issue in Ireland. The principal has apparently quit in the meantime so I guess he can count that as a personal victory.
There was some violence around a refugee encampment this week as right-wing protestors clashed with socialists. A Turkish man came out and shouted 'this is my country' as the right-wingers were tearing down 'No War But Class War' signs and swung at them with a metal pole before getting beaten up. Apparently the Turk is deemed a terrorist by the Turkish government and he spent some time in Poland before coming to Ireland. It looks like the encampment has since been destroyed as the right-wingers burned it down in the night. Not the first time people have burned down asylum seeker accomodation but the other instances were in small towns rather than in the middle of Dublin. The police weren't present for any of this but I'm guessing we'll see some arrests down the line, though a lot of the people involved look like minors so I doubt there'll be real jailtime.
Sinn Féin have dropped their pledge to withdraw from NATO and EU defence agreements if they ever get into power. As far as I am aware all big parties are now pro-NATO and Ireland might end up joining at some point. Neutrality was once something we took pride in, and something that the Irish left valued especially, but the malleability in response to current trends that was exemplified by the lockdowns seems to only be accelerating. One consequence of joining NATO might be British troops training in Ireland, maybe we'll even see the Parachute Regiment show their face under a Sinn Féin government. I see this scenario as being much more inflammatory than the Brexit border issue but that risk isn't discussed in the media. The paramilitaries are basically incompetent nowadays but having obvious and hated targets appear can only help them.
A senator has spoken out against the new hate speech bill. Senators don't really have any power in Ireland (we had a referendum a few years back on abolishing the Seanad altogether) so it probably won't come to anything, but it's certainly another tributary in what could become an organised opposition to the way things are going.
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