Atrocious Joe posted:

I think this is where we disagree. The UK security services having infiltrated the IRA to some degree makes sense, but this is the first I've heard that the Provisional IRA taking up arms prevented a revolution. Is that the Official IRA analysis?

https://www.drb.ie/essays/Red-shift posted:

In 1967 Sinn Féin declared itself in favour of a thirty-two-county socialist republic. Yet most republicans remained fundamentally conservative. … The bitter split within Sinn Féin and the IRA in December 1969 removed most of the more conservative elements from the Official movement. … The split certainly cleared the way for Goulding, ably assisted by Sean Garland, Des O’Hagan and others, to transform the party into an openly pro-Soviet, internationalist organisation. … The aim of the Officials, now renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party (SFWP) moved from “national liberation” to peace and working class unity, North and South. The task was to convince Protestant workers that they were on the same side even by taking their side on issues that risked alienating Catholic supporters. … In the Irish context, this presupposed unity between Protestant and Catholic workers.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/another-cuba-irish-republicanism-and-the-cold-war-1.4103583 posted:

[The] clamour for guns in Belfast’s Catholic ghettos in August 1969, following the outbreak of sectarian violence, provided republican traditionalists with a reason to split the republican movement. Disturbed at the left-wing rhetoric of Garland and Goulding – perceived to be a Marxist or “alien ideology” – the believers in the physical-force tradition set up the Provisional IRA.

The Lost Revolution, p. 179 posted:

Local priests stated that the OIRA were being ‘used by international communism’ and were not welcome in Derry. The Officials responded that they were ‘not a Catholic organization’. The Provisionals jumped on the bandwagon, demanding the ‘Marxist’ Officials get out of Derry; ‘Better Dead than Red’ graffiti appeared in the Bogside.

multistability posted:

It's not so much that the Provies took up arms specifically to prevent a revolution from happening, it's more that the PIRA had fundamental ideological disagreements with the OIRA about the manner through which those conditions were emerging (i.e. via the socialist agitation fomented by organisations such as the Campaign for Social Justice, NICRA, etc.) and therefore had major reservations about what such a revolution carried out along those lines would would ultimately lead to:

According to the standard narrative, the basic disagreement that led the IRA to split into the OIRA and the PIRA was over ideology and strategy / tactics, rather than the teleological end goal--a united 32 county Irish Republic--per se. However the end goal for the Stickies was a united 32 county socialist Irish Republic (in Connolly's sense). For the Provies, who emphasised their nationalism above any other ideology, the very idea of a united 32 county socialist Irish Republic actually would have been anathema:

I guess you could think of the Provies during this period as analogous to Connolly's counterpart de Valera during the Easter Rising and afterwards.

I think what a lot of people fail to understand or recognise is that, according to the Irish Times, around this time "Ireland was described as the most viscerally anti-communist country in the world". Many members of the PIRA would have been hardcore, conservative Catholics. This was a time when the Catholic Church had its claws in everything, a time when unmarried mothers were sent to live in so-called 'Mother and Baby Homes', where they were often horrifically abused by the nuns that ran them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54693159

According to Lobster magazine, with the formation of a non- or even anti-Marxist IRA, "the revolutionary socialist 'agitator' [had] been replaced by the authentic terrorist. … It raises one of the unresolved questions in this area; having created the 'terrorism industry', how far is the British state prepared to go to produce some 'terrorism'?” (Lobster, issue 17, p. 40)

We see exactly the answer to that question when we consider what happened during the ensuing years of mindless sectarian violence which unfolded following the formation of the PIRA. In fact, now that I think about it, to return to your original question--did the Provies take up arms specifically to prevent a socialist revolution?--I suppose there is a sense in which they sort of did: they were actually engaged in a bitter civil war with the OIRA at the same time as both organisations were fighting the various loyalist paramilitary groups and the British state.

Just putting it out there: my analysis is necessarily going to be biased as gently caress because one of my family members, who lived in Turf Lodge (an OIRA stronghold) in Belfast at at the time, was nearly murdered by the PIRA lol

Torpor posted:

so if the Catholic Church didn’t like communists I wonder on what high levels the Catholic Church. encouraged the PIRA, which may have been started as a UK intelligence operation.

I’m just thinking about the Queen calling up the Pontiff and being like, “ hey you got a second?”

https://www.drb.ie/essays/Red-shift posted:

Despite being officially neutral, individuals and agencies in Dublin were more than happy to share information with Britain and the US about republican subversives suspected to have communist leanings. … Neutrality, as contemporary Irish politicians and diplomats reassured their British and American colleagues, was purely a matter of militarily nonalignment. There was no question of the country being neutral in regard to communist ideology.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/another-cuba-irish-republicanism-and-the-cold-war-1.4103583  posted:

In the 1950s, when Ireland was described as the most viscerally anti-communist country in the world … Neither British nor Irish officials believed these “reds” were harmless ... The British ambassador in Dublin saw Northern Ireland’s civil rights crisis through a Cold War lens: the Marxist-influenced IRA, its leaders looking towards Moscow, had manipulated the agitation on the streets. … [This] created an opportunity for the Soviet Union to make trouble for Britain, its Nato adversary, and Moscow looked with increasing sympathy on the post-split Official IRA as another “liberation movement”. Whitehall feared Dublin could become a Soviet espionage hub, with the Official republican organisation acting as a proxy. Using O’Riordan as an intermediary, the Official IRA later received arms shipments from the Soviets. Northern Ireland’s violence spilling over the Border led to fears of instability on the scale of an “Irish Cuba”.

multistability posted:

Well it's funny you ask that; consider that the Catholic Church practically dominated Irish politics and culture during the era we're discussing:

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1410278022415106054?s=19

Torpor posted:

I’m digging the train of thought that the UK was so scared of republicanism and communism that they created the troubles out of whole cloth to prevent it.

multistability posted:

I mean, Nato being so terrified of communism basically lead to the "strategy of tension" during the "Years of Lead" in Italy as well. Lol

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969 posted:

January 2 – People's Democracy begins a march from Belfast to Derry City, Northern Ireland to gain publicity and to promote its cause.

April 20 – British troops arrive in Northern Ireland to reinforce the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

August 12 – The Troubles: Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside, and violence elsewhere in Northern Ireland.

August 14 – The Troubles: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland to restore order following three days of political and sectarian violence, marking the beginning of the 37-year Operation Banner.

December 12 – The Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, Italy kills 17 people and injures 88.

comedyblissoption posted:

poo poo POST MALONE posted:

I just realized Bryan Singer directed the Usual Suspects. lmfao. lol.

multistability posted:

poo poo POST MALONE posted:

I just realized Bryan Singer directed the Usual Suspects. lmfao. lol.

poo poo POST MALONE posted:

I just realized Bryan Singer directed the Usual Suspects. lmfao. lol.

poo poo POST MALONE posted:

that was the one where he tried to coerce teenaged boys to shower naked for a scene and they were like "uhh the gently caress?"

smarxist posted:

what the gently caress

Mola Yam posted:

i know his cabal was kind of perpendicular to the main characters in this thread, but i wonder what secrets rumsfeld took to the grave

Excelzior posted:

lots of unknowns, both known and unknown

poo poo POST MALONE posted:

I just realized Bryan Singer directed the Usual Suspects. lmfao. lol.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Douglas Valentine's "The CIA as Organized Crime" steps on the gas right off the bat and doesn't let up

The Kingfish posted:

how in the poo poo did he go through a full trial and two years in jail with an executed nonprosecution agreement.

e: jfc mainstream legal reporting is so bad. I read the Court’s decision AMA.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Allegedly the Phoenix program was very effective in repressing VC infrastructure in South Vietnam, and the period between 1968-1972 is considered the most difficult time for the Viet Cong. A lot of hay gets made about how the Tet Offensive broke the combat effectiveness of the VC, but I'm wondering if it's not more likely that the VC was being unwound by the Phoenix program actively targeting its political structure.

nut posted:

alright, I've been sitting on this one for a while and I finally got through it and wanna share it. This is a twitter thread about the origins of the modern iteration of the concept that artistic talent is connected to mental illness and that this connection is both genetic and inheritable. It focuses on the work of Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. You will see some familiar names here and there and even a kind of spoiler in that sense, but read it all the way through and let your brain ease and ooze then shatter.

https://twitter.com/mbneedham/status/1395602005654220800?s=20

nut posted:

alright, I've been sitting on this one for a while and I finally got through it and wanna share it. This is a twitter thread about the origins of the modern iteration of the concept that artistic talent is connected to mental illness and that this connection is both genetic and inheritable. It focuses on the work of Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. You will see some familiar names here and there and even a kind of spoiler in that sense, but read it all the way through and let your brain ease and ooze then shatter.

https://twitter.com/mbneedham/status/1395602005654220800?s=20

ymgve posted:

I don't feel like reading 1000 post twitter threads, where is the crack ping point

smarxist posted:

on a scale of 1 to 10 how bullshit is this?

nut posted:

alright, I've been sitting on this one for a while and I finally got through it and wanna share it. This is a twitter thread about the origins of the modern iteration of the concept that artistic talent is connected to mental illness and that this connection is both genetic and inheritable. It focuses on the work of Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. You will see some familiar names here and there and even a kind of spoiler in that sense, but read it all the way through and let your brain ease and ooze then shatter.

https://twitter.com/mbneedham/status/1395602005654220800?s=20

ymgve posted:

I don't feel like reading 1000 post twitter threads, where is the crack ping point