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Similarities between today and Ulster in 1969

  • Riots
  • Claims of discrimination
  • Calls for the police to be abolished
  • Involvement of communists
  • The media taking the side of the rioters
  • The creation of no-go zones for the police
  • Calls for the army to be used
  • Attempts to appease the rioters

I need hardly remind readers that over the following 30 years some 3,000 people were killed and that even though now the killing has stopped the enmity remains.

The similarity is intentional.

32 comments to Similarities between today and Ulster in 1969

  • GregWA

    Patrick, an obvious question is ‘what should we do now based on the lessons learned from 30 years ago?’

    With 30 years of hindsight, was their a way to avoid the bloodshed or at least reduce it by a couple of orders of magnitude?

    Is it reasonable to expect that people should have such insight now?

    I mean, apart from just having the police do their job and enforce the law or use the National Guard to take back sections of our cities from these terrorists. And if the terrorists are dumb enough to resist and we have to start stacking up terrorist bodies, ignore anyone shedding any tears.

  • XC

    A friend of mine and I were using Ulster as a BEST CASE example of what I fear will happen when DJT wins re-election in November.

    The big difference, of course, is that the “arms shipments” that were coming into the city were, basically, a US gun store on a busy Saturday. Absent SEMTEX, of course.

    -XC

  • Nico

    @XC:

    A friend of mine and I were using Ulster as a BEST CASE example of what I fear will happen when DJT wins re-election in November.

    Do you really think that’s what’s in store? I suppose it could be, but this is extortion, and we shouldn’t reward the terrorists. Besides, and much more importantly, the Leninism in the Democratic Party and among BLM, Antifa, and the rest, is now an irresistible force within the Party, and they may well simply take over the Party and the government if they win in November. That is, I can’t tell which outcome will be worse, Trump winning and the dems losing what’s left of their minds, or Trump losing and the dems losing what’s left of their minds in a somewhat different way. God help us.

  • Paul Marks

    In 1960s Northern Ireland the “Civil Rights” movement was a front for the socialist IRA (both the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA were Reds). This was obvious by 1969 – but the media were still pretending otherwise, even in 1969 when it was obvious.

    The IRA does not care about Transubstantiation or Justification By Works – to call them and their war “Catholic” was always bovine excrement. And the “Civil Rights” movement were their mask, their puppets.

    As Norman Tebbit has pointed out – the British state could have destroyed the IRA in a week, the British Establishment did not WANT to destroy the IRA. The aim was always a “political settlement” – i.e. disguised surrender.

    As for now – in the past the Republic of Ireland was a conservative Catholic country. Now it is a left “liberal” province of the European Union.

    And Northern Ireland is not he place it was back in the 1950s – Conservative and British.

    In the end everyone lost – the Protestants lost (Ulster is not a Protestant society any more) and the REAL Catholics lost.

    Now Northern Ireland gets left “liberalism” shoved down its throat – not by Dublin, but by London.

    Everything is lost, everyone has lost.

    Everyone apart from the international left “liberal” elite – only they have won.

    Of course the Marxists have not gone away – and as left “liberal” society collapses (and it is inherently self destructive) they will move in.

    So then the international “liberal” elite will lose – the Marxists will tear them to bits. The rich leftists are already fleeing from many cities in the United States (fleeing from movements they SUPPORTED for many years).

    And the Marxists?

    Oh they will starve in the ruins of the Western Civilisation they helped to destroy.

    So, in the end, everyone loses.

    Whether it is Belfast, London, Dublin or Chicago.

    Perhaps it is time for people like Dr David Wood to stop defying Muslims in New York City and go home to West Virginia to evangelise a population who have lost their Protestant faith. I am certainly not saying that other civilisations are perfect (far from it) – but sorting out one’s own civilisation comes before trying to reform others.The beam in one’s own eye…

    West Virginia is a lot like Ulster – the people may have lost their faith (and turned to drugs and so on), but NOT all of them, and there is land to farm. And other productive work that needs doing.

    People will have more chance of life in somewhere like West Virginia than New York. And they stand a better chance of life in Northern Ireland than in London.

    Times are likely to get hard, very hard indeed – but things are not without hope.

  • After the French Revolution, they got Napoleon. I wonder how Trump would look with one hand in his waistcoat? Because if I lived back then, I’d follow anybody who got us out of the Terror. The Democratic party today sounds a lot like Robespierre.

  • bobby b

    Well, Patrick Crozier, you’re in a mood.

    And then Mr. Marks comes in and says “ . . . but things are not without hope.” Bizarro Day.

    “That is, I can’t tell which outcome will be worse, Trump winning and the dems losing what’s left of their minds, or Trump losing and the dems losing what’s left of their minds in a somewhat different way.”

    The first will be noisier. The second will be far more dangerous and damaging to you and me. On balance, noise is just . . . noise.

    (I’m worried about timing, though. I thought that this round of rioting came just a hair too early to really pay off for the Dems in the November election. But as I think about it, the reaction when Officer Chauvin pleads guilty to negligent homicide with minimal incarceration time and the city’s promise of indemnification in the civil suits – a plea which could come in August or September easily – is really going to be noisy. Maybe dangerously noisy.)

  • Pat

    It should be remembered that all the factions in NI had a cause,were internally united, and fought each other.
    As far as I can see the malcontents in CHAZ have no unifying cause save dislike of the status quo. They will fight amongst themselves soon enough.
    The IRA particularly was in receipt of much free aid from external powers which the US government chose to overlook at the start owing to politicians seeking the American Irish vote. I don’t see any part of the US government overlooking CHAZ unless it is politically convenient, which it won’t be for long even for the Mayor of Seattle, who can take back her City unaided an time it suits.
    So no, this is not a harbinger of troubles, it’s a flash in the pan like OWS.

  • Ellen (June 17, 2020 at 11:52 pm) has a point. If only all these people who pretend (hard) to think Trump a fascist knew anything about actual fascism.

    [In 1919] Post-war Italy was hag-ridden by civil strife and political violence. Sensing a revolutionary situation in the wake of Russia’s Bolshevik coup, the left organized strikes, factory occupations, riots, and political killings. Socialists often beat up and sometimes killed soldiers returning home, just because they had fought in the war. Assaulting political opponents and wrecking their property became an everyday occurrence. …

    Mussolini and a group of adherents launched the Fascist movement … Fascists came into conflict with Socialist Party members and in 1920 formed a militia, the squadre (squads). Including many patriotic veterans, the squads were more efficient at arson and terror tactics than the violently disposed but bumbling Marxists, and often had the tacit support of the police and army. By 1921 Fascists had the upper hand in physical combat with their rivals of the left.

    I suspect the modern US PC left of being just as “violently disposed but bumbling” as the post-WWI Italian marxists. I still hope and expect they will be prevented from progressing the first paragraph I quote above, but if not, then I predict that others will finish whatever they are unwisely allowed to start. I also hope and expect that the US finishers will be more constitutionally disposed in whatever they use their victory to (re)establish.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “If only all these people who pretend (hard) to think Trump a fascist knew anything about actual fascism.”

    Presumably they’re referring to Social Fascism. That was after all the definition used by the original Antifaschistische Aktion.

    “Fascist” simply means “not a Communist”.

  • John B

    When the rules of civil society are abandoned by one side who have colonised society’s institutions, who not only do not want to listen to the other, but stops the other side even speaking, and it is prepared to use intimidation, threats, violence to destroy all the inherited identity of the other side, its property, freedom – dialogue, debate, reason, compromise are no longer available to ensure peaceful co-existence.

    Two options remain: capitulation and life in the gulag, or fisticuffs.

  • John B

    “Fascist” simply means “not a Communist”.

    Fascist means not calling yourself a Communist. Behaviour, totalitarian aims remain the same.

    Think difference between Anglo-Catholic Church and Roman Catholic Church.

    No doctrinal difference, just different names and different competing head boys.

  • Nullius in Verba

    “Fascist means not calling yourself a Communist.”

    Whose definition are you using? Yours? That of the original self-identified Fascists? Or that of the revolutionary Communist paramilitaries who originated the usage here, citing the authority of Comrade Stalin at the 6th Comintern Party Congress?

    There isn’t just one definition. What the speaker intends it to mean is not always what the listener interprets it as meaning. Who decides?

  • Mr Ed

    Did anyone ever say ‘Thanks a bunch, Fascists‘?

  • Nico

    @bobby b:

    I completely agree that the dems will be worse if they win. There’s a chance they win, and we’ll have to give them some space if they do.

    I’m worried about timing, though. I thought that this round of rioting came just a hair too early to really pay off for the Dems in the November election. But as I think about it, the reaction when Officer Chauvin pleads guilty to negligent homicide with minimal incarceration time and the city’s promise of indemnification in the civil suits – a plea which could come in August or September easily – is really going to be noisy. Maybe dangerously noisy.

    Him pleading to a lower charge, or him being acquitted. I’m guessing he could ask for a speedy trial but almost nobody does and he won’t either, so there is no time before the election for a trial. Is that why your fear is that he’ll plea?

    I’ve a feeling that Chauvin won’t be the cause of further riots. As we see, there is an endless stream of plausible causes. They would find a way to have a riot a day if need be just to keep Trump from winning.

    @Ellen: Oh yeah, the dems sure sound like Jacobins today.

  • Flubber

    Why does the Deep State hate Trump? I’ll tell you.

    The surveillance of Trump wasn’t a new thing. If you refer to Judge Collyer’s review of the NSA database searches, the intelligence agencies were undertaking millions of illegal searches from at least the start of Obama’s first term. The Deep State has been bugging every political opponent, judge, DA, Businessman that they took a fancy too.

    In the process of this they built up a huge database of Kompromat.

    Trump is threatening to expose this, who was compromised and who used the Kompromat for blackmail.

    The Conservative Treehouse has been exposing this over the last couple of years.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/14/obama-era-political-surveillance-were-black-files-created/

    All this manufactured race crisis is the latest desperate attempt to stop this. Will it endure? Depends whether Trump & co can expose how the blacks are being used.

  • Fraser Orr

    @bobby b, I am curious as to why you think the DA will commit political suicide by accepting a lesser charge plea. Irrespective of the justice of the system it seems that as a political calculus it is better to charge hard and lose than it is to “let the bastard skate”. In the acquittal case it is because of alt-right-activist-jurors-who-hate-black-people-and-think-they-all-deserve-a-knee-to-the-neck. In the “lesser charge case” he is the da-that-lets-murderers-get-off-on-a-technicality. You get riots either way, but in the lesser charge case you are the target of the riots, on the acquittal you are on the side of the outraged.

    As the CHOP, regarding the Norman Tebbit quote this is exactly right. The situation in CHOP could be resolved without bloodshed (on the police side anyway) very simply and quickly. Don’t allow deliveries in. Turn off the electricity, and block the cell tower signals. No iPhone and a rumble in the stomach is surely though to stop these pampered revolutionaries in their tracks. The problem is that there is no political will to actually stop it. In Seattle, it is almost as if the government are on the side of the anarchists — a contradiction if ever there was one.

    But as I say, everything that is going on in the news in the USA is about one thing — the presidential election. I think the left think that this chaos, whether Covid or Riots, engenders a “bad feeling” in the electorate, to their advantage. However, it is a dangerous beast for them. Firstly because the beast itself can do a Robespierre on them, and secondly, Nixon’s silent majority, I think, have had enough.

    It is really hard to tell what is going on, in fact I think the election remains entirely undecided — it will depend on events over the next few months. However, we can well expect the next few months to be just dreadful as both sides, and the left in particular, lose all shame, lose all sense of decency, lose all sense of right and wrong. The next few months are going to be a total bloodbath. Figurative for sure, and potentially in reality too.

    On one side I think the left have pushed it too far (or more likely been pushed too far), but I hear things that trouble me. A friend of mine, a solid conservative (not a libertarian like me), LtCol in the air force, entrepreneur, solid “nuclear family”, “morals in society” type of guy, told me recently that he is wondering if he can bring himself to vote Trump. Also, @bobby b has mentioned his experience with older people who were scared shitless by the covid thing are are trending away from Trump. But on the flip side “defund the police” is something I think that older people fear far more than the rest of the population. Then one looks at the African American community. To me they are caught in a vice. They were trending toward Trump because he actually improved their lives in several important ways. But then they see their sons being killed and treated horribly by cops, amplifying a pre-existing narative, and they trend back, and then the crazys say “defund the police”, something that the vast majority of the black community rightly is terrified of.

    So I think it is really almost impossible to see what is going on, and to predict what will happen. I think the next few months in the American press are going to be insanely bad.

    In the recent British election the time from calling the election to actually having the election was something like two or three months. I really wish that is what it was like here in the USA too.

  • Fraser Orr

    @Flubber
    Trump is threatening to expose this, who was compromised and who used the Kompromat for blackmail.

    But if you put yourself in their shoes you have to wonder. If Trump were to lose the election he remains president for two months more. You can release a lot of stuff in that time. So is it better to keep him where they have him under some degree of control? But on the flip side, were I Trump I’d be cautious. The left hates him enough that there is a decent chance they will come after him legally after he leaves office. FWIW, I think that is why he did not go after Clinton, to save setting a precedent. On the one hand he might do a prophylactic pardon as Ford did for Nixon, but on the other hand they can still come for him both for future activities and possibly for putative state crimes. Were I Trump, I might want to have a big bag of material to fight back with at the time he becomes a regular citizen again, where he would be subject to the brutal injustices our legal system can inflict on anyone who offends it.

  • Flubber

    Its quite well known that the NY AG has multiple prosecutions waiting for the day that Trump is no longer PDJT.

    As you can see from the Atlanta AG, there are no standards anymore.

  • bobby b

    Fraser Orr
    June 18, 2020 at 8:49 pm

    “@bobby b, I am curious as to why you think the DA will commit political suicide by accepting a lesser charge plea.”

    I agree that it’s counterintuitive. It’s going to depend on who ends up taking the reins on the prosecution. It ought to be in the hands of Mike Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, but it appears that State Attorney General Keith Ellison might be jumping in.

    I have a lot more respect for Freeman – I think he’d do (in my mind) the right thing and take the plea, whereas Ellis will do whatever slimy thing that he thinks will increase his future vote count. Taking this to trial for a dead-sure loss “for effect” would count in that category.

    But the problem for the Dems is, a trial likely wouldn’t happen until after the presidential election. A plea could be brokered that brings this all to a head right before the election.

    So, yeah, I’m conflicted on what’s going to happen. And I bet the Dems are, too.

  • Schrodinger's Dog

    All I can say is that I am absolutely seething at what is happening in both the UK and the US.

  • Nico

    @Schrodinger’s Dog:

    You and most of us here.

    The utter fragility of our society is something we are and long have been aware of. Our susceptibility to the corroding effects of Marxism and collectivist thought is something we understand very well.

    I take comfort in a few thoughts: that it took this long to get us here, and that like the USSR fell, the soviet republics of America and Britain will too fall someday if they come to be in the first place. Not too comforting, I know. But maybe we should spare a moment to leaving behind the kind of writing and inspiration that our intellectual descendants will need. It’s difficult to exceed that which came before us though.

  • Jacob

    Ellen: I’d follow anybody who got us out of the Terror.
    Very good formulation: “The Terror”.
    Now [North] America is experiencing what South American countries lived through in the 1960-70 ties.
    Now you can understand how and why military dictatorships (like Pinochet’s) were born and how they were an improvement over the regimes they replaced. (Not all military regimes were an improvement, but some were).

    And no, Trump is no Napoleon though you might wish he were.

  • staghounds

    Chauvin and the other three deodands will have a jury trial.

    Too many people have said “murder” to offer a plea to something less. And rightly, this is what a jury trial is for. Also everyone wants to be on television.

  • Nico

    @Jacob:

    Well, La Terreur is what the French called it… Anyways, yes, the U.S. is living the leftist violence visited upon South America in the 70s. The Pinochet regime was one of the least bloody of the various military regimes — the killing stopped very soon after he took over. Argentina’s was much bloodier, with the torturing and killing (often of completely innocent people) going on for the better part of a decade.

    A military coup is not in the cards in the U.S., I don’t think. It’s much harder to impose such a thing here than in a country where half the population lives in one big city, though I suppose it could happen, but if it did there would probably be a bit of a civil war to go with it. The South American experience probably doesn’t let us predict what will happen here, not with much certainty.

  • @bobby b, I am curious as to why you think the DA will commit political suicide by accepting a lesser charge plea. (Fraser Orr, June 18, 2020 at 8:49 pm)

    Fraser, I’m as curious why you think the political dangers to them of a trial so obviously lesser. The media can control the narrative much better without a trial. At a trial, the prosecution has to try and prove its case, not just assert it, and then the defence has its say.

    – Minnesota has been Democrat (with the odd Green) for decades. After all the narrative has said and implied, do you think Keith Ellison (or any of them?) want ‘The Minnesota Police Policy on Use of Force’ section on neck holds put in evidence, even if they nevertheless win?

    – You talk of the dangers if they “let the bastard skate”, but consider the danger to the narrative if the medical evidence says Floyd was not choked, as IIUC the autopsy asserts. It describes Floyd as being ‘intoxicated’ with fentanyl. Fentanyl has a known risk of hypoventilation – its stated side-effects include

    Life-Threatening Respiratory Depression

    – with increased danger in “concomitant use” (the autopsy also reported methamphetamine in Floyd’s system). Do you think the narrative wants us to hear everything the defence might have to say about what caused Floyd’s death – and therefore who didn’t? Doubtless the media can and will spin trial testimony but would they not rather avoid our hearing it?

    Trials are uncertain things – as, indeed, are mere arguments if both sides are allowed their say. I can see why they might think it safer to tell the narrative’s side of the story and avoid a public trial telling us anything that could cast doubt on it.

  • Nico

    It takes two to have a plea bargain. Chauvin might prefer to go to trial. That said, I’m guessing that Chauvin would take the plea, that the dems want more riots, and so that they will offer a plea bargain just to get more riots to happen when Chauvin then does take it. That a Democrat would be offering the bargain that will enrage the compliant rioters will not be held against the Democrats — that would be their plan anyways. We’ll find out just how much the dems can cheat at the ballot box / how dumb the electorate is / how smart the electorate is but willing to give in to extortion.

  • Paul Marks

    Ellen – for all his horrible faults (most importantly his absurd wars that killed vast numbers of people for his own “glory” and to put members of his family on the thrones of Europe), Napoleon did restore the rule of law in France (the Code Napoleon), and he restored gold coinage (no more of the paper money of the Revolution), and he returned to private ownership some of the factories the Revolutionaries (including “moderates” such as Carnot) had stolen for the state.

    We would be incredibly lucky to get a Napoleon.

    I do not think we will be incredibly lucky.

  • Fraser Orr

    Niall Kilmartin
    Fraser, I’m as curious why you think the political dangers to them of a trial so obviously lesser.

    99% of people watching this are completely uninterested in the details, they only care about the result. How many protesters are going to say “I’m furious at what they did to Floyd… oh wait, you mean the department policy said that neck thing was ok…. AND he was high on opiates…. oh well I’m taking my sign and going home.”

    So, I don’t think your concern that “the truth will out” really matters here. What matters is the result. The other thing that matters is the timing since, for the political establishment, this is all about the election. A quick plea bargain before the trial leads to outrage at them before the election, a failed trial after the election leads to outrage when it matters a lot less.

    So, I guess we will see, and I take Bobby’s point that it depends on who handles it. But for sure, a very political animal like Ellison is going to handle this to the advantage of his party, and a quick plea is not at all to their advantage.

    It seems to me that the outrage is such that any sentence short of “hung drawn and quartered” will not satiate the mob, and, even were such a punishment meted out to him I think they would still protest and riot around the pike on London bridge which held his head.

  • I think as long as humans can “see” the superficial differences of skin color, they will react accordingly. If we were all color blind it would be a different world.

  • Nico

    @Andre Surkis:

    That’s so cute, that you think think any of this has to do with skin color. Certainly the NI Troubles didn’t. No, religion, skin color — these are convenient excuses of the leninist Left. Sometimes they don’t even have that, as they didn’t in Russia in 1917, or in Spain during its civil war, or in Rwanda, or… If we were all blind, the power-hunger-driven hatred wouldn’t stop.

  • […] Similarities between today and Ulster in 1969 I need hardly remind readers that over the following 30 years some 3,000 people were killed and that even though now the killing has stopped the enmity remains. […]

  • Fraser, I’m as curious why you think the political dangers to them of a trial so obviously lesser. (Niall Kilmartin)

    99% of people watching this are completely uninterested in the details, they only care about the result. How many protesters are going to say “I’m furious at what they did to Floyd… oh wait, you mean the department policy said that neck thing was ok…. AND he was high on opiates…. oh well I’m taking my sign and going home.” Fraser Orr, June 20, 2020 at 2:35 pm

    That’s true as regards their base, and cancel culture obstructs their regarding issues beyond, but I am suggesting there are reasons why they (if thinking clearly) would not want a trial putting that information into the minds of any swing voters in October of this year. The people you describe are not voting for Trump anyway.