Photograph of the Day – Remember the fallen
Garden of Remembrance at the back of the Great Eastern Pub
If anyone can point me in the direction of a similar sectarian scrawl in a Nationalist area i’d be very happy to show that too.
Tags: Belfast, East Belfast, Garden of remembrance, Make that 10 then!, Newtownards Road, Northern Ireland, Photograph of the Day, sectarian?, Where is the respect?
Topic: Society and Culture
Region: Northern Ireland
Topic: Society and Culture
Region: Northern Ireland
Ffs lamhdearg I was only joking man……………..you are obviously 3 sheets to the wind so I’ll catch ye another day.
If you’d bothered reading the thread further, you would have seen I had already acknowledged having taken it for a more general question: 28th Aug 10.33 post. So your comment makes no sense. Unless you’re now criticising people for not having seen one of a certain set of walls.
Prionsa,
“First off did you bother to look up the King of England Edward and Mrs Simpson?”
Hardly, everyone knows about that traitor; and I am anyway a (British) Republican. And Britain had its traitors of course. But what’s that got to do with anything? The point is, Irish Republicans threw their lot in with the Nazis and much as I hate the British Establishment, they really didn’t apart from the odd freak like Diana Mitford. But these people are rightly disowned by modern Britain. The irony is, lots of Catholic Irishmen fought the Nazis and had to do so in British uniform, which must have stuck in the throat for some of them. But those were tens of thousands of Irish heroes, which is something Ireland should be proud of, not the third rate sneaks of the IRA.
“The “existing ideas” you mention which is the practice of eugenics was going on in many US states …”
Yes, yes I know about eugenics also and that it was regarded at one time as progressive (GBS was a big fan). I think Burleigh’s point was that the Nazis put together eugenics with militarism, ultra-nationalism, racism and totalitarianism to create a new cocktail that was more destructive than anything seen before. There is of course nothing new under the sun and elements of it had happened in different places at different times. But I think your view that Britain and Nazi Germany were equivalent has very little to do with an objective view of Nazi Germany and everything to do with your own hatred of Britain. Clearly we’re never going to be good enough for you – but aren’t you supposed to be wooing us?
“Further I have asked you now repeatedly to prove that any of the organised mass murders were known to the general public never mind the IRA early on in the war. You of course can’t do this and this is where your silly charges stem from when the IRA were doing their enemy of my enemy bit.”
I answered this several times before. The Vernichtungslager had not started and I didn’t suggest they had. There were other things the Nazis did even before that that put them beyond the pale of civilised nations. Jews were wearing yellow stars and being herded into concentration camps by ’39, along with any political dissident … simply, the evil of the Nazis DID NOT START IN 1939 and it was widely covered at the time, not least by the BBC. Global concern about Hitler was building strongly from at least 1936 and of course there was a major crisis in 1938. After March 39 when they invaded Czechoslovakia, Nazi intent was clear. After the destruction of Poland, really where was the excuse? Do Republicans not read, see or hear the news? The IRA were helping them right up to 1944.
Your ignorance might be more understandable if you were from the Republic (or are you?), as the War was pretty oddly reported there at the time and subsequently. As Henry Paterson notes in Ireland Since 1939, “the rigorous censorship regime did little to challenge the world-view of those who dismissed the war as a manifestation of inter-imperialist rivalry … Such views were widespread at both elite and mass level.” Once the war started, in the Republic reports of atrocities in German occupied Europe were suppressed and critics of Nazi Germany censored, under with watch of fanatical Brit-hater Frank Aiken. The odd thing is to hear the Nazi link defended in 2010, after all we now know. If I were Jewish, would you be making the same points you have made in the past couple of days?
“Further again I am sure that you are deliberately overlooking that the Nazi’s learnt from the US re-native Americans and British re-Boers just how concentration camps can help deal with troubling situations.”
No, I don’t dispute that. The Germans’ own annihilation of people in Namibia under the Kaiser was another early marker.
“On the Republican display of swastikas, I didn’t say it was widespread but it did happen.
LOL! Was that a Palestinian SS Panzer division flying by ma windae on the back of a pig?”
Are you saying no Irish Republican ever had or displayed a swastika? I don’t expect many people to talk about it, but there are accounts of it happening. The best known is the mini-riot in Dublin at Trinity in 1945, featuring a young CJ Haughey, in which two of the Republicans famously carried a swastika (though it’s clear most of the crowd didn’t want it there). Like I say, it seems clear the flag wasn’t widespread but given the pro-German sympathies of many, it’s not surprising it did pop up from time to time.
Someone called me an “Orangie” on this very site, on the basis of putting broadly unionist views forward (I’m not an Orangeman or even a religious believer of any sort). And I’ve been abused with that term also in the street when a schoolkid. So it seems to be a general term of abuse for (supposed) Protestants.
The Huns thing did start, I think, in Glasgow among Celtic fans as a term of abuse for Gers fans, but again it has widened in its NI usage and seems now to be used to refer to all Protestants.
MU
You have backtracked on so much now it is getting boring answering your hyperbole.
Ok I get in your pro-British Irish mind it was bad for the IRA to side with the enemies of their enemies………………really who gives a fuck what a supporter of the enemy thinks. Do you care that I hate that Unionists team up with the Israeli’s or did deals with apartheid South Africa…………do you hell!
Your next contention is after serious backtracking concerning the enormity of Nazi crimes is that even before 1939 the Nazi’s were bad guys………………know what? Totally agree with you. Could you remind me again who was selling out the CZechs and proclaiming “peace in our time”? Don’t tell me tat like the English King the English PM was a traitor also and in your view not to be considered. About the only person to emerge from this era with even a smidgeon of credit was Churchill.
Now you are on about some hogwash in Dublin regarding flying Nazi flags. Remember your original comment stated that the poor jewish refugee’s had seen Nazi’s on walls in Republican areas of Belfast.
Sorry MU but your credibility has eroded with my patience.
Prionsa Eoghann
Not getting much time to visit Slugger this week but maybe one last belated comment.
I agree that context is an important influence on meaning, though I’m not sure if terms that carry for instance a racial or religious sting are easily converted to inoffensive neutrality.
Perhaps there are designations like brit and teuchter (just maybe) that can journey back and forward between connoting self-respect and disrespect.
MU makes a fair point that a derogatory term can also shift from a specific group onto a more general community.
With his examples I doubt that too many of those using them in this wider context are asking to see membership documents or season tickets before employing their tongues or their spray cans.
You’re right that it’s easy to overreact, and it’s harder to balance the rights of individuals and groups with the right to freedom of speech, particularly if (to cadge from George Orwell again) freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
I saw a documentary earlier this year about Tehran by an Iranian guy (who had got his resources from the Iranian regime) who used irony, mischief and juxtaposition (context again) to make something far more hard hitting than if he’d just called a spade a spade.
Anyway, enough said.
“If anyone can point me in the direction of a similar sectarian scrawl in a Nationalist area i’d be very happy to show that too.”
So, Moochin – was that just total BS, or are you planning to follow the directions given above and photograph a similar sectarian scrawl?
Be good of you to show us the courtesy of saying either way, given that it was you who made the offer.
Thanks OJ at first I thought you were just after a nip but you have highlighted important and relevant points.
My position is that there is a time and a place. Shouting “dirty hun” pretty much anywhere……….even from the Broomloan whilst Rangers v Celtic does have dodgy implications. However two recent examples come to mind. Daily record coloumnist and Protestant Motherwell fan Tam Cowan mentions ‘token Tims’ or token huns’ often and the recent transfer on loan to Rangers of Aberdonian richard Foster has let rip a flurry of ‘anti-hun’ comments from Aberdeen fans. Of course the Aberdeen area is also easily the most Protestant part of Scotland but also an area mainly free of anti-Catholic sectarianism and a bulwark against OO marches in their area.
It is not that I am a Frankie boylesque non-pc nutter or anything, mentioning Cowen reminds me of the time that he went on about ‘beadrattlers’ on his Radio Scotland sports programme. I found it highly offensive because even though I am to all intensive purposes atheist in my outlook. I was shocked at the casual anti-Catholic outburst passing as comedic comment.
I am happy to submit to the theory of a time and a place, something I more or less said in my previous comment.
…..”Oh what a tangled web we weave……”
Two words, maybe not of wisdom: “Visit Coalisland!”
(this has not been sanctioned by the Coalisland Tourist Board)