Germany banned Irish at protests

ILoveYourVibes

This is a funny story.

So It seems that Irish protestors had been involved in Germany organizing pro palestine protests.

And they used Irish to evade germany police or communicate without them knowing. This was so effective that germans started to do it because it sounds sort of like german so it doesnt stand out … but its not and if you focus its only then you realize hey what is that language? its not a language likely to be understood by many.

It was also considered subversive and offensive by some Zionists.

This was so effective that the bundestag BANNED the irish language in spoken word conversation signs or songs at all protests.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/berlin-police-ban-irish-protesters-from-speaking-or-singing-in-irish-at-pro-palestine-ciorcal-comhra-near-reichstag/a234500393.html

Can you believe it. I am so proud. Not since Penal time has the irish language been such a threat. She looks pretty good for a 'dead language'.

Then i thought you know #bostontok ?? What if we could get them to do it to avoid ICE?? And get it banned in the USA by trump! Im feeling subversive. 😊

Irish is a powerful language. She is extremely USEFUL.

prunudo

If only they had the same desire to protest about issues in our own country. Do they live in Germany or did they travel there just to protest and be a nuisance.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305631#Comment_123305631

Perhaps they can travel to Mecca or Yemen next and protest in public about women’s rights?

While in Yemen maybe join up with our politicians and visit the local slave markets??

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305631#Comment_123305631

The article states quite clearly that they live in Berlin.

If only people in Ireland could read we might have less problems.

rock22

Unfortunately, German authorities are reverting to type. Many pro Palestinian protests are being banned as Germany seems to have doubled down on genocide, still providing weapons to Israel.

It does call into question the value of being an official EU language if local authorities in Germany can ban Irish, or any other official EU language

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305649#Comment_123305649

Ah will ya stop

Germany famously has very strict anti hate laws that came precisely due to what happened in 1930s and 40s

That this thread and the manufactured “outrage” is in English on this Irish site adds an extra layer of irony

prunudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305648#Comment_123305648

You're right, whatever the link loaded for me initially it was just ads and the video.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305636#Comment_123305636

This is an extraordinarily stupid objection. If they were somewhere else protesting about something else , would you be demanding to know why they were not in Berlin protesting against the Gaza genocide?

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305685#Comment_123305685

It’s not an objection it’s me pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of certain Irish far left politicians who share the same “cause” as these numpties who went to Yemen recently, ignoring that they still sell humans and treat half their population worse than animals

Stephen_Maturin

Whatever about the context this occurred in, Irish is an official language of the European Union - how is it possibly legal to ban it in a constituent country?

yosser hughes

So we're exporting our antisemitism now. You won't get away with flying Hezbollag flags in Germany like you do in Dublin. There's actual Gazans protesting against Hamas in Gaza, but you won't find any anti-Hamas protests by Irish people.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305703#Comment_123305703

How in God's name are these people in any way response for that? And how does that reflect in any way, in the slightest degree, on their protest?

MarkR

So you can only protest in English or German in Germany. Because the police monitoring the situation want to know what you're saying. That naturally leads to the question of how do you protest if you can't speak those languages? (Putting aside the fact that they probably should be able to speak one of the two languages)

I understand the why, I just don't think it's right.

Montage of Feck

This Palestinian fleg thing is getting out of hand.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305716#Comment_123305716

It's not a general ban. German law requires that protests be conducted in a language intelligible to the police authorities, so they can monitor the protests for hate speech, incitement to violence, etc.

(There are, as we all know, historical reasons why Germany might be particularly sensitive to these matters.)

Obviously, there's a tension between (a) free speech, respect for minority rights, etc on the one hand — considerations which suggest that people should be free to speak in any language they choose — and the maintenance of public order, supression of hate speech, and other considerations at work here. I don't know if the German rule has ever been challenged in the courts or what the ECHR would make of it. But presenting this as a ban on a particular language is a bit oversimplified. (And I'm prettty sure that whether the languages affected are official languages of the EU or not is irrelevant.)

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305754#Comment_123305754

They are a bunch of hypocrites stirring up **** in another country

A country that has strict hate speech laws

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305739#Comment_123305739

Nothing in the reports suggest that these protests were in any way antisemitic, or that anyone even alleged that they were. But, sure, go ahead making up Trumpian "facts" it it gives you comfort.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305779#Comment_123305779

Ain’t that the point, the police in a country that have strict anti hate speech laws want the protesters to talk in a language they can understand to be able to determine if the law of the land is broken

Which one would assume they should be able to do if they are living there

If the same protesters went to Mecca and chanted in Irish about human or women’s rights I wonder how that would work out for them

You go to another country and stir ****, then follow their laws, it’s not a difficult concept

Frost Spice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305739#Comment_123305739

Objection to mass slaughter of civilians is not anti-Semitism obviously.

Hamas aren't supported by western governments.

LambshankRedemption

"They were worried that we, in Irish, would say something that glorified terrorism or incited violence and therefore we were required to have an interpreter to clarify that for the police officers there.

"And because we didn't have one, we were banned from speaking in Irish.”

So, of these 40 irish men and women, who all currently live in Germany, none of them could step up to the plate to act as interpretor? Caoimhe from the article has been living in Berlin for 14 years so presumably has some level of German. Pretty much everyone in Germany under the age of 45 is fluent in English, so she could have simply translated into English.

Part of the article is constructed to sound like random Irish people were banned from speaking Irish in Berlin. But:

She said they were “immediately stopped” from carrying flags and a handmade banner that said “Saoirse don Phalaistín – Bheirlín” (Freedom for Palestine – Berlin) and police wouldn’t let them “display it as it was too political in nature”.

Sounds heavy handed, but they weren't meeting in a local park to discuss issues of a geopolitical nature(through the medium of Irish), they were

at the protest camp in front of the German parliament, the Reichstag.

So its not like the police just turned up at a local park where they were having an open discussion in Irish about world affairs, they were at the protest camp outside the parliament.

Shoddily written article, surprise surprise its the irish Independent, trying to make one thing look like something else.

Shouty protesters, "I'll switch into Irish just to confuse you", will shout over you because I dont agree with you. Hmm, these seem like very familiar tactics, where have I seen that recently?

yosser hughes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123306972#Comment_123306972

It's not mass slaughter of civilians though,taking your figures fro a terrorist organisation at face vallue and getting yourself so worked up about this particular conflict, to the exclusion of all other and far worse conflicts, is antisemitism.

People who celebrated the October 7th attacks, the rapes and murder of women and babies, but are up in arms about Israeli retaliation? yes it's antisemitism whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305754#Comment_123305754

The same poster came unstuck in the Gaza thread so has an axe to bear.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123307701#Comment_123307701

it is mass slaughter, and the deliberate targeting of civilians and provably so.
the figures are generally accepted by reputable organisations, so the gazan health ministry regardless of hamas are as reliable as is possible given the conditions and the slaughtering of journalists who report on the genocide.
focusing on a genocide that is widely known about is not antisemitism, protesting against a genocide is not antisemitism.
holding the state engaging in the genocide, the one that happens to be the world's only jewish state, to a higher standard and subjecting them to a different standard that others aren't held to, is claimed to be antisemitism.
hence supporting israel committing the genocide could be possibly argued to be antisemitism.

end of the road

as for the contents of the article, it's just the police playing politics as police forces throughout europe have been doing.
when you give police dangerous powers such as the power to bann anything, they will use it if expedient, especially when politically so.

thereiver

Thats the excuse trump is using any protestors against Israeli government actions in Gaza are labeled as racist antisemitics like dei is portrayed as anti white prejudice.

Dei is simply having policy's that encourage minority groups to a

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123305796#Comment_123305796

The protesters in this case did follow the German laws. That's also not a difficult concept. That hasn't stopped them being accused of hypocrisy, antisemitism and othe sins by the usual snowflakes of the right who are appalled, just appallled, that anyone would have the temerity to hold, and indeed to express, opinions with which they disagree.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123308529#Comment_123308529

You obviously didn’t read the article

““The police expressed concern that people might be discussing terrorist activity, or what they call incitement to violence,” Ms McAllister said.

"They were worried that we, in Irish, would say something that glorified terrorism or incited violence and therefore we were required to have an interpreter to clarify that for the police officers there.”

No one was stopped from protesting in a language police who need to enforce local laws can understand which is German, English and even Arabic as mentioned in the article

You have **** numpties trying to manufacture outrage over them being slapped in a polite German manner on the wrists for being numpties

Some posters on this thread took an issue with German laws, which is not only daft but damned **** hypoctical when the same far left grouping of 💩 have no issues with slavery or or females being treated as subhuman or wars of imperial conquest and colonisation

It’s not a difficult concept, when in another country follow their laws

That the whole hoopla is being written about in an Irish newspaper and discussed on an Irish forum in English and not Irish adds an extra layer of hilarity and irony while highlighting the stupidity involved

Peregrinus

I did read the article, but you don't appear to have read it. Or, perhaps, you read it but didn't undertstand it. There is nothing, either in the bit you quoted or in the rest of the article, to suggest that the protestors failed to follow the German laws. They complied with the requests the police made of them.

Noworries!

Whatever way you view the horrors that are being conducted at the moment around the world, I certainly wouldn't like to see the Irish language being associated with potential terrorism or extremism, and I certainly wouldn't like to see it being banned from usage in the US by Trump. Regardless of the OPs presumably tongue in cheek comments, the language is struggling, and I would rather see it promoted in a positive light as part of our heritage.

noodler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123307701#Comment_123307701

I'd say it is much higher tbh, also not including the number of injured, orphaned, dieing of disease famine etc.

But to play your game, what proportion of the 50,000 do you think it is and would you consider that number mass slaughter of civilians?

cdeb

While I've every sympathy with their overall pro-Palestinian cause, they do sound like your typical activist doses, prone to hyperbole and unable to view anything other than through the prism of identity.

She said she feels “shocked” by the experience and “frightened on the behalf of the Muslim friends”.

“This repression is a side effect of the levels of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in Germany. It's important to continue to highlight that this is not really a repression of Irish culture. It's the repression of Irish solidarity with Palestine.

We are painfully aware that if we were not a predominantly white-Irish group, this situation would have mostly likely unfolded very differently.”