Young voters' view of the Troubles on the island of Ireland.

No, none of the actions of the PIRA were reasonable, correct or justified. They were completely unjustified, they set Northern Ireland as a society back by decades. Rights for people that were just being achieved by the Civil Rights Movement were set back, relationships between North and South were set back, the PIRA imposed a dark time on this island.

Whataboutery doesn't cut it as a defence either.

I'm proud of the irish womens team and they shouldn't have apologised, especially the foreign manager who doesnt have a clue. We've already lost our national anthem in rugby, yet the english can still sing a slave song

Don't let the facts and realities of the horrors of the PIRA get in the way of the glorification.

It is the Wolfe Tones, and the chorus is "Up the Ra", so yeah, whatever the song was actually written for, the propaganda bit is clear. The best propaganda is always disguised as something else. Turning a piece of evil propaganda into a chart-topping song is quite an achievement though.

Your performance is worthy of an Oscar.

😭

Still, you have to scratch your head over the cognitive disconnect involved in a great group of young people paying a dignified tribute to people killed in the Cresslough explosion and ten minutes later singing a chant glorifying a terrorist organisation that bombed hundreds of civilians to death.

Doesn't make it right.

This incident strikes right to the heart of the issue in this thread, that young people no longer understand the horrors that the PIRA inflicted on ordinary people.

Regarding the original question, i view it as being a bit like Brexit. 52% of the British public wanted Brexit. At least a good proportion of them had enough intelligence to know that it could be economically harmful to the UK, so they had to suppress that critical thinking part in order to go with the other part of their brain that responded to the raw emotion of "take back control". That suppression of critical thinking (famously by Gove who said "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts") continued into politics afterwards. They had been promised that if they voted to leave, they would have all the benefits of membership without the constraints. When that didn't materialise, it was difficult to review the decision, so they voted for Johnson, just to get the bloody thing done. In the space of 6 years, they have lost so much, with each PM getting worse and worse, their economy getting worse and worse and none of the promises of what post-brexit would look like evident. It is only now that they are coming to their senses and the tories are dropping in the polls.

I fear it will be the same with SF. It is normal to want to get government parties out of government after so many years, even more so amongst younger voters. At the moment, SF are the only viable alternative, so the drive to do that allows them to close off their critical thinking when it comes to what the IRA did. My fear is that SF will not improve things when they get into power, but we will end up with a UK (2016-2022) scenario, where things get worse and worse, but people stick to their decision. How much damage will SF have to do before we get out the other side? Look how polarised the UK is now. Parties that come to power on the basis of division have only place to go when they cannot deliver on their promises - find mythical traitors to demonise.

The twitterati really scare me. The SF crew are either really numerous or really active (or both) on twitter, drowning out any reasonable criticism of them. As some have said, the depressing thing about this week isn't the singing of the song (which was wrong, but could have been reasonably easily resolved), but the vitriol that the SF gang aimed at anybody who criticised the singing of the song. They are the same gang who spend their time online shaming anybody who utters a careless phrase that could in any way to be interpreted as sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic, but have spent all this week saying "relax man, it is just a song". The ultimate truth twisting is when they accuse people of misogyny because men shouldn't tell women what they can and cannot sing. We are truly at animal farm. We must be super careful with every minority, unless SF deems them undeserving, in which case (e.g., IRA victims) are fair game for any kind of insensitivity.

I think what Una is pointing towards is the toxic rise of nationalism and its acceptance among the young. Truly sad to see.

Basically 'I dont like the opposition so I'll constantly give out about anything that smells of left wing-ism'? Whats 'toxic' about a rise in 'nationalism' (even if in reality its a reaction against an increasingly right winged government rather than anything to do with a rise in 'nationalism')

No because governments don't control what people think 🙄 this isn't f**king North Korea.

What has changed is that there is now a large cohort of young voters who do not remember the realities of the Troubles yet got taught f**k-all about it in school, so can easily fall victim to SF/IRA rewriting of history.

so all 'nationalism' is bad? Paint with large brushes much?