Dublin dail protests - read OP before posting

What are you on about? They gave you the red ones instead of the green ones didn't they!

Imagine if our lot in the Dail had to spend a week governing France! They’d know what protesting is really all about then. The hand-wringing and hysterical nonsense about this on media over the last few days is nothing short of astounding. Ireland, the country where you free to protest, but be nice, and only protest issues we want you to!

Sorry now, but the video I watched was not harmless.

There was pushing and shoving.

Absolute scumbag behaviour.

Its the "SILENT MAJORITY" they are fighting for.

It just happens they are silent because they are too busy working 24 hours every single time theres a vote hence they never actually speak.

But the "SILENT MAJORITY" definitely exists, and these brave protestors are the heroes they need.

Just look at RTE’s coverage of the migrant centre protests. If you protest hundreds of migrants (the vast majority being young men from countries with backwards views) being dumped in your small town with no services then you must be a racist and we won’t let you have any airtime.

The case we still can’t discuss that happened in the northwest just highlights the issues being created.

Politicians have now bypassed the planning permission process as they know people don’t want their area ghettoised and property devalued. The very people that cheer this on would protest it happening in their own neighbourhood. RTE won’t even discuss this topic. They have gone from don’t question the church forty years ago to the opposite, far left open boarders extremism. It’s like they cant be in the middle.

Regardless of left/right, this current age is seeing individuals going off the deep end with their chosen causes.

Before the explosion of social media like FB and Twitter Jihad Jane was example of someone self radicalising by watching youtube videos. When she was first caught she hadn't even been in a mosque before, but many media reports had assumed she had been radicalised by others, when in the cut of it she did most of the running.

Extreme individual behaviour isn't the reserve of any end of any public discourse, the cause is merely the conduit for the extreme behaviour.

I think they want to kill all gay people and foreigners to leave Ireland and bring back the priests to rule the country like before.

Well they're rattled, and expecting more protests next month on Budget day so want to restrict protests to 1.6 km away! Talk about an over reaction. I used maps.ie to measure out that distance from Leinster House and Parnell Square is 1.6 km away as the crow flies. As is the 3 Arena, Cork Street, Lower Rathmines Road and Ringsend. So are we to take it that if this actually happens all protests are now restricted to being outside this circle?

And people complain about politicians living in a bubble.

this is reminiscent of the "Free Speech Zones" that were implemented in the US under GW Bush 21 years ago. The same ones that were described as a form of censorship and PR management to hide protests from the general public. Also the ACLU campaigned vociferously against these zones. Like it or not, protest is an important part of democracy, as outlined in this article from Daniel Gillion in the Princeton University Press "Why Protests Matter in American Democracy" which deals with the history of protests and the BLM protests in the US in 2021. The point still stands for any democracy.

"Because protests place issues on the political agenda, and work to make those issues salient to the public and individuals in power, protests have the potential to shift voters’ evaluation of political candidates. These informative protests can act as a mobilizing force that draws passion from constituents, heightens their interest in a relevant topic, and later increases the likelihood that they turn out on Election Day. . . . Not only are voters influenced by protest activity, but potential politicians looking to run for office assess their political chances of success by observing the level of activism in congressional districts. Conceived in this manner, protests are the canaries in the coal mines that warn of future political and electoral change. And it is the loud minority communicating to the silent majority that makes this possible."

Thing is, nobody can actually explain what this protest was even about. It seems to have been to cause trouble.

This only works if the protest is peaceful and orderly. If it gets unruly to the point of threatening or with the potential to turn violent, then yeah - of course there's going to be restrictions.

Therein lies the problems with the arugment above: Saying "oh we have the right to protest!" is flawed because 1) protesters do not have to right to turn violent, and 2) the right to protest is not being taken away, it's just being restricted.

Once again though, many on here feigning outrage, defended violent protests in America a few summers ago. "Violence is the language of the unheard" was a quote often used, and those protests were a hundred times worse than what we saw the other day.

"Mass immigration" can be quite a loaded term (often used by the far right ironically). Immigration is just immigration...I'm not sure the word 'mass' needs to be added to it.

Yeah but that violence is OK because they agree with it.

If you are of the opinion that violent protests should never occur regardless of whether they're right or left wing protests you are automatically labelled as right wing or typically far right for not giving your support to left wing violent protests.

Our left wing politicians were very vocal in supporting the BLM riots, I had a leaflet come through my door from the bowld Paul Murphy extolling the virtues of the BLM movement amongst other things (Nationalising everything in sight was high on the agenda also), which isn't surprising given his own history of turning a blind eye to violence at his own protests.

Why is it about "sides"? Can you not just debate what happened yesterday and discuss the people involved yesterday?

Or is it that you can't accept criticism of a group you support and leave it at that? You have to make it about someone else you don't suport so that everyone looks bad and not just the group you do supprt?

There was only one "side" there yesterday.