this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
64 points (62.2% liked)
Asklemmy
42502 readers
1987 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Chuck Freeney. He basically invented "Duty Free" stores and became a billionaire in the process. Then decided he should die "broke" and created The Atlantic Philanthropies secretly staking it with a little over a third of his wealth. In 2020 he closed the organization because he had given away the vast majority of his net worth. Mostly as grants to universities all over the world. He also may have low-key helped fund the IRA.
He's still got enough to live comfortably, and I'm sure his family is set up nicely.
Funding one of the biggest terrorist organisations of the 20th century doesn't sound like a very good thing to do... Same goes for all the other Americans who gave them money without realising they were (are) pretty much universally hated across all Ireland - much like how most Muslims hate IS
What the fuck are you talking about, most Irish don't dislike the IRA, what kind of brain-dead take is that? The 1916 IRA are heroes, the British were bombarding Dublin. The black and tans were gunning down civilians, and the IRA were fighting back.
Now, the PIRA was a lot more disliked by the Irish, but after Bloody Sunday feelings became mixed. A lot of folks were vehemently against the PIRA, a lot were in support, but the vast majority just wanted the bloodshed to end.
Even then, by % of civilian casualties, the PIRA had a 30% civilian casualty rate, which isn't great. But it's literally better than some of the loyalist paramilitaries which had OVER 50% CIVILIAN CASUALTY RATES.
You go to County Clare and yell Tiochfaidh ár lá on a Saturday night and see how ""universally hated"" the RA are.
And you compare them to ISIS? My god.
Tell me you're either not Irish or a teenager without telling be you're a not Irish or a teenager.
Very few people who lived through the IRA of the 70s to 00s would be saying "BuT tHeY wErE tHe GoOd GuYs 100 YeArS aGo" - to most people the Provisional IRA are the IRA because the original IRA is a thing of history books these days.
As for the loyalist paramilitaries, they were terrorists too. Just because they were doesn't mean the IRA weren't.