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What if the Internet had been around during the 'Troubles'

blackcard

When I see the comments about attacks by IS, I wonder how history would have been changed if the Internet had been around during the 'Troubles'

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The Backwards Man

You'd have a lot of yahoos here finding themselves with the shoe on the other foot.

It surprises me that some of them are able to put their own shoes on in the morning in saying that.

blackcard

I would imagine that there would have been widespread calls for internment, widespread anti-Irish sentiment

eeguy

What's different now is the immediacy with which we learn about incidents and attacks.

If something happened during the troubles, news outlets would dispatch reporters, interview witnesses, corroborate evidence and present the story with as many facts as possible.

Now we just have internet journalists (read: social media regurgitators) who get their stories through unverified tweets, publish whatever they like with no oversight, then edit and re-edit a story as many times as they want leaving the reader totally confused and fearful.

RayM

The #upthera and #nosurrender hashtags on Twitter wouldn't just have been a load of tweets about Scottish football teams.

Junkyard Tom

The censorship of Republican voices and views would have been ineffective and a lot more people would have known just how rotten-to-core the RUC/UDR were. Support for the Republican cause would have been an order of magnitude greater.

LordSutch

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

The censorship of Republican voices and views would have been ineffective and a lot more people would have known just how rotten-to-core the RUC/UDR were. Support for the Republican cause would have been an order of magnitude greater.

You would say that :rolleyes:

jeanjolie

It's unlikely that the world would be as it is with a communication network like the Internet.

There's a theory that the brutality of WWII was fueled by the inability of populations to see different groups within their nations and other nations with the humanity that they do today.

The internet would almost certainly have prevented the Troubles.

blackcard

Equally, the anti- Irish sentiment would have been exacerbated

FrancieBrady

The truth about what the British were actually doing would have emerged much quicker.
Partitionists would not have been able to ignore what was going on.

Yamanoto

The URL would've blown up a florists in Aughnacloy

Junkyard Tom

LordSutch wrote: »

You would say that :rolleyes:

The RUC/UDR was a viper's nest of colluders and murderers.

This is the Glenanne Gang (over 99% of their murders were of innocent Catholics) which was the tip of the iceberg.

John Oliver Weir - RUC.

William "Billy" McCaughey- RUC.

Billy Hanna - UDR.

Robin "The Jackal" Jackson - UDR member and an alleged RUC Special Branch agent

Robert McConnell - UVF and 2nd Battalion UDR corporal.

Laurence McClure - UVF volunteer and RUC SPG

James Mitchell - an RUC Reserve.

Robert John "R.J". Kerr - UDA commander.

Harris Boyle - UDR soldier and UVF volunteer.

Wesley Somerville - UDR soldier and a UVF lieutenant.

Gary Armstrong - RUC sergeant.

Captain John Irwin - UDR intelligence officer

Thomas Raymond Crozier - UDR, and UVF.

James Roderick McDowell - UDR, and UVF

John James Somerville - UDR

Norman Greenlee - UDR soldier and UVF volunteer.

Gordon Liggett - (UDA).

William Ashton Wright - UDR soldier.

Joey Lutton - UDR.

Laurence Tate - UDR

William Thomas Leonard - UDR

Ian Mitchell - RUC

David Wilson - RUC

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

My mother and aunt were country girls working in Dublin the day of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 1974. It was a Friday it happened. My grandad went to the train station that evening having heard the news but not knowing whether either of his daughters would get off the train. Stressful, to say the least. They were both OK.

Manach

Well both governments would have pressed for the immediate "regulation" of the Internet - for the good of the people of course - just as what is occurring in the UK and France now. A good primer on the history of such insurgences, Hoffman's "Inside Terrorism", show how these sort of measures are short-term policies designed more to show that "something is being done" by the politicans than for any real sense that such censorship solves anything.

Mint Sauce

I'd say readers of the Daily Mail on Facebook would have called for the deportation of all Irish Catholics from the UK, the same as they are doing with British born Muslims now.

LordSutch

FrancieBrady wrote: »

The truth about what the British were actually doing would have emerged much quicker.
Partitionists would not have been able to ignore what was going on.

Oh dear, you guys.

Dare I say the Provo's operations would have been stopped much quicker due to public outrage as the detail of their atrocities became available much quicker, (to a much wider audience).
The Americans for example would have not have tolerated Bombs being planted in pubs, shops, trains & cars, etc specially when they saw the immediate aftermath online....

blackcard

I don't know if I would have had the courage to post my opinions at that time

eeguy

Mint Sauce wrote: »

I'd say readers of the Daily Mail on Facebook would have called for the deportation of all Irish Catholics from the UK, the same as they are doing with British born Muslims now.

Probably citing stats as to how Catholicism is growing fast, Sean is the most popular new baby name and how we all have big families and don't work.

Rumpy Pumpy

LordSutch and Junkyard Tom would both have made the ultimate sacrifice, by starving themselves to death in front of their keyboard's in a month long, round the clock effort to highlight their cause.

Carlos Orange

People would probably have been justifying bombing pubs because of british foreign policy.

FrancieBrady

LordSutch wrote: »

Oh dear, you guys.

Dare I say the Provo's operations would have been stopped much quicker due to public outrage as the detail of their atrocities became available much quicker, (to a much wider audience).
The Americans for example would have not have tolerated Bombs being planted in pubs, shops, trains & cars, etc specially when they saw the immediate aftermath online....

No, details of their acts were available and they still maintained support.

The British suppressed and covered up what they were up to for years.

wordofwarning

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Support for the Republican cause would have been an order of magnitude greater.

Most people and I will never support terrorists. You might like to window dress it by calling it the 'cause' but terrorism is terrorism. Blowing up a bar of innocent people or causing £500m worth of property damage is terrorism.

I am struggling to see why I would support the 'cause' by hearing the justification of why a terrorist caused £500m worth of property damage with the object of creating a United Ireland...

Even if the British media were reporting the terrorist or republican POV, I personally could not have cared less. So what if the RUC, were killing Catholics. They were killing Catholics, therefore terrorists could justify killing innocent people in London?

We look at our TV in disgust when terrorists kill innocent civilians as revenge over a US airstrike etc. Yet you are telling me we would support the innocent killing of Brits if we could hear the justification from terrorists?

Junkyard Tom

LordSutch wrote: »

Dare I say the Provo's operations would have been stopped much quicker due to public outrage

This is absolutely ridiculous. The public got plenty of outrage via the censored media. Also, if you believe that public outrage could do anything to stop Republicans in places like south Armagh you're having a laugh.

The mighty British Army, you so laud, had to fly its rubbish in and out of its bases on helicopters... that's humiliating.

LordSutch

FrancieBrady wrote: »

No, details of their acts were available and they still maintained support.

The British suppressed and covered up what they were up to for years.

I have this vision of you & Junkyard Tom (together) sitting in your bedroom in a place like Ballyfermot, wearing balaclavas, string vests & hobnail boots, listening to the Wolfe Tones LOUD, with a large poster of Gerry Adams in a tight polo neck sweater on the wall looking down on you, as you sip on a shandy

You old rebels . . . .

Junkyard Tom

wordofwarning wrote: »

terrorism is terrorism...

So what if the RUC, were killing Catholics.

FrancieBrady

LordSutch wrote: »

I have this vision of you & Junkyard Tom (together) sitting in your bedroom in Drimnagh wearing balaclavas, string vests & hobnail boots, listening to the Wolfe Tones LOUD, with a large poster of Gerry Adams in a tight polo neck sweater on the wall looking down on you, as you sip on a shandy

You old rebels . . . .

Do you spend much time imagining people who post on forums? Strange thing to do in that detail.

blackcard

I imagine it would have been extremely difficult for Irish people working in Britain. I was one of those. In fairness, I was treated very well.

LordSutch

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Do you spend much time imagining people who post on forums? Strange thing to do in that detail.

I thought it was brilliant.

But honestly, will you two never let up re your IRA heroes.

FrancieBrady

blackcard wrote: »

I imagine it would have been extremely difficult for Irish people working in Britain. I was one of those. In fairness, I was treated very well.

The British public would have been better informed too though.
The truth would be there to find for the more intelligent Briton. The myopic, oh what a wonderful war crowd would not listen anyhow.

FrancieBrady

LordSutch wrote: »

I thought it was brilliant.

But honestly, will you two never let up re your IRA heroes.

I found it a bit creepy tbh. But horses for courses I suppose.

I think the hero's were the nationalist people tbh. They now have equality and parity of esteem and a place in government. All denied them until it was secured by the negotiators in the party they elect to represent them.

Google it

LordSutch

FrancieBrady wrote: »

I think the hero's were the nationalist people tbh. They now have equality and parity of esteem and a place in government. All denied them until it was secured by the negotiators in the party they elect to represent them.

Now now, don't be trying to twist thigs there^

The PIRA terrorised for the best part of thirty years for a United Ireland @any cost!
...that was their goal > and they failed miserably.

The SDLP are to be commended for not getting embroiled in the mayhem.