March 16, 2025 • 51 mins
In the United States, it's difficult to imagine how civil violence could break out in the United States - how civic and political breakdown could actually manifest in our neighborhoods. The Troubles - the conflict that tore Northern Ireland apart for decades - offer a stark warning for America's increasingly polarized society. In this episode, Oisin Feeney, creator of the acclaimed "The Troubles" podcast, walks us through how a society descended from peaceful civil rights protests into thirty years of paramilitary violence, bombings, and assassinations.
This conversation helps explain how ordinary communities became battlegrounds. Feeney explains how Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists retreated to extremes when moderate voices could no longer be heard, and how paramilitaries filled the vacuum when people lost faith in government institutions.
The parallels to America's current situation are impossible to ignore. From the rise of paramilitary-adjacent groups to increasing political violence, from deep economic inequality to the drowning out of moderate voices, the warning signs are flashing. Feeney discusses how violence becomes normalized, how communities cope with prolonged conflict, and what the difficult peace process in Northern Ireland can teach us about both the fragility and resilience of democratic societies.
The lesson? Societies can fracture quickly, but rebuilding takes generations. For Americans concerned about our democratic future, this conversation offers critical perspective on what's at stake and what we must protect before it's too late.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Oisin (00:00):
You know, like Martin McGuinness would have been the
biggest player for theprovisional IRA, and he always
says that when he was a teenagerhe was turned away from a
number of jobs, and for onereason, and one reason only he
was a Catholic.
He walked into a place can Ihave a job?
And they said, no, you're aCatholic, you can't work here.
We don't want a Catholic here.
If he had grown up in a societywhere everybody was just given
(00:26):
jobs on their merits and not ontheir religion, you know, would
this have happened the way ithappened?
Probably not.
And was the troubles born outof this economic slump?
I don't think so.
I don't know.
Maybe it's an ingredient in it,but I think this was an
inevitability, this was going tohappen.
This had to come to a headbecause, you know, a two-tiered
society can't exist for thislong in unity.
Uh, once realizes that you knowit's not there for them.
Shawn (00:54):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig, and happy St
Patrick's Day.
For the better part of thelatter half of the 20th century,
northern Ireland experiencedsectarian violence, political
upheaval and deep socialdivisions that left thousands
dead and communities profoundlyfractured.
The Troubles, as that time iscalled, offer profound lessons
(01:27):
for understanding what happenswhen democratic institutions
falter and the rule of lawbegins to erode.
Today, as America grapples withits own rising polarization,
weakened institutions andincreasing political violence,
we are asking what can theTroubles teach us about
preventing similar fractures inAmerican society?
How did ordinary life breakdown when violence became
(01:49):
normalized and how didcommunities cope or even heal
afterward?
My guest today is Oishin Feeney, journalist and creator of the
wildly popular podcast theTroubles.
We discuss that period of time,dynamics of escalation,
consequences of prolonged socialand political unrest and some
warning signs that we should belooking for in the United States
(02:11):
to preserve our own peace,stability and democracy.
My guest today is A Feeney,creator of the wildly popular
podcast the Troubles.
We discuss that period of timedynamics of escalation,
consequences of prolonged socialand political unrest and some
warning signs we should belooking for in the United States
(02:32):
to preserve our own peace andstability in democracy.
Just a note before we startthere were a lot of players and
groups involved in the Troublesand it can get confusing really
quickly.
I would highly suggest you takea listen to Ashene's podcast.
It really is fantastic and itsets the board very nicely.
I've dropped a link in the shownotes For the purposes of this
(02:54):
episode, though here's anoversimplified primer that
should help you follow theconversation.
On one side of the conflict wereRepublicans and Nationalists,
predominantly Catholic, whosought a united Ireland, with
the Irish Republican Army, theIRA and the provisional Irish
Republican Army, using armedstruggle to end British rule.
(03:16):
On the other side wereUnionists and Loyalists, mostly
Protestant, who wanted NorthernIreland to remain part of the
United Kingdom.
On their side, paramilitarygroups like the Ulster Volunteer
Force, uvf, and Ulster DefenseAssociation, uda, engaged in
violent campaigns to counter theIRA.
While the British governmentand security forces were
(03:39):
officially neutral, they wereoften accused of bias toward the
unionist cause.
The Irish government alsoplayed a complex role in the
Troubles, balancing itsconstitutional claim to Northern
Ireland, where the Troubleswere occurring, with its
opposition to violence.
So while it supported theNationalist cause in principle,
it condemned the IRA's armedcampaign and worked to suppress
(04:02):
Republican paramilitaries withinits borders.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
(04:23):
.
Let's do a deep dive, a.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?
Oisin (04:35):
No complaint.
Well, actually no complaints.
I'm smothered with the cold,but I'm getting better.
Shawn (04:39):
You started to say no complaints, and then you hedged
your bets but said no complaintsultimately, yeah, look, I'm on
the other side of it.
Oisin (04:50):
It'll be.
Shawn (04:50):
I've had this bad flu there for two days.
So it's on the mend today.
Okay, well, glad to hear it.
So you know, I've always beenfascinated by the troubles and
I've been, I think, a bitsurprised that it doesn't get
much attention in the UnitedStates.
In school, when we studyhistorical conflict around the
world, this just doesn't reallycome up.
That's interesting because theUnited States did play a role at
certain times in the troublespolitical and social.
(05:11):
But the more that I think aboutwhat civil unrest and social
instability and politicalviolence might look like in the
very near future in the US, themore I think about the troubles
and I think that period of timecould really help us understand
what our future here in the UScould look like if we continue
to experience extremepolarization and I would almost
characterize it as a sectariandivision.
(05:31):
For us it's betweenconservatives and progressives,
and during the Troubles it wasbetween broadly Catholics and
Protestants.
But there's more specifics tothis.
Your podcast is really wellresearched, it's so well done.
It goes deep into the troubles,the history, the people, the
events.
So I'm glad to have you here totalk about it.
Oisin (05:49):
Cheers.
I'm looking forward to seeingwhere we can draw similarities.
Shawn (05:53):
Before we even dive into that.
I rarely have the opportunityto talk to other podcasters.
I rarely have them on as guests, so I kind of want to pick your
brain a little bit about that.
First of all, I guess I'mwondering what is it about the
troubles that's particularlyinteresting to you, and how did
this develop into a podcast?
Oisin (06:13):
Well, I'm 34 now and when I was maybe, I did media in
college back long, long, longtime ago, and after that I got a
graduate visa, whichessentially is a one year visa
to go to the USA.
So I went to Chicago and I waslike, oh, I'll apply for a job
with this American Life.
This seems like you know, I'llget the job, because at that age
(06:33):
I kind of believe that any jobyou applied for, you just get.
I didn't realize that thisAmerican Life internship was one
of 50,000 people a year applyand so I didn't get it.
And then I parked that part ofmy life for a while.
I had a great time in chicagoand I worked for a news radio
station there for a year.
But, um, yeah, I'd always justsaid I wanted to start a podcast
(06:53):
.
I always just I listenreligiously, listening to
podcasts for the past 10 years.
Um, I just said I think this issomething I'd like to do.
So come maybe a year beforeCOVID, let's say 2018, I love
kind of just deadpan telling ofhistory.
I love taste file.
It's one of the most populartrue crime podcasts out there
(07:15):
today.
It's an Australian guy and Iwas like, okay, if I ever did a
podcast, I'd do it in that style.
And then I was thinking, well,what's the niche?
You know, because nobody justwants to listen to me talk for
the sake of talking.
So where's my niche?
And then I heard about theassassination of louis
mountbatten.
So lord mountbatten was thisfamous british royal, british
monarch.
(07:36):
He was the uncle of kingcharles.
Now I think I think it was hisuncle.
He was involved in thepartition of india and because
he wants to get back and gofishing, he did it kind of
quickly and he, instead of likethree months, he did it in a
couple of weeks and he displaced30, I think 50 million people
by by drawing this, hacking upthis border between india,
pakistan.
And then he comes home and thenhe's, you know, summering in
(07:57):
ireland during the height of thetroubles and the ira decides,
hey, this is a guy we could takeout.
We could, and it'd be a huge PRwin for us to take out a
British monarch, because hisrole during Troubles wasn't huge
, but the fact that he was areigning monarch.
So anyway, I'm getting a bitlong-winded into it, but I saw
the story beats there.
I saw there's a plot, there's aplot to kill Mountbatten.
(08:19):
There's what happened.
They planted a bomb in his boatand as it went out in the
morning, they detonated the bomb.
There's what it took to catchthe attackers or to catch the
perpetrators.
It's got all the story beatsthere.
And then what made it mostinteresting for me was the
ethical stuff.
At the very end, which the IRAagreed, they said we're going to
(08:41):
kill Mountbatten, we don't carewho's on that boat.
And when that bomb went off, Ithink six or seven people were
killed, including two children.
And the IRA said that this,these were word, this was a
worthwhile endeavor because wegot Mountbatten, whereas most,
most people around the worldprobably wouldn't say that, or
so I just kind of said to myselfthere's all the story beats.
This is a fascinating period inhistory.
(09:02):
And then I was like, as an Irishperson, how do I not know
anything about the Troubles?
You know, like Northern Irelandfor me was where my dad drove
up to get us fireworks becausethey were illegal down here when
we were kids, and that was it.
And then I said to myself oh myGod, there's a wealth of these
stories, these bombings, theseassassinations, and if a guy an
hour away in need can'tunderstand what went on in
(09:25):
Northern Ireland.
How could anyone around theworld understand?
How could anyone in England, inAmerica, understand these very,
very dense moment in history, Iguess?
So I said, ok, I'm going to makeit, and I'm going to make it
simple.
I'm not going to make it like Idon't want to make anything too
what's the word too scholarly.
I want to just kind of distilleach episode about a person,
(09:45):
each episode about a bombing andput it out to the world.
Yeah, so I guess I want to do apodcast.
And then I found the niche Ifound was the troubles.
There wasn't anything else inpodcast form about the troubles.
It from the way I was planningon doing it.
Shawn (09:59):
And then you just finished like your fifth season,
right?
Oisin (10:02):
yeah, yeah, five seasons and 15 episodes a season.
Shawn (10:06):
To the listener, and I think this is probably true of a
large segment of at leastAmerican listeners.
They don't really know,probably, what the Troubles are
or were, and it's verycomplicated and it can become
quite convoluted.
So one I would direct people toyour podcast, the Troubles
podcast.
But could you maybe broadstrokes explain to podcast the
Troubles Podcast.
But could you maybe broadstrokes explain to me what the
(10:27):
Troubles were, who the mainplayers were, what the conflict
was about?
Oisin (10:31):
Basically like Ireland as an island.
If you look at that, it was abunch of, like, high kings
ruling different parts of theisland.
They didn't have a notion ofIrishness.
One of the high kings ofIreland, dermot MacMurray.
He said one day oh look, theseNormans over here are pretty
strong.
The Normans were based fromNormandy in France but they also
had a kind of role in the crownand in the monarch in England.
(10:55):
We have that.
We have the Normans, we havethe English and we have the
native Irish bunch of high kings.
So one of the high kings hedecides if he marries his
daughter off to one of theseNormans, he will have the might
of the Normans who can come overand take over other areas,
expanding this king's influencein the area.
So the king's name was DermotMacMurray and he married his
(11:17):
daughter Aoife to Strongbow.
If you recognize that name,strongbow was a famous Norman
leader and we're talking aroundthe 1100s.
Now at this stage, strongbowcomes over with the Normans.
He realizes this is actuallypretty good.
Ireland has space for us, wecan take space here.
The English king at the timesaid this is problematic.
If the Normans take Ireland,they can use Ireland as a
(11:38):
springboard to invade us.
So that's when the BritishEnglish king at the time invaded
Ireland.
So the invasion of Irelandagain happened in the late 1100s
and that would be the firsttime that we would have had
these kind of foreign entitiesover here, if we exclude the
Celts and the Vikings.
But that would be what we wouldargue is the start of Ireland's
occupation, I guess.
(12:00):
So we're going to fast forwardup to the 1600s and the English
are trying to exert influence inireland.
Now we have also the split fromthe church the catholic church
is split away from the,protestantism is split away from
catholic church and the englishare trying to exert dominance
in ireland.
But it's not really working.
(12:20):
The irish people want to hangon to their religion, they want
to hang on to their language,all of this sort of stuff.
So what the english do is theystart plantations all over the
island of ireland, and aplantation is very simple you
send over, you promise people inengland or scotland large
amounts of land and you say youhave to go over here, we'll give
you all this land, and youcan't hire irish people and you
also have to bring like aminimum of 30 or 40 people with
(12:42):
you to kind of try and stamp outthis rebellious Irishness and
grow your English influence inIreland.
So most of these plantationsdidn't really work out.
The native Irish in Irelandfought back or you know there
was boycotts or there was allthese sort of things.
But the problem was in NorthernIreland, aka Ulster, ulster or
(13:05):
Northern Ireland, where the mostfertile soil was.
So you know you had thesepeople coming primarily from
Scotland over to NorthernIreland and they were settling
and this is the Cromwellianplantations, what it was called.
And when the native Irishpeople said where do we go, they
said you can go to Hel or youcan go to Connacht.
Connacht is on the west coastof ireland and it would be
(13:26):
pretty shite land in the sensethat you know it's beautiful for
tourism nowadays but at thetime there's nothing.
You can't grow your crops on itand you know having fertile
farming land is the mostimportant thing during this
period.
So the people who settled innorthern ireland, you know they
were given huge amounts of land.
They, over the next 200, 300years they prospered and again
(13:49):
they couldn't hire Irish people.
Irish people, native Irishpeople couldn't own land in the
same way that these settlers whowere given their land did.
So if we fast forward now to the1960s, so you have these we
call them like Protestant,unionist people who had arrived
(14:11):
over this country two or 300years before this and the
generational wealth hadcontinued and generational
influence.
And then you have the nativeCatholic Irish who had the lands
taken off them two or 300 yearsbefore this and that sort of
two-tiered system had existedand actually grown deeper in a
way in that two or three hundredyears.
(14:31):
So the population demographics,I think, were about 70 percent,
30 percent, 70 percent in favorof the Protestants at this
stage.
That's drastically changed nowbecause Irish Catholics are
having a rake of caves.
But you have this I think itcame with the advent of free
education on secondary level aswell.
You have these young CatholicIrish in the 1960s who say hang
(14:56):
on a second.
Here we're living in atwo-tiered society.
You know they saw the kind ofthe civil rights movement in the
US and they realized that.
You know that's the problemover here.
We have a two-tiered societywhere Northern Ireland is what
it was known as a unionistcountry for unionist people.
Again, remember, unionist isthe Protestant people who came
(15:17):
from England 300 years ago.
That like, let's, let me justexplain.
Like if you were a catholic innorthern ireland, there was a
bunch of ways in which you werenot really allowed to ever
really move up in the world.
You know, like there was thisthing known as gerrymandering.
So if there were like catholicareas where catholics were the
(15:37):
majority, that area would all besplit up so that in government
the catholic people would thenbe the minority.
If that makes sense, does thatmake sense?
Yep, we have.
People would then be theminority.
If that makes sense, does thatmake?
Shawn (15:45):
sense Yep.
We have the same thing in theUS.
Oisin (15:47):
Okay, perfect.
And then there was also like itwas only rate payers could vote
.
Rate payer essentially meanshomeowner anyway, and since you
know, most unionists owned theirhomes whereas most Catholics
were renting homes and theunionists were the ones voting,
you know, catholics couldn't ajob in the civil services,
couldn't get jobs in the police.
If a Catholic person went forsocial housing it would always
(16:08):
kind of the priority would gotowards the unionists.
So it was this kind of.
It was a direct knock on effectfrom 300 years before that.
That just got deeper and moredivided.
And then, with civil rightsmovement in the US and slightly
better access to education inthe 60s, that's when the
Catholic or nationalistpopulation started to advocate
(16:29):
for their rights, to peacefullyadvocate for their rights, which
wasn't really met very well bythe other side.
So the police force, the RUC,were attending these peaceful
protests and in some cases theywere standing back, while
unionists or loyalists now it'sa new word we're introducing
individuals started attackingthese protests and in some cases
they were standing back, whileunionists or loyalists now it's
a new word we're introducingindividuals started attacking
these protests or in some casesthey attacked the protests
(16:52):
themselves.
So suddenly we have theCatholic people saying we're
trying to peacefully protest andthey're just beating us up and
they're shooting us and killingus.
And things just got worse fromthere, so much so that the
Northern Irish government wasdissolved is that the word
Basically basically direct rulefrom England was imposed.
The British army were then sentover to Northern Ireland.
The British army initially werewelcomed by Irish people, but
(17:14):
like nationalist people, saying,oh, thank God, you're here,
you're going to help us againstthis biased police force who are
killing us.
But then the British armystarted doing the same.
They started well, let's lookat Bloody Sunday, you know,
where we saw 12 to 13 peopleshot in the back, unarmed Irish
men, unarmed nationalist men,shot as they were running away
(17:34):
by the British army.
And then basically everythingjust kept going, getting worse
and worse and worse and worse.
And then we have the emergenceof the paramilitary groups, so
the emergence of the provisionalIRA on one side, and then we
have the UVF and the UDA on theother side.
And then it was just a really,really awful 30-year period of
(17:56):
tit-for-tat killings.
A bomb would go off on theShankill and kill six people,
and the next day the UVF wouldmake sure they wanted to get
their pound of flesh as well.
They make sure to kill sixcatholics on the other side, and
it just got worse and worse andworse, with no end in sight.
Shawn (18:12):
I mentioned this in the preamble the tension between
Catholics and Protestants, andsometimes I feel like these are
just covers for other things.
So we also have the rise of thereligious right wing, and it's
gotten to the point where, ifsomebody tells you that they are
religious, the assumption isthat they are conservative or
Republican Republican.
(18:37):
The reason I'm even bringingthis up is that I don't always
know that what we're reallytalking about is religious, as
much as religion is just maskingsomething else, and so the
question I have for you is whenwe talk about this as being a
Protestant versus Catholic thing, at what point did this stop
being religious and just becomea name that we gave to
understand the two sides?
Oisin (18:55):
Well, I think when the world looks at the troubles,
they also look at palestiniansversus catholics, but, like you
know, in in the way I justexplained it, it's it's settler
versus non-settler.
I guess, when does somebody whobegins to live on a land earn
the right to have that land overthe other person?
That's all, that's all.
This is that in its absolute,simplest form.
(19:16):
So the people who came overfrom Scotland, primarily they
settled over here and in reality, these religion.
This was an era where religionwas very important, especially
at the 1960s.
Everyone in Ireland wasreligious, everybody.
So it was a huge point ofdivisiveness, I guess.
But I would argue that it allgoes back to.
(19:37):
It doesn't matter aboutreligion, it just matters.
You're the people who settledhere 300 years ago and we're not
.
You're loyal to the Queen ofEngland, we're loyal to a free
Ireland.
You know, it's that simple.
Shawn (19:49):
I guess this is a third prong to this.
So we talked about thegerrymandering which kind of
dilutes power, and we talkedabout the religious factor, but
the other and you've broughtthis up already is economic
inequality, and these kind ofall interplay with each other,
right, and so in IrelandCatholics experienced economic
inequality at the hands ofProtestants, and how much do you
(20:10):
think that that actuallycontributed to not just the
tension but the outrightviolence?
And the reason I ask is becausewe are experiencing an extreme
period of economic inequality inthe United States right now and
I wonder if that's also justanother recipe in the soup that
is similar to what happened inthe Troubles.
That could be something wepoint to as a warning sign.
Oisin (20:31):
I think your recipe in the soup is very important.
Recipe in the soup becausethese are all small contributing
factors that lead to somethingelse.
So in Northern Ireland at theonset of the Troubles, everybody
was broke.
It's very hard to describe but,like you know, there was
massive amounts of working classareas, these massive, big
dimmest flats, these governmentbuilt flats that were in awful
(20:54):
condition.
But even in the early days ofthe Trunkwoods there was a lot
of this socialism-type stuffwhere unionists and nationalists
initially were interested inworking together to overthrow
the society that's keeping themboth down, basically.
Now that all petered out fairlyquickly.
Another paramilitary groupsimilar to the IRA was the
(21:15):
INLALA.
They would have been a lot moresocialist leaning and pretty,
pretty violent in the acts thatthey carried out.
Could you say that a lot of thethe violence came out of
working class areas in NorthernIreland?
I'd say that's true.
Had these places had you know,like Martin McGuinness would
have been the biggest player forthe provisional IRA and he
always says that when he was ateenager he was turned away from
a number of jobs and for onereason, and one reason only he
(21:38):
was a catholic.
He walked into a place can Ihave a job and they said no,
you're a catholic, you can'twork here, we don't want a
catholic here.
If he had grown up in a societywhere everybody was just given
jobs on their merits and not ontheir religion, you know, would
this have happened the way ithappened?
Probably Probably not.
And was the Troubles born outof this economic slump?
(21:59):
I don't think so.
I don't know.
Maybe it's an ingredient in it,but I think this was an
inevitability.
This was going to happen.
This had to come to a headbecause, you know, a two-tiered
society can't exist for thislong in unity.
Once one realizes that, youknow it's not fair for them.
Shawn (22:15):
So the violence reaches a point at which the British
government decides at some pointthat they have to intervene.
I think that we like to thinkmaybe naively that when
especially democraticgovernments get involved, that
the safety and security of thepopulace is front of mind.
And so therefore, despite howconvoluted or how violent the
(22:39):
situation might be on the ground, that government intervention
could be a defining factortoward an end of peace.
But the British government'sintervention didn't achieve that
quickly.
Oisin (22:52):
Well, hang on.
Sorry, before you ask thisquestion, this was a really
really really complicated periodin the sense that, like the
northern irish government, theunionist government obviously
they they lost rule.
But then, when things likebloody sunday happened or was it
the battle of the bog side aswell the irish government what
is their role when you're in therepublic of ireland and you
(23:15):
have people across your borderthat would consider themselves
Irish citizens?
So the Irish government set uptriage.
There was a risk that the Irishgovernment would send soldiers
over the border into NorthernIreland to protect their own,
but they didn't, and they'vealways drawn a lot of criticism
for that, for not necessarilybeing in the corner of the Irish
people who are trapped acrossthis border.
(23:36):
So the Irish government had avery difficult position at this
point and they didn't really actand the Northern Irish
government was dissolved andthen the British government
basically had to make thedecision to send in the army and
I feel like every singledecision that the army made when
they got to Northern Irelandfed and fueled the troubles.
Shawn (23:55):
So I guess that was my question, but I also wonder how
much of this was a MaggieThatcher leadership problem.
Had there been somebody maybemore skilled and less rigid, do
you think that this would haveplayed out differently, because
I feel like Thatcher made thesituation worse.
Oisin (24:14):
I'm going to go back a little bit.
So first off, Thatcher didn'tcome in until 1979 at Google
that Right.
So let's say the troubles kickedoff in 1969.
You know, I'm not too sure howmuch prominence she would have
had 10 years before that, butthe point that I wanted to make
is I was reading a book recentlythat said it's undeniable that
the British government createdrepublicanism in Northern
(24:34):
Ireland.
You know, two of the biggestinstances were well, one Bloody
Sunday, which I've talked aboutbefore, but also the second one
was called internment, where theBritish army came over here and
they said, okay, we need tosmash the IRA.
So internment happened over aperiod of I think it was just
two days, where over a thousandpeople were scooped up and no
(24:54):
Protest protestants, there areonly people who were accused of
being members of the ira andthey were kept illegally,
without question, withoutquestion, without any
representation, some of them forup to two years.
And when these people came out,you know they got out of prison.
Many of them.
The first thing they did wasjoin the ira because they they
had been mistreated so poorly bythis government that was
(25:17):
apparently acting in theirinterests.
So it just seems that time andtime again, the British
government made the wrong movewhen it came to trying to
resolve the violence in NorthernIreland and instead they just
flipped it up.
I've totally forgotten yourquestion, by the way.
Shawn (25:32):
I guess what I'm wondering is like how much of
this was just so embedded in theon the ground real world
situation that was happening,that was going to unfold,
regardless of intervention fromthe British government?
Oisin (25:47):
You have to look at the characters.
You know the people, theplayers.
So the paramilitary groups werehuge.
You know the UDA and the UDFmembership.
Like the UDA had jeez was it?
20,000 people involved and theUDF kept it down to like 2K.
But there was huge amounts ofpeople who were choosing to
react.
Let's just say the word react.
(26:07):
And then the other point I kindof want to make.
I'm not sure how relevant it isto this question, but is that
like if you were in NorthernIreland and you're a unionist
and you want to fight backagainst this violence, where can
you go?
You can join the police force,you can join the army at UDR and
you can legally, you know,defend your, the values that you
(26:28):
have.
If you're a nationalist inNorthern Ireland and you want to
defend your values, the onlyoption you have is to become a
paramilitary.
Now you could go down thepolitical route, but it was
believed that the politicalparties had their hands tied
around their backs.
You know the NationalistPolitical Party, so they didn't
really have that chance ofefficacy, I guess.
I think the cogs were firmly inmotion by the 70s and I'm not
(26:51):
too sure how different thingswould have been with a different
prime minister.
You had Ian Paisley stoking theflames of violence in Ireland,
in Northern Ireland, doing thesehuge fire and brimstone sermons
.
You know that got a lot ofpeople involved and made a lot
of people want to violentlyreact.
Shawn (27:11):
Yeah, Since we've brought up the paramilitary groups as
an outsider having limitedknowledge about this.
I think about the IRA, I thinkabout UVF, and I'm not quite
sure.
They seem like they wereincredibly organized and that
became at least the IRA becamean international organization to
some degree, or at least withinternational support and supply
, and so that had an immediateand intense impact on the
(27:33):
conflict in Northern Ireland.
That was irrespective of thegovernment's intervention, so
that was playing out regardless.
But I don't know that peoplereally understand what the IRA
was or what the opposingparamilitary groups were in
Northern Ireland.
So maybe could you just explainwhat they were and who they
were composed of.
Oisin (27:53):
On the nationalist side you would have had primarily two
, three I guess.
The IRA at the start of theTroubles split into the
officials and the provisionals.
The provisionals was just likehey guys, what do we call these?
We'll just call themprovisionals until we think of a
better name.
And then provisional became themain name.
The officials didn't believe inthe violence that people were
(28:15):
demanding at the start of thetroubles and that's why the IRA
split and the provisionals were.
They were determined to carryout wage war, violence against
the British establishment,basically.
Then you also have the IrishNationalist Liberation, inla,
but they were the socialistleaning version of the IRA,
basically.
And then on the other side youhave the Ulster Volunteer Force
(28:37):
who I think were set up byEdward Carson at the turn of the
century.
They would have been a lot morestrict and more rigid Again.
They were down to about 2,000members.
But the other loyalist groupwould have been the Ulster
Defense Association, the UDA,which would have had 20,000
members but would have beenconsidered like the UBF, were
considered like a battalion.
(28:57):
They were the leaders in theUVF were all ex-soldiers.
They were really strict.
They offered.
They would have actually beendisgusted at the UDA and there
would have been a lot of kind ofI see myself as higher up than
you, blah, blah, blah, becauseI'm in the UVF, not the UDA, and
the provisional IRA in a sensewould have been the same.
You know, if you were acriminal, the provisional IRA
(29:19):
wouldn't take you on.
They were really determined tobe perceived as we are purely
violent for political means andno other means.
That's what they wanted to do,but then their actions dictate
other ways, you know.
But they would be the four mainplayers.
I'll say one more thing on theloyalist side.
I always find this really funny.
I find this similar to likemaybe American religions and
stuff.
There was a bit of a cult ofpersonality when it came to
(29:40):
loyalist paramilitary figures.
So the loyalist side had somany schisms is that the word
where you know where people wentoff and they joined this one
specific loyalist character andhis smaller paramilitary group.
So the best example of that wasBilly Wright and the Loyalist
Volunteer Force, the LVF.
But the Loyalists split a lotmore than the Republicans did.
Shawn (30:02):
So this next question I'm going to preface with the
reason that I'm asking, which iswe have some paramilitary
groups of our own in the UnitedStates.
The world probably knows thembest from the January 6th
insurrection, but so I'm talkingabout the three percenters, the
proud boys, yeah, the oathkeepers, etc.
And I don't know that we coulddraw a direct line and character
(30:23):
to something like the IRA.
But where I do see somepotential similarity is that
these paramilitary groups oftenespouse and I'm talking about
the US groups, often espousesome very deep ideological
affinities and that thisostensibly drives their activity
(30:44):
.
And that is true of groups likethe IRA in Ireland or in
Northern Ireland.
But at the same time there wasalso just almost a dedication to
violence and terrorism thatseemed free of ideology in
certain circumstances, the useof innocence to blow up vehicles
.
The IRA doing that often turnedoff some of their own
(31:05):
supporters.
Right, it just seemed like itwasn't in pursuit of a goal that
was worthy, right?
We have some of the samecharacter and same behavior on
our side and I guess I'mwondering how much of that do
you think contributed to aweakening of the IRA?
Or maybe a better way to askthe question is.
Is there a possibility that andI'm just focusing on the IRA
(31:26):
but is there a possibility thatthe IRA was deeply ideologically
rooted, in a position that,over time, evolved to the point
that it became nonsensical tothe average citizen and just
became violence, irrespective ofideology, in such a way that it
ultimately undermined themovement?
Oisin (31:47):
Yeah, okay, that's a good way of phrasing it, because
again, we had the IRA active inIreland 100 years ago resisting
British oppression, blah, blah,blah, and they're looked at as
heroes.
So people are like, well, whyaren't the IRA of the 70s looked
at as heroes?
And I'd say the simple fact isbecause they blew up kids and
because their car bombs weresloppy.
In a lot of cases the bombsweren't where they called them
(32:09):
in, the detonation wasn'tcorrect and a lot of people lost
their lives.
I'm pretty sure the IRA enactedthe highest civilian death toll
of all of the groups during theTroubles.
So initially the plan was theIRA is only allowed to kill
British soldiers or policemen, Iguess.
But then this expanded and thenit was prison officers and then
(32:31):
it was.
But by the late 80s it was.
If you worked at a chef on aBritish Army base, then I'm
thinking specifically of PatsyGillespie who I'm pretty sure he
was a chef on a British Armybase, but that was it.
You know, heained to the chair.
(32:54):
So yeah, when you hear thosestories it's very hard for very
hard to continue supporting thatand that's why the likes of my
parents generation will neversupport Sinn Féin, who are the
political party that would beassociated with the IRA, who are
the political party that wouldbe associated with the IRA and
who have been making a lot ofmaking a lot of progress
politically in Ireland.
Because my generation people intheir 30s and 20s they kind of
(33:17):
see them as, oh, the Sinn Féinthey're going to, they're
socialist leaning, they're goingto build houses, they're going
to tax the rich, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
Shawn (33:24):
I'm glad you bring up Sinn Féin because in the times
that I've visited Ireland, andparticularly Dublin, I did
notice that there are a lot ofSinn Féin posters.
To an outsider like somebodylike me, without having, I guess
, a clear understanding of thehistory and how this has evolved
since the Troubles and onthrough today, it seems to me
like Sinn Féin wouldn't beaccepted in polite company, but
(33:49):
it does seem like they are beaccepted in polite company, but
it does seem like they are.
Oisin (33:51):
Well, whenever they're making any statement in the
courts now or, you know, in theLeinster House, in our
parliament, the opposition,which we are, two largest
parties, senegal and Pinafog,who are in power at the moment
they will always say, oh look,the bali clave has slipped.
Or X Y, z, you know, they'llalways kind of say that, like,
you are a product of yourviolent past and they're trying
(34:14):
to say, no, we're not, we'resomething else, you know.
But the problem is, I think,especially in Northern Ireland
with the members of Sinn Féin, alot of the ones who took part
in the violent past moved intopolitics and I think that was
something that was verydifficult for maybe those on the
other side to ever come aroundto.
After peace was made innorthern ireland we had a is a
(34:34):
devolution where both power,both the unionists and
nationalist people they electone person to lead hand in hand,
so we've power sharing.
But like if you have theunionist population and they're
looking at like martin mcginnis,who was the first minister, and
you can see footage of martinmcginnis like a gun shooting a
gun online and they're like youknow, this person killed our
peers.
(34:54):
Now we have to break bread withhim in the political sphere.
I think that was a verydifficult pill to swallow for
the unionist people in NorthernIreland.
Shawn (35:01):
I'm glad you bring this up, because so the Good Friday
Agreement is signed.
We pat ourselves on the backand a lot of conflicts end this
way right, like at some point.
You know, regardless of theviolence, regardless of the
history, people show up, theysit down together, they shake
hands, they sign an agreement.
Oisin (35:16):
Well, let's, before we jump into this, like, let's just
, there had been many attemptsat peace, There'd been like
Sunningdale, there'd been theAnglo-Irish agreements, and
these are also met with massiveamounts of violence and, like
you know, workers' strikes andeverything.
The agreements were neverreally.
They were all stepping stonestowards Good Friday.
But I always put this questionto people like by the early 90s,
(35:37):
the IRA was absolutely armed tothe teeth.
They had, and most of theseweapons and bombs came from
Gaddafi, from the Libyans.
We had something like six superdumps in the Republic of
Ireland, and a super dump couldbe something that's like three
or four shipping containersunder the ground filled with
(35:58):
guns and explosives.
In theory, when you're lookingat a time when the IRA was armed
to the teeth, why did peoplecome to the table for peace?
And I think one of the answersthat a friend of mine, Gerard
Jojuelan, always says is he wasjust like people were becoming
grandparents now and looking atkids playing, you know, with
these British army vehiclesaround Belfast.
(36:19):
People were just tired of thisand they wanted something else.
They wanted hope.
They didn't want to live in apolice state.
Shawn (36:29):
So, anyway, I just wanted to get that in before you got
to your next question, because Ifeel like it's relevant to
where you're going.
It is relevant, and this is whywe're not talking about ancient
history.
There are people, a largenumber of people, still alive
that lived through this periodof time, either very actively
participants or, you know, justmembers of society that
experienced this, and manypeople were on one side or the
other.
And the Good Friday Agreement,while it seems to have succeeded
(36:53):
in ending the violence, Iimagine that there must still be
challenges.
There must still be tension.
You've alluded to some of this.
So what type of tension doesexist?
What does that look like?
Oisin (37:05):
Above all else, the Good Friday Agreement stops the
denials.
I guess because of the way itwas done, it was kind of done
very quickly over a couple ofweeks or whatever, but it ended
up basically allowing both sidesto be further entrenched into
their own belief systems.
So there wasn't necessarilymore integration of schools,
these interface areas whichwould see catholic maybe
nowadays let's just saynationalists and unionists,
(37:26):
because people aren't thatreligious anymore.
So you'd see nationalistcommunities right up against
unionist communities and you'dhave these things called peace
walls in between them.
So a peace wall is just a giant, really high barricade to
prevent throwing petrol, bombsor rocks over the walls.
There are what was it?
270 peace walls now, which isfour times more than there ever
were.
So again, we have peace but wedon't have unity is how I've
(37:50):
heard it described.
I think that's very, very smartand as well as that, it was
really strange because the twodominant political parties in
Northern Ireland during theTroubles were the moderate
nationalist and the moderateunionist.
So the moderate nationalist wasSDLP and the moderate unionist
was the UUP.
But since the Good FridayAgreement those two parties have
been absolutely decimated andpeople have now retreated over
(38:12):
to the edges.
So we have the very, verynationalist Sinn Féin on the
left and then we have the very,very unionist DUP, which were
that was the party that DeanPaisley was a part of.
So the political scene haschanged.
Now we have the growing allianceparty in the middle, which I
love the concept of Alliance aresaying, look, I don't care,
(38:35):
which, you know, alliance isjust trying to be firmly in the
middle and try to pull peopleaway from the edges and just say
, look, we just need afunctioning government.
You know, it doesn't matterwhat side you're on, let's just
get this together and make thisgovernment work.
They're the ones I want to seegrow the most over the next few
years.
Yeah, the good friday agreementstops the violence, but it's a
(38:56):
deeply flawed agreement.
Yeah, again, it just allowedpeople to dig further into their
, their, their, it.
There wasn't enoughcross-community mixing done.
Shawn (39:05):
I don't know how to describe it so in a way it
almost seems like theater andthis is just a broad brush has
moved from the streets togovernment, so it's being
politically managed.
Do you think that thetemperature has come down enough
that there is room for somepolitical mismanagement and the
peace still holds?
Or do you think that this ismanaged right now in the
(39:26):
political arena but could spillback into the street at some
point?
Oisin (39:30):
The peace still holds.
But the two sides find it very,very difficult to work together
and the problem with devolutionor the problem with this power
sharing situation, is that whenone of the sides disagree they
can collapse the entiregovernment.
So the Northern Irishgovernment has been functioning
now for the past maybe 26 yearsand of that 26 year period it's
been collapsed and not workingfor a total of nine years.
(39:54):
So that doesn't make any senseLike that.
That's ridiculous and that onlythat only hurts the people
they're trying to work in theinterest of more than anything.
No, I think we're in a verythey've never really worked well
together and I guess if you'relooking, you've got Sinn Féin
leading alongside the DUP.
Sinn Féin are always saying wewant to unite in Ireland, sinn
(40:14):
Féin operate in Northern Irelandand they operate in the
Republic of Ireland.
So the DUP is never going totrust anything they say that
doesn't you know.
And they're not going to say wewant to function in government.
The DUP don't trust them.
They trust that Sinn Féin willalways act in the interest of
accomplishing a united Ireland.
So the DUP is like well, wecan't trust these guys and now
we should work hand in hand withthem, and then the DUP also
(40:35):
have their own issues, I guess.
But then you have to look atBrexit, you have to look at the
United Kingdom, essentiallytelling the unionists in
Northern Ireland we're notthinking of you, we don't care
about you.
So the unionists feel likethey're cut off from you know
the crown that they fought forall their lives, or you know
this sort of monarchy.
It's a hard thing to explain,but I just find unionism is in a
(40:56):
very precarious position rightnow where they're kind of
stranded, in a way cut off fromthe mainland of Great Britain.
So if we lived in a place whereviolence could ever happen
again, I always I feel like.
I feel like it could come fromthe unionist population and our
loyalist population specifically, but I also don't think that's
possible in a modern society.
Shawn (41:15):
Basically, so obviously we're in a different time.
The situation in the UnitedStates is very different.
We have different players andyou're not deeply involved in
the United States politics butas somebody that has the
knowledge of what's happened inIreland, specific to the
Troubles, you've talked to a lotof people, you've researched
this when you look at the UnitedStates through the lens that
(41:37):
you do, and considering theTroubles, do you see any warning
signs?
Oisin (41:41):
Yeah, you're not the first person to say this and I
do find it kind of.
I actually find it difficult todraw comparisons, but I know
they do exist.
I guess this binary oppositionor this polarization, you know
it can drown out the moderates.
So, though 80% of thepopulation may be these
moderates, you're only going tohear from the 10% of either side
who are screaming the loudest.
(42:02):
It's frustrating, but I thinkit's not a realistic.
You're not seeing the truth.
You know a loss of trust inpolitical institutions.
You know, and that's why weneeded to establish power
sharing.
But it's also why, over thepast 20 years, there's been a
lot of building of trust.
We had to, totally.
We got rid of our old policeservice and established a brand
new police service because weneeded to build trust again,
(42:26):
trust that had been lost neededto be rebuilt and I think at the
moment now there's a lot of.
How do you describe what's goingon in america?
It's, it's crazy, but like, inthe sense that there is a lot
like, I just find it veryfascinating that like we live in
a society now where we have themost amount of news at our
fingertips we could ever haveand we've ever had in history.
(42:46):
And yet it's even moredifficult and convoluted to read
the truth, because everyone isshouting at everyone that
they're lying or they're in thepocket of somebody else.
So, even though we have themost access to information that
we've ever had in our entirelifetimes, we still live in a
place where it's impossible toknow who's telling the truth and
(43:07):
who's not, and I feel like thatobfuscation has really, really
taken america by storm and Idon't know who did it.
I don't know.
Could you say trump was doingit or whoever was doing it.
But I think maybe it was adeliberate cast, doubt in what
the media reports, what it wouldhave been a deliberate ploy at
some stage.
Shawn (43:27):
yeah, yeah, I also feel like we in the united states we
always talk about saving ourdemocracy in the United States.
Both sides are saying this, butI do wonder if you talked a
little bit about needing torebuild and restructure
restructure a lot, and I feellike we might already be past
that Rubicon of saving democracyand actually in a position
where we need to start thinkingabout what rebuilding looks like
(43:49):
.
Oisin (43:49):
you know need to start thinking about what rebuilding
looks like.
You know, but what wouldviolence look like Like?
How would you see violencebreaking out in the US now had
Trump not won the election?
Maybe had Kamala won?
Shawn (44:01):
I almost feel like it's inevitable at this point.
Regardless, there's so manyscenarios and none of them seem
good to me.
Trump can't run again,ostensibly, but if he does, that
could stoke violence, right.
Or if he suspends elections,that could stoke violence.
If the MAGA movement doesn'tdie with Trump and it moves on
to somebody else, well, thatjust suggests that we're in for
(44:23):
potential political violencearound any election, moving
forward, right.
Oisin (44:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn (44:28):
There was a civil war in particularly Northern Ireland.
There was a civil war and itwasn't a cold civil war, but it
wasn't really a hot civil wareither.
It was just these pockets ofviolence, and I kind of feel
like that's what it would looklike, that's how it would play
out in the United States.
Oisin (44:44):
Like.
So it would be kind of notguerrilla warfare type things,
but these would be just likeexplosions or killings or yeah,
Happening on a small scale.
Shawn (44:52):
Yeah, we have so many guns.
I see it on a daily basis aspeople that are clearly
paramilitary adjacent at minimumwalking around with guns.
Oisin (45:03):
Okay, but now again, this is an Irish guy, so my
understanding of you so say,when we talk about like proud
boys, we talk about all thissort of stuff, all of the
paramilitaries would beRepublican leaning, all the
potential paramilitaries.
So where do you see thepotential violence?
Coming from the left, or fromthe liberals, or how do you
describe it?
Shawn (45:21):
It's interesting that you mentioned this, because earlier
in our conversation thiscrossed my mind as well.
I don't know if it was balanced, but there were two sides that
were armed to the teeth duringthe troubles, and that doesn't
exist right now in the unitedstates.
In fact, you have one side thatis very anti-paramilitary, and
in order to have a balance notthat I'm advocating for it, but
you have to have somebody thatmeets the paramilitary that is
(45:44):
on one side and they have to beplaying the same game, and
they're not.
Not that I'm advocatingviolence in way, but it does
feel very lopsided, right, andthat's scary?
Oisin (45:52):
Well yeah, but I guess what is the power of the gun
when the gun comes, when thepolitical things fail you?
Know, and I guess those withthe guns would be quite content
right now and quite happy withthe state of affairs, isn't that
?
Shawn (46:06):
that's a weird dynamic.
In an odd way, the fact thatTrump is in office right now
might actually be clipping thewings of some of these
right-wing paramilitary groupsbecause they feel safe right
well, yeah, I like I had afriend visit last year from
colorado, but like she, she cameto visit last year because her
parents wanted to kind of sizeup.
Oisin (46:25):
Could we live over here?
If you know, if trump doesn'tget into power, we believe
violent there'll be a violentoutbreak in the us and they were
stockpiling guns because theybelieved that trump not winning
would lead to war I mean, we areat a place now where every
election is an existentialbattle and I just feel like that
can't hold and I don't know howwe, how we climb down from that
(46:47):
I don't know, is the us justtoo big to have one leader, you
know?
Shawn (46:51):
or, or to be one country.
Yeah, honestly, if I was justall cards on the table, I don't
think we come out of this as oneunified country so you, you
don't think there's anyeventuality now like, say, next
election, democrats get back inand things are back to normal.
You think it's too far gone Ithink democrats could win,
assuming there is an election,and let's assume there will be.
(47:12):
I think Democrats could win,but I just don't think that
everyone calms down.
I think that the parties are ateach other's throats and that's
just going to play out for along time.
Yeah, biden won in 2020.
And everyone thought everythingwould go back to normal.
Oisin (47:25):
And Trump walks back in.
Shawn (47:26):
Yeah, and what if Biden was the anomaly you know, and
the new normal is actually thistype of politics.
Oisin (47:33):
Well, again, that's the thing.
Like, irish people are simpleenough people, or whatever, in
our views, so they loved Obama.
They knew nothing about Obama'spolicies, but he was just an
affable guy.
That simple.
But I think Obama coming in wasprobably could it have been the
start.
That was the end of Bush,wasn't it?
It was Bush then into Obama.
Shawn (47:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oisin (47:50):
I think I feel like for many, many Republicans, Obama
was like the last straw or likethe catalyst, for we're not
going back.
Shawn (47:59):
Yeah, that's a lot of the narrative and a lot of it is
race-based, an argument that ablack man suggested that white
dominance was over, and that'sprobably part of the story and I
don't want to be the Democratthat beats up on Democrats.
But I also think in hindsightthat Obama didn't do a very good
job of really representingDemocratic ideals and values.
(48:20):
Oh, interesting.
Ok, I think he focused verystrongly on Obamacare.
I think he wasted a lot ofpolitical capital on that and
then he just didn't fight onstuff and I think he allowed
that extreme Republican movementto really gain a lot of
political capital on that andthen he just didn't fight on
stuff and I think he allowedthat extreme Republican movement
to really gain a lot of steamwithout providing any
alternative.
Oisin (48:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn (48:39):
Final question you ready for it?
Okay, what's somethinginteresting you've been reading,
watching, listening to or doinglately?
And it doesn't have to berelated to this topic, but it
can be.
Oisin (48:49):
I just came back from a trip to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, so I've beenreading up on a lot of World
War II content, specifically theBattle of Stalingrad, which I'd
never heard about.
It was like the worst battle inthe history of all of humanity,
so that's pretty wild.
I've also just watched theOscar winning documentary called
no Other Land, which is allabout the demolition of
(49:11):
settlements in Palestine.
So that was really really wellmade.
I thought I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, that's it.
I've been, oh, I've been goingto.
I went to a live podcast lastThursday.
That was good fun.
I got very drunk.
There are these Irish guyscalled Shite Talk and it was all
about Eamon de Valera and itwas just really funny.
Really really good night.
So, a, thanks for theconversation and taking the time
(49:34):
.
Thanks for having me, s.
Sorry if the head cold muddledmy brain a bit, but hopefully I
made sense.
Shawn (49:44):
The painful legacy of Northern Ireland offers powerful
lessons about the cost ofdivision and the undermining of
democracy.
Understanding these dynamicsisn't just historical curiosity.
It's essential to recognizingsimilar patterns that are
emerging here in the UnitedStates today, as we stare down
our own era of democraticbacksliding.
(50:06):
We need to remember and we cantake lessons from other
conflicts in places likeNorthern Ireland during the
Troubles, that societies canfracture quickly, but rebuilding
takes generations.
So we need to stay engagedbecause holding it together will
be much less painful andviolent than trying to build it
all back.
Alright, check back next weekfor another episode of Deep Dive
(50:30):
Chat soon, folks.
Thank you, thank you.
You know, like Martin McGuinness would have been the
biggest player for theprovisional IRA, and he always
says that when he was a teenagerhe was turned away from a
number of jobs, and for onereason, and one reason only he
was a Catholic.
He walked into a place can Ihave a job?
And they said, no, you're aCatholic, you can't work here.
We don't want a Catholic here.
If he had grown up in a societywhere everybody was just given
(00:26):
jobs on their merits and not ontheir religion, you know, would
this have happened the way ithappened?
Probably not.
And was the troubles born outof this economic slump?
I don't think so.
I don't know.
Maybe it's an ingredient in it,but I think this was an
inevitability, this was going tohappen.
This had to come to a headbecause, you know, a two-tiered
society can't exist for thislong in unity.
Uh, once realizes that you knowit's not there for them.
Shawn (00:54):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig, and happy St
Patrick's Day.
For the better part of thelatter half of the 20th century,
northern Ireland experiencedsectarian violence, political
upheaval and deep socialdivisions that left thousands
dead and communities profoundlyfractured.
The Troubles, as that time iscalled, offer profound lessons
(01:27):
for understanding what happenswhen democratic institutions
falter and the rule of lawbegins to erode.
Today, as America grapples withits own rising polarization,
weakened institutions andincreasing political violence,
we are asking what can theTroubles teach us about
preventing similar fractures inAmerican society?
How did ordinary life breakdown when violence became
(01:49):
normalized and how didcommunities cope or even heal
afterward?
My guest today is Oishin Feeney, journalist and creator of the
wildly popular podcast theTroubles.
We discuss that period of time,dynamics of escalation,
consequences of prolonged socialand political unrest and some
warning signs that we should belooking for in the United States
(02:11):
to preserve our own peace,stability and democracy.
My guest today is A Feeney,creator of the wildly popular
podcast the Troubles.
We discuss that period of timedynamics of escalation,
consequences of prolonged socialand political unrest and some
warning signs we should belooking for in the United States
(02:32):
to preserve our own peace andstability in democracy.
Just a note before we startthere were a lot of players and
groups involved in the Troublesand it can get confusing really
quickly.
I would highly suggest you takea listen to Ashene's podcast.
It really is fantastic and itsets the board very nicely.
I've dropped a link in the shownotes For the purposes of this
(02:54):
episode, though here's anoversimplified primer that
should help you follow theconversation.
On one side of the conflict wereRepublicans and Nationalists,
predominantly Catholic, whosought a united Ireland, with
the Irish Republican Army, theIRA and the provisional Irish
Republican Army, using armedstruggle to end British rule.
(03:16):
On the other side wereUnionists and Loyalists, mostly
Protestant, who wanted NorthernIreland to remain part of the
United Kingdom.
On their side, paramilitarygroups like the Ulster Volunteer
Force, uvf, and Ulster DefenseAssociation, uda, engaged in
violent campaigns to counter theIRA.
While the British governmentand security forces were
(03:39):
officially neutral, they wereoften accused of bias toward the
unionist cause.
The Irish government alsoplayed a complex role in the
Troubles, balancing itsconstitutional claim to Northern
Ireland, where the Troubleswere occurring, with its
opposition to violence.
So while it supported theNationalist cause in principle,
it condemned the IRA's armedcampaign and worked to suppress
(04:02):
Republican paramilitaries withinits borders.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
(04:23):
.
Let's do a deep dive, a.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?
Oisin (04:35):
No complaint.
Well, actually no complaints.
I'm smothered with the cold,but I'm getting better.
Shawn (04:39):
You started to say no complaints, and then you hedged
your bets but said no complaintsultimately, yeah, look, I'm on
the other side of it.
Oisin (04:50):
It'll be.
Shawn (04:50):
I've had this bad flu there for two days.
So it's on the mend today.
Okay, well, glad to hear it.
So you know, I've always beenfascinated by the troubles and
I've been, I think, a bitsurprised that it doesn't get
much attention in the UnitedStates.
In school, when we studyhistorical conflict around the
world, this just doesn't reallycome up.
That's interesting because theUnited States did play a role at
certain times in the troublespolitical and social.
(05:11):
But the more that I think aboutwhat civil unrest and social
instability and politicalviolence might look like in the
very near future in the US, themore I think about the troubles
and I think that period of timecould really help us understand
what our future here in the UScould look like if we continue
to experience extremepolarization and I would almost
characterize it as a sectariandivision.
(05:31):
For us it's betweenconservatives and progressives,
and during the Troubles it wasbetween broadly Catholics and
Protestants.
But there's more specifics tothis.
Your podcast is really wellresearched, it's so well done.
It goes deep into the troubles,the history, the people, the
events.
So I'm glad to have you here totalk about it.
Oisin (05:49):
Cheers.
I'm looking forward to seeingwhere we can draw similarities.
Shawn (05:53):
Before we even dive into that.
I rarely have the opportunityto talk to other podcasters.
I rarely have them on as guests, so I kind of want to pick your
brain a little bit about that.
First of all, I guess I'mwondering what is it about the
troubles that's particularlyinteresting to you, and how did
this develop into a podcast?
Oisin (06:13):
Well, I'm 34 now and when I was maybe, I did media in
college back long, long, longtime ago, and after that I got a
graduate visa, whichessentially is a one year visa
to go to the USA.
So I went to Chicago and I waslike, oh, I'll apply for a job
with this American Life.
This seems like you know, I'llget the job, because at that age
(06:33):
I kind of believe that any jobyou applied for, you just get.
I didn't realize that thisAmerican Life internship was one
of 50,000 people a year applyand so I didn't get it.
And then I parked that part ofmy life for a while.
I had a great time in chicagoand I worked for a news radio
station there for a year.
But, um, yeah, I'd always justsaid I wanted to start a podcast
(06:53):
.
I always just I listenreligiously, listening to
podcasts for the past 10 years.
Um, I just said I think this issomething I'd like to do.
So come maybe a year beforeCOVID, let's say 2018, I love
kind of just deadpan telling ofhistory.
I love taste file.
It's one of the most populartrue crime podcasts out there
(07:15):
today.
It's an Australian guy and Iwas like, okay, if I ever did a
podcast, I'd do it in that style.
And then I was thinking, well,what's the niche?
You know, because nobody justwants to listen to me talk for
the sake of talking.
So where's my niche?
And then I heard about theassassination of louis
mountbatten.
So lord mountbatten was thisfamous british royal, british
monarch.
(07:36):
He was the uncle of kingcharles.
Now I think I think it was hisuncle.
He was involved in thepartition of india and because
he wants to get back and gofishing, he did it kind of
quickly and he, instead of likethree months, he did it in a
couple of weeks and he displaced30, I think 50 million people
by by drawing this, hacking upthis border between india,
pakistan.
And then he comes home and thenhe's, you know, summering in
(07:57):
ireland during the height of thetroubles and the ira decides,
hey, this is a guy we could takeout.
We could, and it'd be a huge PRwin for us to take out a
British monarch, because hisrole during Troubles wasn't huge
, but the fact that he was areigning monarch.
So anyway, I'm getting a bitlong-winded into it, but I saw
the story beats there.
I saw there's a plot, there's aplot to kill Mountbatten.
(08:19):
There's what happened.
They planted a bomb in his boatand as it went out in the
morning, they detonated the bomb.
There's what it took to catchthe attackers or to catch the
perpetrators.
It's got all the story beatsthere.
And then what made it mostinteresting for me was the
ethical stuff.
At the very end, which the IRAagreed, they said we're going to
(08:41):
kill Mountbatten, we don't carewho's on that boat.
And when that bomb went off, Ithink six or seven people were
killed, including two children.
And the IRA said that this,these were word, this was a
worthwhile endeavor because wegot Mountbatten, whereas most,
most people around the worldprobably wouldn't say that, or
so I just kind of said to myselfthere's all the story beats.
This is a fascinating period inhistory.
(09:02):
And then I was like, as an Irishperson, how do I not know
anything about the Troubles?
You know, like Northern Irelandfor me was where my dad drove
up to get us fireworks becausethey were illegal down here when
we were kids, and that was it.
And then I said to myself oh myGod, there's a wealth of these
stories, these bombings, theseassassinations, and if a guy an
hour away in need can'tunderstand what went on in
(09:25):
Northern Ireland.
How could anyone around theworld understand?
How could anyone in England, inAmerica, understand these very,
very dense moment in history, Iguess?
So I said, ok, I'm going to makeit, and I'm going to make it
simple.
I'm not going to make it like Idon't want to make anything too
what's the word too scholarly.
I want to just kind of distilleach episode about a person,
(09:45):
each episode about a bombing andput it out to the world.
Yeah, so I guess I want to do apodcast.
And then I found the niche Ifound was the troubles.
There wasn't anything else inpodcast form about the troubles.
It from the way I was planningon doing it.
Shawn (09:59):
And then you just finished like your fifth season,
right?
Oisin (10:02):
yeah, yeah, five seasons and 15 episodes a season.
Shawn (10:06):
To the listener, and I think this is probably true of a
large segment of at leastAmerican listeners.
They don't really know,probably, what the Troubles are
or were, and it's verycomplicated and it can become
quite convoluted.
So one I would direct people toyour podcast, the Troubles
podcast.
But could you maybe broadstrokes explain to podcast the
Troubles Podcast.
But could you maybe broadstrokes explain to me what the
(10:27):
Troubles were, who the mainplayers were, what the conflict
was about?
Oisin (10:31):
Basically like Ireland as an island.
If you look at that, it was abunch of, like, high kings
ruling different parts of theisland.
They didn't have a notion ofIrishness.
One of the high kings ofIreland, dermot MacMurray.
He said one day oh look, theseNormans over here are pretty
strong.
The Normans were based fromNormandy in France but they also
had a kind of role in the crownand in the monarch in England.
(10:55):
We have that.
We have the Normans, we havethe English and we have the
native Irish bunch of high kings.
So one of the high kings hedecides if he marries his
daughter off to one of theseNormans, he will have the might
of the Normans who can come overand take over other areas,
expanding this king's influencein the area.
So the king's name was DermotMacMurray and he married his
(11:17):
daughter Aoife to Strongbow.
If you recognize that name,strongbow was a famous Norman
leader and we're talking aroundthe 1100s.
Now at this stage, strongbowcomes over with the Normans.
He realizes this is actuallypretty good.
Ireland has space for us, wecan take space here.
The English king at the timesaid this is problematic.
If the Normans take Ireland,they can use Ireland as a
(11:38):
springboard to invade us.
So that's when the BritishEnglish king at the time invaded
Ireland.
So the invasion of Irelandagain happened in the late 1100s
and that would be the firsttime that we would have had
these kind of foreign entitiesover here, if we exclude the
Celts and the Vikings.
But that would be what we wouldargue is the start of Ireland's
occupation, I guess.
(12:00):
So we're going to fast forwardup to the 1600s and the English
are trying to exert influence inireland.
Now we have also the split fromthe church the catholic church
is split away from the,protestantism is split away from
catholic church and the englishare trying to exert dominance
in ireland.
But it's not really working.
(12:20):
The irish people want to hangon to their religion, they want
to hang on to their language,all of this sort of stuff.
So what the english do is theystart plantations all over the
island of ireland, and aplantation is very simple you
send over, you promise people inengland or scotland large
amounts of land and you say youhave to go over here, we'll give
you all this land, and youcan't hire irish people and you
also have to bring like aminimum of 30 or 40 people with
(12:42):
you to kind of try and stamp outthis rebellious Irishness and
grow your English influence inIreland.
So most of these plantationsdidn't really work out.
The native Irish in Irelandfought back or you know there
was boycotts or there was allthese sort of things.
But the problem was in NorthernIreland, aka Ulster, ulster or
(13:05):
Northern Ireland, where the mostfertile soil was.
So you know you had thesepeople coming primarily from
Scotland over to NorthernIreland and they were settling
and this is the Cromwellianplantations, what it was called.
And when the native Irishpeople said where do we go, they
said you can go to Hel or youcan go to Connacht.
Connacht is on the west coastof ireland and it would be
(13:26):
pretty shite land in the sensethat you know it's beautiful for
tourism nowadays but at thetime there's nothing.
You can't grow your crops on itand you know having fertile
farming land is the mostimportant thing during this
period.
So the people who settled innorthern ireland, you know they
were given huge amounts of land.
They, over the next 200, 300years they prospered and again
(13:49):
they couldn't hire Irish people.
Irish people, native Irishpeople couldn't own land in the
same way that these settlers whowere given their land did.
So if we fast forward now to the1960s, so you have these we
call them like Protestant,unionist people who had arrived
(14:11):
over this country two or 300years before this and the
generational wealth hadcontinued and generational
influence.
And then you have the nativeCatholic Irish who had the lands
taken off them two or 300 yearsbefore this and that sort of
two-tiered system had existedand actually grown deeper in a
way in that two or three hundredyears.
(14:31):
So the population demographics,I think, were about 70 percent,
30 percent, 70 percent in favorof the Protestants at this
stage.
That's drastically changed nowbecause Irish Catholics are
having a rake of caves.
But you have this I think itcame with the advent of free
education on secondary level aswell.
You have these young CatholicIrish in the 1960s who say hang
(14:56):
on a second.
Here we're living in atwo-tiered society.
You know they saw the kind ofthe civil rights movement in the
US and they realized that.
You know that's the problemover here.
We have a two-tiered societywhere Northern Ireland is what
it was known as a unionistcountry for unionist people.
Again, remember, unionist isthe Protestant people who came
(15:17):
from England 300 years ago.
That like, let's, let me justexplain.
Like if you were a catholic innorthern ireland, there was a
bunch of ways in which you werenot really allowed to ever
really move up in the world.
You know, like there was thisthing known as gerrymandering.
So if there were like catholicareas where catholics were the
(15:37):
majority, that area would all besplit up so that in government
the catholic people would thenbe the minority.
If that makes sense, does thatmake sense?
Yep, we have.
People would then be theminority.
If that makes sense, does thatmake?
Shawn (15:45):
sense Yep.
We have the same thing in theUS.
Oisin (15:47):
Okay, perfect.
And then there was also like itwas only rate payers could vote
.
Rate payer essentially meanshomeowner anyway, and since you
know, most unionists owned theirhomes whereas most Catholics
were renting homes and theunionists were the ones voting,
you know, catholics couldn't ajob in the civil services,
couldn't get jobs in the police.
If a Catholic person went forsocial housing it would always
(16:08):
kind of the priority would gotowards the unionists.
So it was this kind of.
It was a direct knock on effectfrom 300 years before that.
That just got deeper and moredivided.
And then, with civil rightsmovement in the US and slightly
better access to education inthe 60s, that's when the
Catholic or nationalistpopulation started to advocate
(16:29):
for their rights, to peacefullyadvocate for their rights, which
wasn't really met very well bythe other side.
So the police force, the RUC,were attending these peaceful
protests and in some cases theywere standing back, while
unionists or loyalists now it'sa new word we're introducing
individuals started attackingthese protests and in some cases
they were standing back, whileunionists or loyalists now it's
a new word we're introducingindividuals started attacking
these protests or in some casesthey attacked the protests
(16:52):
themselves.
So suddenly we have theCatholic people saying we're
trying to peacefully protest andthey're just beating us up and
they're shooting us and killingus.
And things just got worse fromthere, so much so that the
Northern Irish government wasdissolved is that the word
Basically basically direct rulefrom England was imposed.
The British army were then sentover to Northern Ireland.
The British army initially werewelcomed by Irish people, but
(17:14):
like nationalist people, saying,oh, thank God, you're here,
you're going to help us againstthis biased police force who are
killing us.
But then the British armystarted doing the same.
They started well, let's lookat Bloody Sunday, you know,
where we saw 12 to 13 peopleshot in the back, unarmed Irish
men, unarmed nationalist men,shot as they were running away
(17:34):
by the British army.
And then basically everythingjust kept going, getting worse
and worse and worse and worse.
And then we have the emergenceof the paramilitary groups, so
the emergence of the provisionalIRA on one side, and then we
have the UVF and the UDA on theother side.
And then it was just a really,really awful 30-year period of
(17:56):
tit-for-tat killings.
A bomb would go off on theShankill and kill six people,
and the next day the UVF wouldmake sure they wanted to get
their pound of flesh as well.
They make sure to kill sixcatholics on the other side, and
it just got worse and worse andworse, with no end in sight.
Shawn (18:12):
I mentioned this in the preamble the tension between
Catholics and Protestants, andsometimes I feel like these are
just covers for other things.
So we also have the rise of thereligious right wing, and it's
gotten to the point where, ifsomebody tells you that they are
religious, the assumption isthat they are conservative or
Republican Republican.
(18:37):
The reason I'm even bringingthis up is that I don't always
know that what we're reallytalking about is religious, as
much as religion is just maskingsomething else, and so the
question I have for you is whenwe talk about this as being a
Protestant versus Catholic thing, at what point did this stop
being religious and just becomea name that we gave to
understand the two sides?
Oisin (18:55):
Well, I think when the world looks at the troubles,
they also look at palestiniansversus catholics, but, like you
know, in in the way I justexplained it, it's it's settler
versus non-settler.
I guess, when does somebody whobegins to live on a land earn
the right to have that land overthe other person?
That's all, that's all.
This is that in its absolute,simplest form.
(19:16):
So the people who came overfrom Scotland, primarily they
settled over here and in reality, these religion.
This was an era where religionwas very important, especially
at the 1960s.
Everyone in Ireland wasreligious, everybody.
So it was a huge point ofdivisiveness, I guess.
But I would argue that it allgoes back to.
(19:37):
It doesn't matter aboutreligion, it just matters.
You're the people who settledhere 300 years ago and we're not
.
You're loyal to the Queen ofEngland, we're loyal to a free
Ireland.
You know, it's that simple.
Shawn (19:49):
I guess this is a third prong to this.
So we talked about thegerrymandering which kind of
dilutes power, and we talkedabout the religious factor, but
the other and you've broughtthis up already is economic
inequality, and these kind ofall interplay with each other,
right, and so in IrelandCatholics experienced economic
inequality at the hands ofProtestants, and how much do you
(20:10):
think that that actuallycontributed to not just the
tension but the outrightviolence?
And the reason I ask is becausewe are experiencing an extreme
period of economic inequality inthe United States right now and
I wonder if that's also justanother recipe in the soup that
is similar to what happened inthe Troubles.
That could be something wepoint to as a warning sign.
Oisin (20:31):
I think your recipe in the soup is very important.
Recipe in the soup becausethese are all small contributing
factors that lead to somethingelse.
So in Northern Ireland at theonset of the Troubles, everybody
was broke.
It's very hard to describe but,like you know, there was
massive amounts of working classareas, these massive, big
dimmest flats, these governmentbuilt flats that were in awful
(20:54):
condition.
But even in the early days ofthe Trunkwoods there was a lot
of this socialism-type stuffwhere unionists and nationalists
initially were interested inworking together to overthrow
the society that's keeping themboth down, basically.
Now that all petered out fairlyquickly.
Another paramilitary groupsimilar to the IRA was the
(21:15):
INLALA.
They would have been a lot moresocialist leaning and pretty,
pretty violent in the acts thatthey carried out.
Could you say that a lot of thethe violence came out of
working class areas in NorthernIreland?
I'd say that's true.
Had these places had you know,like Martin McGuinness would
have been the biggest player forthe provisional IRA and he
always says that when he was ateenager he was turned away from
a number of jobs and for onereason, and one reason only he
(21:38):
was a catholic.
He walked into a place can Ihave a job and they said no,
you're a catholic, you can'twork here, we don't want a
catholic here.
If he had grown up in a societywhere everybody was just given
jobs on their merits and not ontheir religion, you know, would
this have happened the way ithappened?
Probably Probably not.
And was the Troubles born outof this economic slump?
(21:59):
I don't think so.
I don't know.
Maybe it's an ingredient in it,but I think this was an
inevitability.
This was going to happen.
This had to come to a headbecause, you know, a two-tiered
society can't exist for thislong in unity.
Once one realizes that, youknow it's not fair for them.
Shawn (22:15):
So the violence reaches a point at which the British
government decides at some pointthat they have to intervene.
I think that we like to thinkmaybe naively that when
especially democraticgovernments get involved, that
the safety and security of thepopulace is front of mind.
And so therefore, despite howconvoluted or how violent the
(22:39):
situation might be on the ground, that government intervention
could be a defining factortoward an end of peace.
But the British government'sintervention didn't achieve that
quickly.
Oisin (22:52):
Well, hang on.
Sorry, before you ask thisquestion, this was a really
really really complicated periodin the sense that, like the
northern irish government, theunionist government obviously
they they lost rule.
But then, when things likebloody sunday happened or was it
the battle of the bog side aswell the irish government what
is their role when you're in therepublic of ireland and you
(23:15):
have people across your borderthat would consider themselves
Irish citizens?
So the Irish government set uptriage.
There was a risk that the Irishgovernment would send soldiers
over the border into NorthernIreland to protect their own,
but they didn't, and they'vealways drawn a lot of criticism
for that, for not necessarilybeing in the corner of the Irish
people who are trapped acrossthis border.
(23:36):
So the Irish government had avery difficult position at this
point and they didn't really actand the Northern Irish
government was dissolved andthen the British government
basically had to make thedecision to send in the army and
I feel like every singledecision that the army made when
they got to Northern Irelandfed and fueled the troubles.
Shawn (23:55):
So I guess that was my question, but I also wonder how
much of this was a MaggieThatcher leadership problem.
Had there been somebody maybemore skilled and less rigid, do
you think that this would haveplayed out differently, because
I feel like Thatcher made thesituation worse.
Oisin (24:14):
I'm going to go back a little bit.
So first off, Thatcher didn'tcome in until 1979 at Google
that Right.
So let's say the troubles kickedoff in 1969.
You know, I'm not too sure howmuch prominence she would have
had 10 years before that, butthe point that I wanted to make
is I was reading a book recentlythat said it's undeniable that
the British government createdrepublicanism in Northern
(24:34):
Ireland.
You know, two of the biggestinstances were well, one Bloody
Sunday, which I've talked aboutbefore, but also the second one
was called internment, where theBritish army came over here and
they said, okay, we need tosmash the IRA.
So internment happened over aperiod of I think it was just
two days, where over a thousandpeople were scooped up and no
(24:54):
Protest protestants, there areonly people who were accused of
being members of the ira andthey were kept illegally,
without question, withoutquestion, without any
representation, some of them forup to two years.
And when these people came out,you know they got out of prison.
Many of them.
The first thing they did wasjoin the ira because they they
had been mistreated so poorly bythis government that was
(25:17):
apparently acting in theirinterests.
So it just seems that time andtime again, the British
government made the wrong movewhen it came to trying to
resolve the violence in NorthernIreland and instead they just
flipped it up.
I've totally forgotten yourquestion, by the way.
Shawn (25:32):
I guess what I'm wondering is like how much of
this was just so embedded in theon the ground real world
situation that was happening,that was going to unfold,
regardless of intervention fromthe British government?
Oisin (25:47):
You have to look at the characters.
You know the people, theplayers.
So the paramilitary groups werehuge.
You know the UDA and the UDFmembership.
Like the UDA had jeez was it?
20,000 people involved and theUDF kept it down to like 2K.
But there was huge amounts ofpeople who were choosing to
react.
Let's just say the word react.
(26:07):
And then the other point I kindof want to make.
I'm not sure how relevant it isto this question, but is that
like if you were in NorthernIreland and you're a unionist
and you want to fight backagainst this violence, where can
you go?
You can join the police force,you can join the army at UDR and
you can legally, you know,defend your, the values that you
(26:28):
have.
If you're a nationalist inNorthern Ireland and you want to
defend your values, the onlyoption you have is to become a
paramilitary.
Now you could go down thepolitical route, but it was
believed that the politicalparties had their hands tied
around their backs.
You know the NationalistPolitical Party, so they didn't
really have that chance ofefficacy, I guess.
I think the cogs were firmly inmotion by the 70s and I'm not
(26:51):
too sure how different thingswould have been with a different
prime minister.
You had Ian Paisley stoking theflames of violence in Ireland,
in Northern Ireland, doing thesehuge fire and brimstone sermons
.
You know that got a lot ofpeople involved and made a lot
of people want to violentlyreact.
Shawn (27:11):
Yeah, Since we've brought up the paramilitary groups as
an outsider having limitedknowledge about this.
I think about the IRA, I thinkabout UVF, and I'm not quite
sure.
They seem like they wereincredibly organized and that
became at least the IRA becamean international organization to
some degree, or at least withinternational support and supply
, and so that had an immediateand intense impact on the
(27:33):
conflict in Northern Ireland.
That was irrespective of thegovernment's intervention, so
that was playing out regardless.
But I don't know that peoplereally understand what the IRA
was or what the opposingparamilitary groups were in
Northern Ireland.
So maybe could you just explainwhat they were and who they
were composed of.
Oisin (27:53):
On the nationalist side you would have had primarily two
, three I guess.
The IRA at the start of theTroubles split into the
officials and the provisionals.
The provisionals was just likehey guys, what do we call these?
We'll just call themprovisionals until we think of a
better name.
And then provisional became themain name.
The officials didn't believe inthe violence that people were
(28:15):
demanding at the start of thetroubles and that's why the IRA
split and the provisionals were.
They were determined to carryout wage war, violence against
the British establishment,basically.
Then you also have the IrishNationalist Liberation, inla,
but they were the socialistleaning version of the IRA,
basically.
And then on the other side youhave the Ulster Volunteer Force
(28:37):
who I think were set up byEdward Carson at the turn of the
century.
They would have been a lot morestrict and more rigid Again.
They were down to about 2,000members.
But the other loyalist groupwould have been the Ulster
Defense Association, the UDA,which would have had 20,000
members but would have beenconsidered like the UBF, were
considered like a battalion.
(28:57):
They were the leaders in theUVF were all ex-soldiers.
They were really strict.
They offered.
They would have actually beendisgusted at the UDA and there
would have been a lot of kind ofI see myself as higher up than
you, blah, blah, blah, becauseI'm in the UVF, not the UDA, and
the provisional IRA in a sensewould have been the same.
You know, if you were acriminal, the provisional IRA
(29:19):
wouldn't take you on.
They were really determined tobe perceived as we are purely
violent for political means andno other means.
That's what they wanted to do,but then their actions dictate
other ways, you know.
But they would be the four mainplayers.
I'll say one more thing on theloyalist side.
I always find this really funny.
I find this similar to likemaybe American religions and
stuff.
There was a bit of a cult ofpersonality when it came to
(29:40):
loyalist paramilitary figures.
So the loyalist side had somany schisms is that the word
where you know where people wentoff and they joined this one
specific loyalist character andhis smaller paramilitary group.
So the best example of that wasBilly Wright and the Loyalist
Volunteer Force, the LVF.
But the Loyalists split a lotmore than the Republicans did.
Shawn (30:02):
So this next question I'm going to preface with the
reason that I'm asking, which iswe have some paramilitary
groups of our own in the UnitedStates.
The world probably knows thembest from the January 6th
insurrection, but so I'm talkingabout the three percenters, the
proud boys, yeah, the oathkeepers, etc.
And I don't know that we coulddraw a direct line and character
(30:23):
to something like the IRA.
But where I do see somepotential similarity is that
these paramilitary groups oftenespouse and I'm talking about
the US groups, often espousesome very deep ideological
affinities and that thisostensibly drives their activity
(30:44):
.
And that is true of groups likethe IRA in Ireland or in
Northern Ireland.
But at the same time there wasalso just almost a dedication to
violence and terrorism thatseemed free of ideology in
certain circumstances, the useof innocence to blow up vehicles
.
The IRA doing that often turnedoff some of their own
(31:05):
supporters.
Right, it just seemed like itwasn't in pursuit of a goal that
was worthy, right?
We have some of the samecharacter and same behavior on
our side and I guess I'mwondering how much of that do
you think contributed to aweakening of the IRA?
Or maybe a better way to askthe question is.
Is there a possibility that andI'm just focusing on the IRA
(31:26):
but is there a possibility thatthe IRA was deeply ideologically
rooted, in a position that,over time, evolved to the point
that it became nonsensical tothe average citizen and just
became violence, irrespective ofideology, in such a way that it
ultimately undermined themovement?
Oisin (31:47):
Yeah, okay, that's a good way of phrasing it, because
again, we had the IRA active inIreland 100 years ago resisting
British oppression, blah, blah,blah, and they're looked at as
heroes.
So people are like, well, whyaren't the IRA of the 70s looked
at as heroes?
And I'd say the simple fact isbecause they blew up kids and
because their car bombs weresloppy.
In a lot of cases the bombsweren't where they called them
(32:09):
in, the detonation wasn'tcorrect and a lot of people lost
their lives.
I'm pretty sure the IRA enactedthe highest civilian death toll
of all of the groups during theTroubles.
So initially the plan was theIRA is only allowed to kill
British soldiers or policemen, Iguess.
But then this expanded and thenit was prison officers and then
(32:31):
it was.
But by the late 80s it was.
If you worked at a chef on aBritish Army base, then I'm
thinking specifically of PatsyGillespie who I'm pretty sure he
was a chef on a British Armybase, but that was it.
You know, heained to the chair.
(32:54):
So yeah, when you hear thosestories it's very hard for very
hard to continue supporting thatand that's why the likes of my
parents generation will neversupport Sinn Féin, who are the
political party that would beassociated with the IRA, who are
the political party that wouldbe associated with the IRA and
who have been making a lot ofmaking a lot of progress
politically in Ireland.
Because my generation people intheir 30s and 20s they kind of
(33:17):
see them as, oh, the Sinn Féinthey're going to, they're
socialist leaning, they're goingto build houses, they're going
to tax the rich, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah.
Shawn (33:24):
I'm glad you bring up Sinn Féin because in the times
that I've visited Ireland, andparticularly Dublin, I did
notice that there are a lot ofSinn Féin posters.
To an outsider like somebodylike me, without having, I guess
, a clear understanding of thehistory and how this has evolved
since the Troubles and onthrough today, it seems to me
like Sinn Féin wouldn't beaccepted in polite company, but
(33:49):
it does seem like they are beaccepted in polite company, but
it does seem like they are.
Oisin (33:51):
Well, whenever they're making any statement in the
courts now or, you know, in theLeinster House, in our
parliament, the opposition,which we are, two largest
parties, senegal and Pinafog,who are in power at the moment
they will always say, oh look,the bali clave has slipped.
Or X Y, z, you know, they'llalways kind of say that, like,
you are a product of yourviolent past and they're trying
(34:14):
to say, no, we're not, we'resomething else, you know.
But the problem is, I think,especially in Northern Ireland
with the members of Sinn Féin, alot of the ones who took part
in the violent past moved intopolitics and I think that was
something that was verydifficult for maybe those on the
other side to ever come aroundto.
After peace was made innorthern ireland we had a is a
(34:34):
devolution where both power,both the unionists and
nationalist people they electone person to lead hand in hand,
so we've power sharing.
But like if you have theunionist population and they're
looking at like martin mcginnis,who was the first minister, and
you can see footage of martinmcginnis like a gun shooting a
gun online and they're like youknow, this person killed our
peers.
(34:54):
Now we have to break bread withhim in the political sphere.
I think that was a verydifficult pill to swallow for
the unionist people in NorthernIreland.
Shawn (35:01):
I'm glad you bring this up, because so the Good Friday
Agreement is signed.
We pat ourselves on the backand a lot of conflicts end this
way right, like at some point.
You know, regardless of theviolence, regardless of the
history, people show up, theysit down together, they shake
hands, they sign an agreement.
Oisin (35:16):
Well, let's, before we jump into this, like, let's just
, there had been many attemptsat peace, There'd been like
Sunningdale, there'd been theAnglo-Irish agreements, and
these are also met with massiveamounts of violence and, like
you know, workers' strikes andeverything.
The agreements were neverreally.
They were all stepping stonestowards Good Friday.
But I always put this questionto people like by the early 90s,
(35:37):
the IRA was absolutely armed tothe teeth.
They had, and most of theseweapons and bombs came from
Gaddafi, from the Libyans.
We had something like six superdumps in the Republic of
Ireland, and a super dump couldbe something that's like three
or four shipping containersunder the ground filled with
(35:58):
guns and explosives.
In theory, when you're lookingat a time when the IRA was armed
to the teeth, why did peoplecome to the table for peace?
And I think one of the answersthat a friend of mine, Gerard
Jojuelan, always says is he wasjust like people were becoming
grandparents now and looking atkids playing, you know, with
these British army vehiclesaround Belfast.
(36:19):
People were just tired of thisand they wanted something else.
They wanted hope.
They didn't want to live in apolice state.
Shawn (36:29):
So, anyway, I just wanted to get that in before you got
to your next question, because Ifeel like it's relevant to
where you're going.
It is relevant, and this is whywe're not talking about ancient
history.
There are people, a largenumber of people, still alive
that lived through this periodof time, either very actively
participants or, you know, justmembers of society that
experienced this, and manypeople were on one side or the
other.
And the Good Friday Agreement,while it seems to have succeeded
(36:53):
in ending the violence, Iimagine that there must still be
challenges.
There must still be tension.
You've alluded to some of this.
So what type of tension doesexist?
What does that look like?
Oisin (37:05):
Above all else, the Good Friday Agreement stops the
denials.
I guess because of the way itwas done, it was kind of done
very quickly over a couple ofweeks or whatever, but it ended
up basically allowing both sidesto be further entrenched into
their own belief systems.
So there wasn't necessarilymore integration of schools,
these interface areas whichwould see catholic maybe
nowadays let's just saynationalists and unionists,
(37:26):
because people aren't thatreligious anymore.
So you'd see nationalistcommunities right up against
unionist communities and you'dhave these things called peace
walls in between them.
So a peace wall is just a giant, really high barricade to
prevent throwing petrol, bombsor rocks over the walls.
There are what was it?
270 peace walls now, which isfour times more than there ever
were.
So again, we have peace but wedon't have unity is how I've
(37:50):
heard it described.
I think that's very, very smartand as well as that, it was
really strange because the twodominant political parties in
Northern Ireland during theTroubles were the moderate
nationalist and the moderateunionist.
So the moderate nationalist wasSDLP and the moderate unionist
was the UUP.
But since the Good FridayAgreement those two parties have
been absolutely decimated andpeople have now retreated over
(38:12):
to the edges.
So we have the very, verynationalist Sinn Féin on the
left and then we have the very,very unionist DUP, which were
that was the party that DeanPaisley was a part of.
So the political scene haschanged.
Now we have the growing allianceparty in the middle, which I
love the concept of Alliance aresaying, look, I don't care,
(38:35):
which, you know, alliance isjust trying to be firmly in the
middle and try to pull peopleaway from the edges and just say
, look, we just need afunctioning government.
You know, it doesn't matterwhat side you're on, let's just
get this together and make thisgovernment work.
They're the ones I want to seegrow the most over the next few
years.
Yeah, the good friday agreementstops the violence, but it's a
(38:56):
deeply flawed agreement.
Yeah, again, it just allowedpeople to dig further into their
, their, their, it.
There wasn't enoughcross-community mixing done.
Shawn (39:05):
I don't know how to describe it so in a way it
almost seems like theater andthis is just a broad brush has
moved from the streets togovernment, so it's being
politically managed.
Do you think that thetemperature has come down enough
that there is room for somepolitical mismanagement and the
peace still holds?
Or do you think that this ismanaged right now in the
(39:26):
political arena but could spillback into the street at some
point?
Oisin (39:30):
The peace still holds.
But the two sides find it very,very difficult to work together
and the problem with devolutionor the problem with this power
sharing situation, is that whenone of the sides disagree they
can collapse the entiregovernment.
So the Northern Irishgovernment has been functioning
now for the past maybe 26 yearsand of that 26 year period it's
been collapsed and not workingfor a total of nine years.
(39:54):
So that doesn't make any senseLike that.
That's ridiculous and that onlythat only hurts the people
they're trying to work in theinterest of more than anything.
No, I think we're in a verythey've never really worked well
together and I guess if you'relooking, you've got Sinn Féin
leading alongside the DUP.
Sinn Féin are always saying wewant to unite in Ireland, sinn
(40:14):
Féin operate in Northern Irelandand they operate in the
Republic of Ireland.
So the DUP is never going totrust anything they say that
doesn't you know.
And they're not going to say wewant to function in government.
The DUP don't trust them.
They trust that Sinn Féin willalways act in the interest of
accomplishing a united Ireland.
So the DUP is like well, wecan't trust these guys and now
we should work hand in hand withthem, and then the DUP also
(40:35):
have their own issues, I guess.
But then you have to look atBrexit, you have to look at the
United Kingdom, essentiallytelling the unionists in
Northern Ireland we're notthinking of you, we don't care
about you.
So the unionists feel likethey're cut off from you know
the crown that they fought forall their lives, or you know
this sort of monarchy.
It's a hard thing to explain,but I just find unionism is in a
(40:56):
very precarious position rightnow where they're kind of
stranded, in a way cut off fromthe mainland of Great Britain.
So if we lived in a place whereviolence could ever happen
again, I always I feel like.
I feel like it could come fromthe unionist population and our
loyalist population specifically, but I also don't think that's
possible in a modern society.
Shawn (41:15):
Basically, so obviously we're in a different time.
The situation in the UnitedStates is very different.
We have different players andyou're not deeply involved in
the United States politics butas somebody that has the
knowledge of what's happened inIreland, specific to the
Troubles, you've talked to a lotof people, you've researched
this when you look at the UnitedStates through the lens that
(41:37):
you do, and considering theTroubles, do you see any warning
signs?
Oisin (41:41):
Yeah, you're not the first person to say this and I
do find it kind of.
I actually find it difficult todraw comparisons, but I know
they do exist.
I guess this binary oppositionor this polarization, you know
it can drown out the moderates.
So, though 80% of thepopulation may be these
moderates, you're only going tohear from the 10% of either side
who are screaming the loudest.
(42:02):
It's frustrating, but I thinkit's not a realistic.
You're not seeing the truth.
You know a loss of trust inpolitical institutions.
You know, and that's why weneeded to establish power
sharing.
But it's also why, over thepast 20 years, there's been a
lot of building of trust.
We had to, totally.
We got rid of our old policeservice and established a brand
new police service because weneeded to build trust again,
(42:26):
trust that had been lost neededto be rebuilt and I think at the
moment now there's a lot of.
How do you describe what's goingon in america?
It's, it's crazy, but like, inthe sense that there is a lot
like, I just find it veryfascinating that like we live in
a society now where we have themost amount of news at our
fingertips we could ever haveand we've ever had in history.
(42:46):
And yet it's even moredifficult and convoluted to read
the truth, because everyone isshouting at everyone that
they're lying or they're in thepocket of somebody else.
So, even though we have themost access to information that
we've ever had in our entirelifetimes, we still live in a
place where it's impossible toknow who's telling the truth and
(43:07):
who's not, and I feel like thatobfuscation has really, really
taken america by storm and Idon't know who did it.
I don't know.
Could you say trump was doingit or whoever was doing it.
But I think maybe it was adeliberate cast, doubt in what
the media reports, what it wouldhave been a deliberate ploy at
some stage.
Shawn (43:27):
yeah, yeah, I also feel like we in the united states we
always talk about saving ourdemocracy in the United States.
Both sides are saying this, butI do wonder if you talked a
little bit about needing torebuild and restructure
restructure a lot, and I feellike we might already be past
that Rubicon of saving democracyand actually in a position
where we need to start thinkingabout what rebuilding looks like
(43:49):
.
Oisin (43:49):
you know need to start thinking about what rebuilding
looks like.
You know, but what wouldviolence look like Like?
How would you see violencebreaking out in the US now had
Trump not won the election?
Maybe had Kamala won?
Shawn (44:01):
I almost feel like it's inevitable at this point.
Regardless, there's so manyscenarios and none of them seem
good to me.
Trump can't run again,ostensibly, but if he does, that
could stoke violence, right.
Or if he suspends elections,that could stoke violence.
If the MAGA movement doesn'tdie with Trump and it moves on
to somebody else, well, thatjust suggests that we're in for
(44:23):
potential political violencearound any election, moving
forward, right.
Oisin (44:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn (44:28):
There was a civil war in particularly Northern Ireland.
There was a civil war and itwasn't a cold civil war, but it
wasn't really a hot civil wareither.
It was just these pockets ofviolence, and I kind of feel
like that's what it would looklike, that's how it would play
out in the United States.
Oisin (44:44):
Like.
So it would be kind of notguerrilla warfare type things,
but these would be just likeexplosions or killings or yeah,
Happening on a small scale.
Shawn (44:52):
Yeah, we have so many guns.
I see it on a daily basis aspeople that are clearly
paramilitary adjacent at minimumwalking around with guns.
Oisin (45:03):
Okay, but now again, this is an Irish guy, so my
understanding of you so say,when we talk about like proud
boys, we talk about all thissort of stuff, all of the
paramilitaries would beRepublican leaning, all the
potential paramilitaries.
So where do you see thepotential violence?
Coming from the left, or fromthe liberals, or how do you
describe it?
Shawn (45:21):
It's interesting that you mentioned this, because earlier
in our conversation thiscrossed my mind as well.
I don't know if it was balanced, but there were two sides that
were armed to the teeth duringthe troubles, and that doesn't
exist right now in the unitedstates.
In fact, you have one side thatis very anti-paramilitary, and
in order to have a balance notthat I'm advocating for it, but
you have to have somebody thatmeets the paramilitary that is
(45:44):
on one side and they have to beplaying the same game, and
they're not.
Not that I'm advocatingviolence in way, but it does
feel very lopsided, right, andthat's scary?
Oisin (45:52):
Well yeah, but I guess what is the power of the gun
when the gun comes, when thepolitical things fail you?
Know, and I guess those withthe guns would be quite content
right now and quite happy withthe state of affairs, isn't that
?
Shawn (46:06):
that's a weird dynamic.
In an odd way, the fact thatTrump is in office right now
might actually be clipping thewings of some of these
right-wing paramilitary groupsbecause they feel safe right
well, yeah, I like I had afriend visit last year from
colorado, but like she, she cameto visit last year because her
parents wanted to kind of sizeup.
Oisin (46:25):
Could we live over here?
If you know, if trump doesn'tget into power, we believe
violent there'll be a violentoutbreak in the us and they were
stockpiling guns because theybelieved that trump not winning
would lead to war I mean, we areat a place now where every
election is an existentialbattle and I just feel like that
can't hold and I don't know howwe, how we climb down from that
(46:47):
I don't know, is the us justtoo big to have one leader, you
know?
Shawn (46:51):
or, or to be one country.
Yeah, honestly, if I was justall cards on the table, I don't
think we come out of this as oneunified country so you, you
don't think there's anyeventuality now like, say, next
election, democrats get back inand things are back to normal.
You think it's too far gone Ithink democrats could win,
assuming there is an election,and let's assume there will be.
(47:12):
I think Democrats could win,but I just don't think that
everyone calms down.
I think that the parties are ateach other's throats and that's
just going to play out for along time.
Yeah, biden won in 2020.
And everyone thought everythingwould go back to normal.
Oisin (47:25):
And Trump walks back in.
Shawn (47:26):
Yeah, and what if Biden was the anomaly you know, and
the new normal is actually thistype of politics.
Oisin (47:33):
Well, again, that's the thing.
Like, irish people are simpleenough people, or whatever, in
our views, so they loved Obama.
They knew nothing about Obama'spolicies, but he was just an
affable guy.
That simple.
But I think Obama coming in wasprobably could it have been the
start.
That was the end of Bush,wasn't it?
It was Bush then into Obama.
Shawn (47:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oisin (47:50):
I think I feel like for many, many Republicans, Obama
was like the last straw or likethe catalyst, for we're not
going back.
Shawn (47:59):
Yeah, that's a lot of the narrative and a lot of it is
race-based, an argument that ablack man suggested that white
dominance was over, and that'sprobably part of the story and I
don't want to be the Democratthat beats up on Democrats.
But I also think in hindsightthat Obama didn't do a very good
job of really representingDemocratic ideals and values.
(48:20):
Oh, interesting.
Ok, I think he focused verystrongly on Obamacare.
I think he wasted a lot ofpolitical capital on that and
then he just didn't fight onstuff and I think he allowed
that extreme Republican movementto really gain a lot of
political capital on that andthen he just didn't fight on
stuff and I think he allowedthat extreme Republican movement
to really gain a lot of steamwithout providing any
alternative.
Oisin (48:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Shawn (48:39):
Final question you ready for it?
Okay, what's somethinginteresting you've been reading,
watching, listening to or doinglately?
And it doesn't have to berelated to this topic, but it
can be.
Oisin (48:49):
I just came back from a trip to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, so I've beenreading up on a lot of World
War II content, specifically theBattle of Stalingrad, which I'd
never heard about.
It was like the worst battle inthe history of all of humanity,
so that's pretty wild.
I've also just watched theOscar winning documentary called
no Other Land, which is allabout the demolition of
(49:11):
settlements in Palestine.
So that was really really wellmade.
I thought I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, that's it.
I've been, oh, I've been goingto.
I went to a live podcast lastThursday.
That was good fun.
I got very drunk.
There are these Irish guyscalled Shite Talk and it was all
about Eamon de Valera and itwas just really funny.
Really really good night.
So, a, thanks for theconversation and taking the time
(49:34):
.
Thanks for having me, s.
Sorry if the head cold muddledmy brain a bit, but hopefully I
made sense.
Shawn (49:44):
The painful legacy of Northern Ireland offers powerful
lessons about the cost ofdivision and the undermining of
democracy.
Understanding these dynamicsisn't just historical curiosity.
It's essential to recognizingsimilar patterns that are
emerging here in the UnitedStates today, as we stare down
our own era of democraticbacksliding.
(50:06):
We need to remember and we cantake lessons from other
conflicts in places likeNorthern Ireland during the
Troubles, that societies canfracture quickly, but rebuilding
takes generations.
So we need to stay engagedbecause holding it together will
be much less painful andviolent than trying to build it
all back.
Alright, check back next weekfor another episode of Deep Dive
(50:30):
Chat soon, folks.
Thank you, thank you.
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