• grozzle@lemm.ee
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    8 hours ago

    While I normally don’t give the Brits much credit, gotta say NI is not being held in the UK against its collective will. Your imagined cruel English oppressor holding on to land by force, opposing the will of the local population, is out of date in the 21st century.

    Almost all Brit politicians would love to be the PM at the time of Irish unification.

    Since 1998, the NI Secretary is obliged by treaty to carry out a referendum for unification as soon as polling indicates there’s a reasonable chance it would get a yes majority.

    It just hasn’t happened yet. It probably will, within a few decades.

    • glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 hours ago

      Watch derry gerls and see it’s being held against its collective will. Just cause you invade, rename the place London-Derry, and fill it with your people so that after centuries of strife when you finally are forced by international pressure into signing the Good Friday agreement (military occupation didn’t work, yeah give ‘em credit for that) which allows for a path to a free Ireland (and do not forget the strife needed to get any free Ireland at all), doesn’t give you a “but they don’t wanna cause they can’t muster the vote cause we’ve filled it with our peeps” ain’t a “out of date in the 21st century” view.

      Fuckin travesty they have to have their passport and different coinage to visit relatives on the other side of the border, while still being in their own island. BRITS could just set em loose not do the song and dance “oh the nationalists we planted and stoked for centuries are too many you can’t get the vote ha ha”. Orrrrr if England was gonezo the Welsh and Scots would def let it go

      TLDR; git güd, see the unnecessary pain, see Sinn Féin wins parliament seats but does NOT participate in parliament because they know they are being oppressed against their will and will not participate in that system of oppression.

      • grozzle@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        sure, anything’s good to get mad about if you just make things up.

        what specifically do you have in mind by “set em loose”, if not the referendum i talked about?

        would you rather the six counties be “handed over” without the consent of the people who live there? how is that less imperialist than the Good Friday Agreement which you seem to be angry about?

        a passport is not required to cross the border. never was. you just drive straight through, no stops since the mid-90s. I can tell you’ve never been to Ireland.

        please don’t talk to me as if I’m british.

        Derry Girls is a great show, I’m glad it’s popular, but it isn’t a substitute for reality.

        • glizzyguzzler@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 hour ago

          Aye missed it on the hard border not reinstated post-Brexit. “Never was” and “mid-90s” (2005 was the last of the military checkpoints; literally not before 1998, the late-90s) is incongruous though!

          Gonna skip over the Sin Féin thing? Gonna skip over the systematic displacement and oppression that led to the Troubles that then led to the Good Friday agreement? The resistance does not use bombs anymore, but they still resist

          And you skipped the “filled with pro-Brit nationalists for centuries and stoked pro-Brit nationalism for centuries so that the oppressed cannot get a majority”. Orange parades could have been banned easily

          Do you see parallels with displacement in the Crimea or the West Bank? How much time does the oppressor need to displace the original populous for it to become “well you can’t kick them out, they live there!” A hundred years probably passes the bar, that’s how it works in the US at least.

          Clearly, the Good Friday agreement is the best off-road possible to avoid more bloodshed from either side after centuries of distain and oppression of the Irish. An agreement that was forced onto the British gov by systematic resistance for decades. They don’t get a “everything’s great, the British in modern times should be lauded” after an armed resistance forced the international community put enough pressure on the British government to make them offer an agreement to end their colonization.

          Indeed, the Brits could have just relinquished them over and set up a de-colonization program for extreme British nationalists who didn’t want to be Irish. The main thing to pull from derry girls is that in spite of it all most there just want to live, and just creating a unified Ireland would end it there and then. But the British nationalists might start bombing then, so yeah Good Friday slow roll with continued resistance to British rule is the way to go - but it has not ended that pain, only prolonged.

          Anyway it’s clear to me that the sentiment

          While I normally don’t give the Brits much credit, gotta say NI is not being held in the UK against its collective will. Your imagined cruel English oppressor holding on to land by force, opposing the will of the local population, is out of date in the 21st century.

          is not in good faith. It is not out of date, just because the British military isn’t shooting people there anymore doesn’t mean it’s hunky-dory. (hunky-derry? Hehehh)

          This speaks to the systemic racism issues present in the US, which parallel the Irish experience in Northern Ireland to an extent. Because minorities were red-lined for decades and denied access to various privileges, now that they mostly aren’t (https://virginiamercury.com/2024/06/06/black-womans-bid-to-buy-virginia-beach-home-faces-illegal-barrier-echoes-of-the-past/ comes to mind) do we declare success? It is once more clear to me that we do not just get out the banner once the paper is signed, but rather continue to make noise to ensure we’re always moving towards removing barriers that discriminate and oppress. E.g., the 1964 and ‘65 civil and voting rights acts required by law that minority discrimination and oppression is abolished - by 1990 was that systemic discrimination and oppression gone? Nop. By 2024 is that systemic discrimination and oppression gone? Nopppp

          “please don’t talk to me as if I’m british” is doing the most btw