anti restrictions rioting

There’s a big difference between protesting against a(nother) murder and protesting against public health measures.
 
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EasilyAmused said:
There’s a big difference between protesting against a(mother) murder and protesting against public health measures.
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Yes but when I watched the videos from the US etc it looked as well like more looting and rioting than protesting.

That today was not much of a protest either (at least from the few pictures I saw). Just plain ugly rioting
 
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Three Gardai injured, one of whom was admitted to hospital.
23 people arrested, 13 of them charged last night.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has clarified inaccuracy in his remarks.
 
I'm no fan of the far right, they are a bunch of dangerous crazies, but why the hysteria about them when we already have a large contingent of an equally "far" left? How is the looneys and former(?) terrorists in our Parliament any less ideologically dangerous than the nutters who were out protesting at the weekend?
I appreciate that RTE have a strongly left-wing bias and are very fond of tabloid sensationalism but why are only one group of extremists dangerous, especially when one group has form murdering people?
 
Purple said:
I'm no fan of the far right, they are a bunch of dangerous crazies, but why the hysteria about them when we already have a large contingent of an equally "far" left? How is the looneys and former(?) terrorists in our Parliament any less ideologically dangerous than the nutters who were out protesting at the weekend?
I appreciate that RTE have a strongly left-wing bias and are very fond of tabloid sensationalism but why are only one group of extremists dangerous, especially when one group has form murdering people?
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There's a couple of points here. The first is that the crowd out at the weekend (and generally the organised anti-lockdown protests) just are the far right and not the far left. I agree that the extreme on the left are also problematic but they aren't the ones on the street at the moment.

The second differentiating point is that at least the "former terrorists in our Parliament" are actually in the Parliament. They have had to participate in an election and persuade enough people to vote for them. That process has tempered some of their previous policies in order to get enough public backing. So while they may be disagreeable to many, they have legitimacy. The groups behind these protests have no interest in electoral politics. In fact they are looking to subvert electoral politics and force change in other ways.

My biggest concern though - and here I speak from the experience of having a former acquaintance who has disappeared down this rabbit-hole and also seen the same with a friend of my child - is that they aren't a single cohesive protest movement. As with QAnon, they are attracting people with one grievance and exposing them to a myriad of wild theories and giving legitimacy to concepts that just have no basis - with a view to normalising views that by themselves have very little support. So people who are legitimately disaffected with the lockdown are sucked into groups where they are then exposed to acceptance of anti-Vax, anti-5G, theories of institutionalised child abuse, and usually anti-immigrant and nationalistic views. The groups behind a lot of this have close ties to the UK and US far right and having failed to get any traction using legitimate political parties (they tried and failed) are using this disaffection to generate a feeling that authority in general needs to be overturned.

So to answer your question, they are more dangerous than the "former terrorists in our Parliament" because they are looking to subvert the Parliament. They would like to do what the 6th Jan protest in the US tried to do
 
EmmDee said:
So to answer your question, they are more dangerous than the "former terrorists in our Parliament" because they are looking to subvert the Parliament.
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They are looking to subvert it from the outside. The former terrorists are already on the inside. They can just subvert it from there.
 
I find myself asking when gatherings where there is known potential for rioting and violence “where are the army”? Why aren’t they there as back up to the gardai? It’s a genuine question. no army bashing intended.
 
phoenix53 said:
I find myself asking when gatherings where there is known potential for rioting and violence “where are the army”? Why aren’t they there as back up to the gardai? It’s a genuine question. no army bashing intended.
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Our army is tiny and not trained fir that sort of thing. It’s also totally inappropriate for a civilian government to deploy the army for crowd control.
This isn’t Washington during an insurrection or the Belfast during the UK’s civil war in the 70’s.

In a civilised country people are entitled to protest without the threat of intimidation by the army.
 
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