The Guerrilla Army Behind Irelands MADNESS

Summary

Podcast Summary: Camp Gagnon

Episode: The Guerrilla Army Behind Ireland’s MADNESS

Host: Mark Gagnon

Guest: Vittorio Angelone

Date: December 4, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode explores the history, culture, and ongoing repercussions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Host Mark Gagnon is joined by Belfast-born comedian Vittorio Angelone for a candid, humorous, and insightful discussion about civil conflict, Irish identity, colonialism, and the legacy of resistance in both historical and modern contexts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Legacy of the IRA and The Troubles

• Origins of the IRA:

  • The IRA started as a grassroots, improvised resistance group—ordinary Irish Catholics, not trained soldiers, taking up arms against British rule ([00:00]).
  • Discussion of safe houses, weapon smuggling, and the transformation into a feared underground army.

• Personal Ties to Conflict:

  • Vittorio’s family ice cream shop in Belfast was bombed by the UVF in 1975 ([10:06]), highlighting how violence saturated ordinary life.
  • “A lady brought a bag... saw wires, and then threw it towards the door and it blew up just after it left his hand. 100 people in the cafe, 39 people hurt. Nobody died. It blew his ear off.” – Vittorio ([11:27])

• Geography & Identity:

  • Most violence concentrated in Northern Ireland; Belfast and border areas delineated by Protestant and Catholic communities ([14:16]).
  • Humorous exchange on Irish nicknames for people from different regions (“Mexicans” for southern Irish) ([14:43]).

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2. The Complex Nature of Irish Identity

• Cultural Connections:

  • Parallels drawn between Irish and other colonized cultures, especially Mexico ("flags are similar... emotional vivaciousness, an obsession with music, Catholicism, recent poverty, colonial overshadow") ([16:50]-[17:39]).

• Religious & Political Conflict:

  • The Protestant/Catholic divide as a proxy for political power, not pure theological disagreement ([36:41]-[38:23]).
  • Discrimination—voting rights, housing, jobs—drove Catholics toward activism and, ultimately, violent resistance ([44:07]).

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3. Timeline of Major Events & Escalations

• The Famine and British Colonial Rule:

  • The so-called famine was not food scarcity but forced export; British oppression triggered Irish mass displacement ([23:01]).
  • Native Americans tried to send food aid, turned away by the British army ([22:18]).

• Key Moments in Armed Resistance:

  • Easter Rising, 1916: Marked as the formal beginning of the modern IRA ([26:04]-[26:56]).
  • Partition, 1921: Establishment of Northern Ireland; left a Catholic minority under Protestant-dominated rule ([31:53]-[33:17]).
  • Civil Rights Movement, 1960s: Inspired by American and Indian civil rights activism. Discrimination and police brutality catalyzed escalation ([35:24]-[36:15]).

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4. The Height of The Troubles

• Sectarian Violence:

  • “Where do Protestants hang out? Target that. Where do Catholics hang out? Target that.” – [47:26]
  • Use of safe houses, children acting as lookouts, entire neighborhoods facilitating IRA activities ([47:58]-[49:01]).

• Internal IRA Discipline:

  • Harsh punishment for suspected informants ("touts"); kneecapping, executions, social ostracism, and disappearances ([50:57]-[53:11]).

• Notable Civilian Impact:

  • Remorseless cycles of violence, including revenge attacks and wrongful killings based on tortured confessions ([54:41]).
  • “Did civilians die? Probably, yeah. Were there bad actors in a good movement? Sure. It just is.” – Mark ([54:58])

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5. International Influence and Escalation

• Foreign Funding and Arms:

  • Gaddafi’s Libya supplied weapons—even surface-to-air missiles—to the IRA, exponentially escalating their firepower ([60:26]-[64:12]).
  • Irish-American fundraising (“NORAD”) provided significant support; messages tailored for American left/right sensibilities ([64:56]).

• Influence of "Black and Tans":

  • Paramilitary forces trained in repression in Ireland were later used in British Mandate Palestine, highlighting connections between anti-colonial movements ([20:43]-[21:31]).

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6. The Path to Resolution

• Bloody Friday & Operation Motorman:

  • IRA’s 1972 bombing spree led to British military retaliation, eroding IRA’s territorial control ([58:03]-[60:03]).

• The Hunger Strikes & Political Identity:

  • Bobby Sands and others led hunger strikes for political prisoner status; Sands’ election as an MP increased international visibility ([75:28]-[81:58]).
  • “Bobby Sands lasted 66 days on hunger strike… went blind, body starts to eat itself.” – Vittorio ([80:29])

• Good Friday Agreement (1998):

  • Marked the formal end of The Troubles, instituted power-sharing, voting reforms, and police overhaul ([85:53]-[87:24]).
  • Ongoing debate about unresolved issues, hidden arms caches, and the transformation of paramilitaries into “legitimate” businesses or crime rackets ([89:22]-[89:59]).

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7. Lasting Cultural and Psychological Impacts

• Trauma & Silence:

  • “People who fought for the IRA now live in apartments, traumatized... can’t go to therapy because of no patient confidentiality.” – Vittorio ([69:47]-[70:09])
  • Generational trauma: “Ceasefire babies” have high suicide rates; parents’ silence creates distance ([70:41]).

• Ritual and Language:

  • Suppression of Irish language and culture by British, resurgence in recent years ([39:47]-[43:00]).
  • Linguistic quirks linked to remnants of Irish grammar in English.

• Music and Humor as Coping:

  • Songs (e.g., “Grace”) memorialize events; culture of finding laughs amid darkness ([29:07], [51:37]).

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8. Modern Identity & Reflections

• Irish Americans:

  • “Irish people fucking hate Irish Americans... obsessed with being Irish in such a weird way, use their Irishness to excuse their racism.” – Vittorio ([92:59])
  • Historical context: “How the Irish Became White,” discusses how Irish Americans assimilated into American racial hierarchy ([93:52]).

• Current Sentiment:

  • “In the words of Jerry Adams, they haven’t gone away, you know.” – Vittorio ([89:22])

• Recommendations & Further Exploration:

  • Books: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, Killing Thatcher
  • “My show is a lot about this, doing it at Union Hall, called You Can’t Say Nothing Anymore, about growing up in the wake of the Troubles.” – Vittorio ([96:41])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A group that started with stolen rifles, homemade bombs, and farmers on bicycles, but somehow ended up fighting the British Empire.” – Mark ([00:00])
• “We were growing corn and wheat, had livestock... but the British forcibly exported all of it to England.” – Vittorio, on the famine ([24:18])
• “Civilians die in every war. It just is.” – Mark ([54:58])
• “Kneecap aren’t pro-IRA; they talk about drugs too much.” – Vittorio ([91:15])
• “We were never allowed gun toys... Guns aren’t fun. My mom and dad just seen too much of it.” – Vittorio ([71:01])
• “People are exhausted by three decades of bombings and assassinations... by 1994 the IRA declares a ceasefire.” – Mark ([86:07])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Topic/Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Origins of IRA, Introduction | 00:00 - 01:10 | | Family ice cream shop bombed | 10:06 - 12:31 | | Geography, “Mexicans” in Ireland | 14:16 - 15:03 | | Catholic/Protestant conflict explained | 36:41 - 38:23 | | “Taking the soup”: Identity, famine | 38:44 - 39:03 | | Civil rights inspiration from U.S. | 35:24 - 36:15 | | Arms from Gaddafi’s Libya | 60:26 - 64:12 | | Hunger Strikes, Bobby Sands | 75:28 - 81:58 | | Good Friday Agreement, aftermath | 85:53 - 87:24 | | Trauma, generational effects | 69:47 - 71:01 |

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a balance of dark humor, authenticity, and educational depth. Mark and Vittorio exchange jokes and personal anecdotes while displaying deep respect for the complexity of the conflict and the suffering involved. Several moments of levity ("We don’t have drinks called 9/11") are used to navigate heavy themes, reflecting the Irish cultural disposition toward humor in the face of adversity.

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Further Learning

• Read:

  • Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • Killing Thatcher

• Watch:

  • Say Nothing documentary/series

• See Live:

  • Vittorio Angelone’s stand-up show You Can’t Say Nothing Anymore, touring UK, Ireland, US

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This is a must-listen episode for anyone interested in Irish history, the legacy of colonialism, the psychology of conflict, and the unique resilience of the Irish spirit.

Transcript

[A]

Most resistance groups fade out pretty fast. But this one didn't just survive. It became one of the most feared underground armies of the 20th century. A group that started with stolen rifles, homemade bombs, and farmers on bicycles, but somehow ended up fighting the British Empire. They weren't Special Forces, they weren't trained soldiers. They were just simple Irish Catholics living in neighborhoods that the government barely bothered to protect. This is the ira. They built safe houses under grocery stores, smuggled weapons from the Middle east, and even ran their own spy networks. This episode is absolutely amazing. I'm joined by my friend Vittorio Angelone, who is a brilliant comedian from Belfast. I just want to make it clear we make some jokes during this episode. I don't mean to be irreverent about a very difficult and complex situation, but in the way of the Irish and of comedians, I typically like to find what's funny even in the dark places. So if you are interested in Irish history and in religious history, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp.

Vittorio Angelone.

[B]

Smashed it.

[A]

How are you, sir?

[B]

I'm very well. How are you, Mark?

[A]

I'm doing excellent, brother. Thank you so much for joining me in your final hours here in New York City.

[B]

Yeah. You're catching me just before I disappear for I assume forever. I. I'm at every point in my visa application and arrival here. I've assumed I will be kicked out at some point. Any moment, Any moment, any moment.

[A]

But it makes it fun, right?

[B]

There's a good sort of spice to everything. I've tried to make the most of my one week here on the assumption that I will never be back.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's also tough as like a foreign stand up comic on a visa because you're like, you know, even if I try to stay, people know where I'm going to be. Yeah, you're posted on my website for sure.

[B]

It's like, hello, Ice. These are the locations where you can snatch me whenever you would like.

[A]

Exactly. We met on the street here in New York City.

[B]

Yeah. So fun.

[A]

And. And my buddy David, who is coincidentally in the room. Hello. How are you, David? All right, all right, all right. We literally are on the street. And David has a knack for finding Irishman. I don't know how he does it.

[B]

He has it like a hobby you can hear.

[A]

Is an interesting affliction that you have to find the Irish. And he's a massive fan of all Irish music. Like, I mean, yes, I love the Irish people. Yeah, you guys love to. You guys are very Nice. Really, like, the stereotype of Irishman is.

[B]

That you guys are mean, but every Irish person I've ever met in New.

[A]

York has a hoop earring like you, loves the Fontaines.

[B]

And I'm like, this is my type of guy. That's so funny. So you're a big Fontaine's guy?

[A]

Huge.

[B]

The drummer followed me yesterday on Instagram. I was very excited. No way.

[A]

Our buddy Miles, you just met.

[B]

Met Grian at a bar last week.

[A]

And I was so jealous.

[B]

Grian Chattan was quite rude to me once.

[A]

Whoa. Well, he's a fucking rock star.

[B]

Yeah, he is the thing. He's a fucking. And I just sort of respected it. Cause I was at a gig, a band called Lancome, who are like a spooky Irish folk band. They're really, really great. And there was like, a drinks thing afterwards, and it was him, Graham Chatton, and the singer Rady Pete from Lancome. And I went up and was like, oh, sorry to interrupt. You guys are both. Just think you're both really great and love what you're doing. And Grant turns around and goes, all right.

[A]

But also, that's what I want. Okay? If I meet Liam Gallagher, I want him to go, who the fuck are you? Laughing? Yeah, I want him to piss off. I want him to tell me to piss off. And I would be like, yes, he did. He was what I wanted, you know? Thank you, Liv. Exactly. I don't want him to be like, oh, it's great to meet you. You want a photo? Yeah. No, no, no. Be a rock star, you know?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But I mean, the Irish in my book have always held a special page, you know, We've done shows in Dublin, fantastic shows. Always the sing songy culture of, like, the pub and going in and just everyone knows how to play music, which is brilliant. And there's a long musical legacy. Damien Rice, that guy is fantastic.

[B]

That's the float, like a cannonball guy.

[A]

I believe so. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But yeah, if you had a song.

[B]

Because every Irish person has, like, a song for, like, end of a party. Everyone has a party piece. What would be your song?

[A]

Like, if I could take any song, you just.

[B]

You have to sing it at the end of a party.

[A]

Mr. Brightside by the Killers.

[B]

Crazy acapella at a pub, A cappella.

[A]

At a pub, a cappella at a pub. Or I do something real sad. I do like the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, everybody.

[B]

Ben Drop. Silence. And you're going. Coming out of my cage Doing just fine. Yeah.

[A]

100. Not even a question dude, are you kidding me? I'm actually glad you asked this question, because I have, like, 10 of them in the bank. I might do Champagne Supernova.

[B]

Yeah. Again, crazy.

[A]

Or Don't Look Back in Anger.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So you're a big Oasis guy.

[A]

Well, the weird thing is I was. And I didn't even know it. And then David was like, dude, you got to listen to, like, you know, definitely, maybe, like, go through the actual albums. And I was like, oh, I like every song.

[B]

Oh, they're all. It's sort of an incredible number of.

[A]

Hits because I liked seven songs. And you would think if you like seven songs, then you probably like this band. But I never was like, oh, waste. I didn't know the lore.

[B]

Yeah. It's easy to have, like, a passive, like, of Oasis and just be like, I know what they do, and I. You know, if it comes on, I'm singing along or whatever, but, like, to do a proper deep dive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Did you go? Sorry, no.

[A]

No, I did. Met. No, no. This is your job. You're supposed to deviate. We did go to MetLife, David and I. He wore a bucket hat doing poppers. It was great.

[B]

So good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So good.

[A]

But we meet on the street, I find out that you just got passed at the best comedy club in the world. A comedy Cellar.

[B]

Very crazy moment.

[A]

And. Which is a. It's its own insane story on the side of the. But I've been wanting to do an episode on the Troubles and the IRA and Irish history, and I was like, I really need a lad to do it with, you know? And then you came across the inside scoop, and I was like, this is serendipitous. You know what I mean? This is beautiful.

[B]

I'm big into serendipity at the minute. I'm like, the universe just points you in the right direction sometimes. I'm starting to believe in magic. I might get really religious. I think that's my next thing. I'm going to get really religious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I haven't picked which one yet. Like, I grew up Catholic, but I'm trying to decide, like, where should I, like, focus my efforts? Like, maybe I'll become, like, a big Buddhist guy.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's. That's almost too safe. I think you go, like. I think you go, like, hardcore cult. Like, Unitarian Church of Korea. Yes.

[B]

Korean church.

[A]

Exactly. But, like, go hardcore. Go into it, you know.

[B]

Yeah. Properly, like, attending their services, like, on zoom. Yeah.

[A]

Or just go full, like, Muslim. Like, just always wear the Candora. Just, you know, if I could, like.

[B]

Go to Mecca and come back. I was like, Ahmed Al Jaloni.

[A]

Oh, Nation of Islam, as in like, are you familiar with this?

[B]

No.

[A]

Nation of Islam is a specific, like, I don't even call it a sect because like some Muslims don't recognize it in the exact same way. Yeah, I don't understand the politics, but it's. It's a specific subset of like Black Muslims in America that are hardcore.

[B]

Is that like similar but the opposite to the black Israelite guys type shit? Yeah.

[A]

As they would say. It's like Nation of Islam is like, if you're a black dude that goes to prison, there's a good chance you'll become like Nation of Islam.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it was sort of spearheaded by this dude, the most honorable Elijah Muhammad.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then there's all sorts of stuff about like.

[B]

And was that the type of Islam Malcolm X got into or no, he just got like proper school or is he.

[A]

I think so. That probably deserves its own episode. But then there's this also this search the alien in the Nation of Islam that created white people.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of lore here. This is awesome.

[B]

I think this would be a tough religion for me to get into, but.

[A]

I would be good.

[B]

I would like to be just open about like, oh yeah, I was created by an alien. Sorry.

[A]

Yes, this is the nation of Is. Hold on. Go to images.

Yeah, Yakub. So Yaqub is like basically like a God.

[B]

I think he plays for Aston Villa.

[A]

You put a ball in the box. He's getting to it, dude. He's going to get a head on that thing.

He has two brains, a white brain and a black brain. He created white people and black people. I think this is potentially extremely sacrilegious to the Nation of Islam folks. And if that's the case, I'm sorry.

[B]

Sorry to all the listeners and viewers who are, you know, proponents of the Nation of Islam or citizens of the Nation of Islam.

[A]

Yeah, maybe they might be full on patriots, you know what I mean? I don't know the exact visa process, but we're not talking about that today. We're talking about the ira. I don't really know anything about it, but I was like, it's just a fascinating time in history. The troubles of the, you know, this basically sectarian violence between the Catholics and the Protestants. That's actually a proxy war for a political battle. The colonization of the British onto the island of Ireland and sort of what it means for people. It's like such a deep history and there's also like terrorism, but then freedom fighting. And it's like all perspective and whatever side you're on depends on, like, who you rep. And then there's still walls up to this day, I think, in parts of Belfast that delineate the Protestant side from the Catholic side. And it all happened like 50 years ago.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it. It sort of nominally ended in 1998, so that's 27 years ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So like. Yeah, that was sort of. But then there was sort of a couple bombs after that. And then I sort of grew up in, like, the echo of it. So I was born in 96. And then it's like we had the odd, like, bomb scare every so often. And you would, like, miss your music lesson that night because it was like.

The bus isn't coming because it might blow up.

[A]

The most painful thing for an Irishman.

[B]

Oh, but we were just so fun. We were just like. Like, it was so stupid how we were like, oh, yes, don't have to go to my. Don't have to go to this thing.

[A]

So explain to me into the audience first. Your name is Vittorio.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Which is not the most traditional Irish name.

[B]

No, not a tradition. Not an Irish name, even in the. In the slightest. I'm half Italian. That's my. That's my sort of background. So my dad's family are Italian. They moved to Belfast during World War II to get away from all the bombs and violence. And then.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And that was. That was a good move. Until a few years later.

[A]

Yeah. You leave Sudan to go to Russia. Yeah, yeah. This will be a nice area.

[B]

And then.

Open an ice cream shop. Very stereotypical. But, like, that was the family's business.

[A]

Like gelato.

[B]

Yeah, like proper. I like fish and chips as well. That was like. Of course, that's the two things Italian people do in Ireland. Fish and chips and ice cream. That's what Italians are.

[A]

That is so funny up to. Cuz.

[B]

I don't know, like in America it feels like you would have like a deli or like a. But it doesn't. And then there's some gelato places. But that feels more recent. It doesn't feel like historically what Italians were doing in America, but yeah, it did that. That got blown up in 1975 by the UVF.

[A]

Literally blown up.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the bomb by the uvf. Yeah. So that's the Ulster Volunteer Force. There's so many acronyms for different paramilitary groups. So the uvf, the uda, the uff, the ira, the Provisional ira, the inla, and Then within the ira, there's like the real ira, the continuity Iraq, the old ira. And it's like, it gets very complicated.

[A]

And why was it blown up?

[B]

I don't know, like, like, now the.

[A]

Most Irish thing I've ever heard. You're like, yeah, we didn't talk about it.

[B]

Like, I only found out like two years ago that it was blown up because my dad was always like, oh, it had the clothes. Like, he never said why it had the clothes. And then I found an article in the New York Times about it getting blown up.

[A]

What?

[B]

Because it ended a ceasefire. There's a six month ceasefire. And then my family's ice cream shop got blown up.

[A]

Why an ice cream shop?

[B]

Well, this is. See, now, some people would argue that. Which I would call victim, blaming that my family must have been doing something other than making ice cream. I have never heard that. And I would like to claim that that is not what was happening. But basically what happened was a lady brought up like a bag to the counter, like the till, and was like, oh, somebody left this bag in one of the booths. Could you put it in, like, lost and found or like lost property and Belfast in 1975, not a big lost property kind of place. So my dad's cousin Eugenio slowly opened the bag, saw wires, and then threw it towards the door and it blew up just after it left his hand. And there was 100 people in the cafe, 39 people were hurt. Nobody died, which is like, crazy. And he was interviewed on TV immediately after that happened, but it blew his ear off. And he was deaf in that ear for the rest of his life. And then there's a really funny TV interview where he is, like, stood there holding his ear on with like, blood sort of like going down his cheek.

[A]

Van Goff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the interviewer is like. And what happened when the bomb went off? And he's screaming because he's deaf.

He brought up a bag and I saw.

[A]

Ridiculous, bro, that is crazy.

[B]

Yeah, so that's my blowing up an.

[A]

Ice cream shop seems completely trivia. I like, actually, one that could get it is the Turkish ice cream shop. The one that like, pretends to give you the ice cream, then tricks you. Oh, I'd blow that up a million percent. Right? Give me my ice cream.

[B]

I would never have you ever had that done. I feel so bad.

[A]

It was fun for, like four of them. And then you started getting real. That guy's good, dude, he's good. I look down, there's a napkin in my hand. I was Like, God. And I look up, it's like someone. It's my dad doing. I'm like, how the. He pulled his mask off. I was like, what is happening? Thanksgiving, I haven't recovered fully, dude. It's like a bad trip. I crack my back, I sneak his face. It's crazy. But, yeah, that guy can go. But your family seemed like they were nice guys.

[B]

I think they were nice guys. They were known for a particular ice cream called the Smoky, which is in a knickerbocker glory glass, like a tall glass vanilla ice cream. And then like pineapple juice poured on top of it. And then like a chocolate flake, like, crumbled on top of that. And that was like the. That my family are like, weirdly sort of famous in West Belfast for that.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Particular type of ice cream. And everybody argues about what the recipe is. And that's the recipe. People think it's lemonade, but it's pineapple juice.

[A]

Oh, that's an exclusive.

[B]

That's an inside scoop. That's cigarette. Although you can only get a specific. They don't make the pineapple juice anymore, but my nono. My dad's dad still has like a big container of it.

[A]

Really? Yeah, just the same. This from the 60s, just an old vat scraping out the bottom like this will do. All right. That's crazy.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Now, just for context, can we just pull up a map real quick? My friend Christos of. Of Belfast. Or actually maybe just Ireland in general, because I think the geography here makes a little bit of a difference. People think Ireland, they think Dublin.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the troubles primarily were happening in Northern Ireland.

[B]

Yeah, the, like, the absolute vast majority, like, there was stuff happening around the border. Where's it were is where a lot of stuff happens to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And we call them. We call people from the south Mexicans because they're from south of the border.

[A]

Wait, south of what border? Of the Northern Irish border.

[B]

Yeah. So in Belfast, we call people from the south, like the Republic of Ireland, Mexicans.

[A]

That's so funny. You guys don't even have Mexicans.

[B]

There's a bizarrely good burrito chain in Ireland that started in Belfast called Boozum. And I asked a Mexican, is it actually good? And he said, it's good Tex Mex, but it's not proper Mexican food. That's hilarious. I'll save that. Yeah, in Ireland. I'll fucking take good Tex Mex.

[A]

There is a funny thing of going to a. Specifically, like, in the UK and Around sort of the isles here, seeing people that have accents combined with accents that you don't expect. So like meeting like an Indian Scottish guy.

[B]

Oh, funny.

[A]

And he went from Mumbai to Glen. Cool.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And he's got an Indian Scottish sort of like twang. And I'm like, I didn't even know that combo was possible.

[B]

There's a great Irish comedian who's like sort of crazy, but like used to have a TV show in Ireland, like a sketch show. David McSavage is his name and he's a stand up as well. And he does this bit that's one of the funniest bits I've ever seen where he says you can't do like offensive accents anymore. Like, that's obviously not allowed. But some accents do mix really well together. And he goes, for example, Scottish and Japanese. And then he goes.

For like five minutes and it doesn't stop getting funnier. It's absolutely hysterical.

That's great.

[A]

It is combinations you just don't expect. Yeah. Like a Mexican dude in Ireland.

[B]

You're like loads of Brazilians in Dublin and like lots of Spanish people. But Mexicans are a real rarity.

[A]

Fascinating.

[B]

My brother studied with a Mexican and he brought crickets to a party once and we had crickets.

[A]

Literal crickets?

[B]

Yeah. Not nice like dried crickets, but like.

[A]

And just popping them.

[B]

Yeah. They don't really taste of anything. But I like gave it a go and I was quite pleased with myself for like trying crickets.

[A]

I do think personally that there is a connection between the Mexican and the Irish.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't know exactly what it is. The flags are similar. Sure. But I'm talking like, culturally. Yeah.

[B]

Well, the guy who runs the Dead Rabbit, he recently opened another bar in Jersey, I think, called like San Patricio's, which is a Mexican Irish bar.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

So that's like a thing. I used to work at a Mexican Irish bar in London.

[A]

What is your take? Like, for me, I just always. I connected just through doing shows. Like you go do shows like in, you know, South Texas with a bunch of Mexicans. You go to shows in Ireland. There's an emotional vivaciousness, like it's alive emotionally. There's like a obsession with music. Many of them are like Catholic, which I think also imbues the culture with a specific perspective. Like there is a. A recent poverty, you could say, within the last few hundred years, where, you know, the country's overcome something. There's also like this colonial element, you know, Mexico has America, you know, quite.

[B]

An Ancient mystical culture that had Catholicism sort of like over overlapped on top, placed upon it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because I've been reading a lot about, like, Ireland, pre.

Like pre Christianity arriving with St. Patrick and stuff. And it sort of is this very old pagan. And the Irish language is one of the oldest languages, like, in the world that still, like, exists at all. And I think that's probably what it is. And I think there's a lot of links with, like, Mexico and then, I mean, Ireland also has a huge, like, North African influence, which is kind of weird. So if you zoom out, if that's on maps and you can zoom out from there, if it isn't just an image. Yeah, it's just an image like North Africa sort of like if you miss the bottom of England, if they were doing like a shipping route, like, a lot of people landed in the very south coast of Ireland.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Gibraltar is right there from North Africa. So that sort of comes up through that way. And there's a lot of connections between the languages. So I find Irish people very culturally similar to a lot of these sort of colonized countries and then very ancient former, like, pagan or like, older religion countries. So, like Indians I find very culturally similar to Irish people and then Mexicans as well. And I'm sure there's loads of, like. I bet if I met, like an Inuit, I think we'd get on.

[A]

That's fascinating.

[B]

I think that would be cool.

[A]

I'm so curious about this. And actually, there's another interesting thing which I heard. I forget who said it. I don't even remember who was a podcaster, Irish guy that talked about the Irish Palestinian sort of connection.

[B]

Gaddafi gave guns to the ira.

[A]

I was just about to bring that up, but I have that in. I have that in the notes. You know what? Maybe we just jump right there. What's up, people? We're gonna take a break because we. New merch. That's right. It is the holiday season. And the good folks over at Camp R and D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the Christmas sweaters with the aliens. We got the Christmas sweaters with the conspiracy vibes you already know. I mean, this one might be my favorite one. A Christmas tree full of aliens. Full Christmas sweater energy. And then, of course, if you just want something simple, you know, you bust out the camp logo tea with the little Christmas lights on it. Come on, bro, get cute for Christmas, okay? It is a holiday season, all right? We're celebrating the birth of the savior, okay? And what better way to do it than to cop a couple threads for the person in your life that you know that loves a campsite that loves hanging with us every single week. And right now, we're running a promo through the holidays. That's right. Use the promo code. Christmas camp for 15% off. I just made that up on the spot, but I think we can do it. Right. I'll call some people. Christmas camp for 20. For 15% off. Sure. 16% off. Whatever you say, Mark. Should we give them more? One more. 17% off, people, we don't. I think this is gonna work. I'm not positive. We're gonna see if we can do it, but I'll. Yeah. Check it out, guys. We got all the camp stuff going until the end of the year. Check it out. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. I love you all. God bless and merry Christmas. But specifically, have you heard of the Black and Tans?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

So you. Okay. Americans don't know about this.

[B]

Some of the worst cunts ever is sort of a death squad sent into Ireland, quite literally. Yeah.

[A]

This is like early 1900s.

[B]

Yeah. Was that. It was like. Is that. That's early for Churchill. That is early for Churchill. I can't remember who sort of established the Black and Tans, but it's basically.

[A]

A paramilitary force sent by the British to suppress any type of Irish resistance.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I believe it was around the same time that the Black and Tan sort of fell back in Ireland, that they were quite literally the same. Exact. People were repatriated to go be a paramilitary force within British mandate Palestine.

[B]

Yes. And they trained the IDF and all that stuff.

[A]

And so the Irish are like, okay. We were oppressed by this literal pair of British. British paramilitary guys.

[B]

Same guys.

[A]

It's this exact. It's not like the same. It's the same humans.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And if you consider, like, oh, these two disparate cultures that are different religions, different ethnicities that have this weird sort of coalescence, I think that that is a major thread.

[B]

Yeah. There's crazy. Like, you see pictures of, like, Palestinian kids, like, from, like, last year holding a sign that says, Free Northern Ireland.

[A]

Really?

[B]

And that's so crazy.

[A]

They're looking out for y'. All.

[B]

This is the thing, I think.

[A]

How bad is Belfast? Like, guys, thanks for the attention, but let's look at Ireland. Yeah. All right. They need it. They need it bad right now.

[B]

Crazy connection. America to Ireland as well. During the famine, which wasn't a famine, allegedly, there was enough food. The British just took a lot of it. This is the perfect example of how it was sort of like an attempted genocide in a way, like the famine, but where Native American.

Communities, like, donated a bunch of food together and they sent, like, a ship over to Ireland because they'd heard about the famine, right. And it was turned away at gunpoint by the British army because they thought it would negatively affect, like, the economy if, like, free food was coming in.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So they were, like, protecting, like, the GDP fucking country.

Yeah. Crazy. And so there's, like, a big statue of a feather. I think it's in court.

[A]

Yeah, I've seen this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, like. To honor their attempt to, like, it was something beautiful.

[A]

It was like it wasn't the most food, but, like, literally, Native Americans dealing with their own genocide that were sending. I think it was, like, a couple horses and, like, some grain help out.

[B]

And they, like, turned it away because they didn't want anything.

[A]

You guys own a casino?

[B]

I think we should have. No, I think we should have our own casino. I think we should get one of them as well. One of the casinos. Because they're talking about building the casinos in New York.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Like, I think that should be run by Irish people.

[A]

It probably will be. To be honest. I don't know if you've hung around New York a ton, but there's a. There's a couple of patties running around.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But it's interesting. The famine. Is there a famine denial movement, like.

[B]

Similar to Holocaust denial movement?

[A]

Right. Like, it seems like with any great tragedy, there is a contingent of radicals that say it's not happening.

[B]

Well, I think there's, like, the consensus from Irish people is that, like, a famine is probably, like, the wrong word to use for it because one crop failed. Like the potato blight and then. But again, we. I think the perception from around the world is like, oh, Irish people just ate potatoes. So the potatoes failed. And then they were. They all died because they had nothing to eat other than potatoes. But we were growing, like, corn and wheat and had livestock and, you know, all these things. But then the British were sort of forcibly at gunpoint exporting all of that stuff to England to make sure English people were getting, like, fed and looked after at the sort of hard work of Irish people. So there was enough food, but it was, like, just taken away.

[A]

This is mid-1800s.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And the population in Ireland still hasn't recovered.

[A]

Right. It's still less today than it was pre. Fam.

[B]

Shout out to the people who say the words Ireland's full and hate immigrants. Fucking idiots.

[A]

These people just haven't had the right Mexican food. I'm telling you, that's what they need. If you get a couple more burrito spots, legit ones, not Tex Mex actual from Jalisco, you know what I mean? Then they'll be like, all right, we can take a couple.

[B]

I went to Lost Tacos number one. It's supposed to be, like, a good one in New York. And I got the cactus one just because I was like, oh, I should. Similar to the cricket thing. I was like, let's eat the crazy thing. I wish I'd just got, like, chicken or something.

[A]

Yeah. It's a novelty. You can't just put all your eggs in.

[B]

I think it's four vegetarians.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, the cactus one is just like, oh, that's your thing.

[A]

It's actually an interesting place when you come back that I would love to take you to if you're an adventurous eater. It's called the Black Ant.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it specifically specializes in central, like, Mesoamerican ancient cuisine.

[B]

Okay, cool.

[A]

Where a lot of it is imbued with insects.

[B]

Okay, good, good. Protein and insects. Supposedly.

[A]

Now I know that there's gonna be a lot of conspiracy people that are like, oh, dude, the rich wants you to eat insects. That's not what I'm talking about. Okay. This is like an agent wants you to eat. This is a conspiracy thing.

[B]

I was not the conspiracy theory. I've heard. That's so fun.

[A]

Closed, yo.

[B]

Their domain. They don't even have a website, bro.

[A]

I went like, a year and a half ago. I cannot believe that the insect restaurant.

[B]

Is closed by the woke Mom.

[A]

Dude, the elites, bro. The elites wanted us to eat it, and we.

[B]

And we. The elites don't want us to eat bugs.

[A]

Yeah. That's crazy. Okay, So I guess for context, the British have been, I mean, depending on who you ask, treating the Irish unfairly for a long time.

[B]

Yeah. Pushing 900 years now.

[A]

We can argue about time. Maybe it's 700 years. Who knows really? Right. But as time goes on, Easter Monday, 1916, the Easter Rising.

[B]

Yeah. Occupying the post office, which feels very, like, boring. You know what I mean? It's quite a boring place to occupy if you're gonna start a revolution.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Like the post office, like, on some level, it's a funny place.

[A]

Like, if on January 6, Trump was like, we're going to the post office. People be like, what? Yeah, the capital's right there. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no one's getting packages.

[B]

The post office and then occupying it as well. Like, post office is just where there's always, like a line. So, like, at what point did they notice they were like, oh, the line's taken forever. And it's just a bunch of guys stood there with guns.

[A]

We're protesting. They're like, we get it. Okay. Then no one even knows it's happening. That's hilarious. But basically, this moment is kind of like the birth of the IRA in a move, in a. In a way, like in a formal sense.

[B]

Yeah. I would say that it was like the first sort of like the Declaration of, like. And you have your own equivalent of like the Declaration of Independence. We had like, the Irish proclamation, which is like, here's this is our country, blah, blah, blah. A 32 county socialist republic.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it was all like, teachers and poets and artists. That's part of the whole, like, Irish mythology around. Like, our rebellion was led by artists and stuff, which I don't think would work today. Like, if January 6th was all, like, poets.

They'D have the same drums.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I feel like it would be very pass. Aggressive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They would go through the capitalists, be.

[B]

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Be kind of cute.

[B]

And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But basically there's a. You know, there's a standoff, you could say, in this moment.

[B]

And they weren't well supported at the time. Like, the. This. The. The leaders in 1916 of the Easter Rising, like, it wasn't popular opinion, was not that they should do this. Like, there was, I think, a general overall feeling of, like, look, the British aren't great, but we can sort of put up with it. And these are seen as sort of like real rebels who were, like, fighting sort of ideologically rather than, like, for what the people necessarily wanted.

[A]

And the British come in, they try to stop it. They are successful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They eventually surrender. And it doesn't seem like, oh, this is gonna be the start of a massive independence movement, but it is.

[B]

But then it's. Cause they shoot them all. And that really shifted public opinion of, like, oh, like, they just put them to death. Interesting. And there's a very cute story of a guy called Joseph Mary Plunkett. I don't know why his middle name is Mary, but that's his middle name. And he was going out with a girl called Grace Gifford, and they were like childhood sweethearts, and it was all very, very nice. And then he went and joined the easter rising in 1916. And it doesn't Go, well, they all get arrested. They're in prison. And then while they're in prison, the day before he gets taken out and put to death, he marries Grace Gifford.

Cause he was like, I wanna. The last thing I wanna do on this earth is just marry you.

[A]

There must be a million songs about this.

[B]

There's one called Grace, and it is, like, a very beautiful song. Yeah, Very beautiful song.

[A]

I, I. The Irish relationship with music is truly, like. I don't know if there's other places like that. Obviously we've talked about music already, but, like, there's a connection to it in a really interesting way.

[B]

Yeah, it's always sort of been at the core of, like, everything we've done, whether it's political, was. And that's why I know it's 900 years, because we're very good at, like, in. All the songs start with, like, in 1604. Like, it's always like, these are the dates, and it fucking happened.

[A]

All right, well, 1919, the Irish War of Independence officially starts. And the IRA has a pretty, you know, simple strategy. Don't do, you know, open field battle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you're going against the British, and so you just attack them where they're kind of vulnerable. And so you got to find, like, you know, a barracks here or there, a targeted killing on a, you know, an intelligence.

[B]

Even 1916, I think, was tactically.

Sort of timed during, like, the First World War, because the British were, like, essentially, like, distracted or, like, couldn't, like, didn't have the resources to, like, shift over to Ireland because they were fighting on, like, two different fronts. Sort of snuck in the back door while they were fighting in Europe.

[A]

And then I imagine, even 1919, World War I's technically over, but they've been ravaged. They're reeling from this brutal war for, you know, all through Western Europe. That's really interesting. Ah, that's. I mean, I think the same thing happened with, like, Haiti, like, with their independence came from the French after a major conflict. I forget which, but it was the same thing that, like, they were basically so destitute financially, but also militarily from this conflict. Haiti was like, can we be free? And then they fought for. And they got it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Because it was like, okay, yeah, now is the time. It's literally now or never felt.

[A]

Yeah. But I didn't realize the IRA had, like, tactically, they were a bit guerrilla.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very guerrilla warfare. And had to be, because that's the only way to sort of, like, similar, like, Vietnam and stuff. If you have a massive sort of imperial army up against you, you can't just like, you know, it's like a boxer who's going up against like Deontay Wilder.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, you can't stand toe to toe and be like, right, let's fucking swing. Yeah, you gotta cheat, Bob. Yeah. You gotta kick him in the ball.

[A]

Find a way. So they're getting like messenger boys, like newsp farmers. Just like any place that they can basically set up a way to like, improvise weapons, like to meet in secret, to like basically plan these operations more or less. And it kind of starts there and it seems like it just kind of continues all throughout like the 20th century. Like this sort of like stand up pretty much.

[B]

Pretty pretty much. So 1921, correct me if I'm wrong, is when like partition happens. And it's sort of. There's an Irish Republic, the Anglo Irish tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so that's when Northern Ireland, where I'm from, is sort of founded. That's when that sort of starts, which is mad. You know, it's 105-year-old country.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it feels crazy young. And there's people who think that they should have held out for. And the reason that north east coast of Ireland, that northeast portion of Ireland is maintained as part of the UK is cause that's where the most successful plantation was in the 1600s. So lots of like Scottish landowners and like farmers and stuff were like sort of planted in Northern Ireland. And in the north of Ireland, Irish people who had like a farm or whatever, they're like, okay, that's not your farm anymore. These Scottish people own it. Which is why my accent is different to people in the south of Ireland, because ours is heavily influenced by Scotland.

[A]

Interesting. Oh, I always wonder what that was.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because Northern Irish sound different.

[B]

Yeah, it's this.

[A]

Gosh.

[B]

Ah, that makes sense. Big time.

[A]

And so that moment in 1921 just radically changes the geography. There's like, it's a partition, effectively.

[B]

Yeah. A new country is sort of a new nation. Two new countries, I guess, are sort of born. You have like the United Kingdom of Crypto in Northern Ireland, and then you have the Republic of Ireland.

[A]

It also seems like it splits, like the force, like you had this one sort of unified revolutionary force. They have this treaty. People are for it, people are against it. And then that creates its own division almost internally within the resistance.

[B]

Yeah. And there's a feeling in the north, I'm sure, from the sort of republican Catholic side that they've Been somewhat abandoned. You know, like the people in the south sort of took what they could get and then sort of left them to their own things. And it was a really like, it was a state that was designed to always have a Protestant majority and always be run by Protestants. Like all the, the voting territories were like, it was all gerrymandered and all worked out so that like. And also I think voting was based on.

Like property ownership. So you couldn't vote or you got more votes or your vote wasn't worth as much basically if you didn't own the home that you like lived in.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And all of the landowners and property owners were Protestants who were pro British.

[A]

Which is a pretty typical like British common law thing. It's like to vote you have to be a man who owns land.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they did that in America for years.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that basically locked the Catholics out of any political way of sort of self determination or like gaining their freedom via the ballot box. Which is the argument for why if you don't have equal rights politically, that's the argument for like political violence being the only course of action. Because everybody who argues against political violence is like, oh, like you should just like vote and organize and have a political campaign and do it like peacefully. But it's like, well, if you can't vote.

[A]

Right. Well that's the MLK thing. Right. Like the. Was it violence is the language of the unheard or something to that effect that, you know, you try to go through the democratic process and if it's not working, what other options do you have to not be, you know, crushed.

[B]

By reasonably like.

Like reasonably peaceful, I would say between then and like the 1960s, like there's little campaigns here and there along the border and like the 50s and stuff.

And then in the 60s is when it all sorts of sort of cracks off, kicks off in Northern Ireland and it's all inspired like by each other. So there's like civil rights movements in India and then MLK in America. Like, like the Irish. The Northern Irish civil rights movement, which sort of started the Troubles, was very inspired by the black civil rights movement in America.

[A]

Interesting. I didn't know that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, wow. Is there like influence of like music and culture and sort of like spirituals coming out of America that is, that is connecting with the Irish?

[B]

I don't know. I think there was sort of a shared knowledge and shared awareness that like around the world that was like, okay, civil rights are sort of on the agenda and up for grabs and people fight for Them and possible.

[A]

Yeah, it's like a four minute mile thing. Right? Like one person breaks it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And they thought it was impossible. And then within the next five years, 100 people break it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just this sort of. You have to break out of your mental prison first Right. Before you can break out of your proper one.

[A]

We've touched on this briefly, but I think it's helpful for people that don't know sort of the religious political component that I think people maybe if they didn't grow up within, you know, the Christian Catholic worldview, they're seeing this thing against Protestants and Catholics and they think it's solely about sort of dogmatic, ritualistic, theological terms.

[B]

Yeah. And also they think like, what's the fucking difference? Like, do you know what I mean? They're a bit like, why are Catholics and Protestants getting this weird about each other? It's like very little.

[A]

Is it about transubstantiation? Is it about the divinity of Mary? Like what is actually at stake?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Could you just explain the Catholic component as it's imbued to the culture?

[B]

So I think, like you put it quite well in the sense that the Catholic Protestant thing sort of.

It'S like a proxy. Like it just sort of happens to line up with the actual. Like the disagreement is political rather than religious really. But then it's political because people were discriminated.

Against because of their religion. Do you know that sort of way where it's like the oppressed have to define themselves by the thing that the oppressor defines them by and that's what they're unified by. In the same way that like in the Middle east, no, you'd be like, oh, it's Muslims against Jews, like it is. But that's not why it, like, you know what I mean?

[A]

I think even to that point, like Sunni versus Shia, right? It's like you have like the Sunni versus Shia sectarian violence. People are like, oh, is this all about, you know, the secession of the Prophet, peace be upon him, or is this actually a proxy for another conflict? Which is what it is. Like you have Iran that is predominantly Shia and like the rest of the Arab world, specifically Saudi Arabia, that's predominantly Sunni and the most Arabs are Sunni. But you have this like, you have Iran backing these different Shia proxies to cause problems in these other countries, to destabilize them in order to, you know, get access to precious minerals. So all that to say it's like these things are acting both as like ontologically as religious conflicts, but also as proxy conflicts for the political part.

[B]

Yeah. And then so basically, the function was that, like, Irish people, who were those people who were forced off their land, and the land was given to Scottish people. So it was like Scottish Protestants came over into Ireland and were part of that plantation. And then actually, during the famine, if you. There's a phrase in Ireland called, like, if you pander to English people, people would say, like, you took the soup.

[A]

You took the soup.

[B]

And that's because during the famine, if you renounced Catholicism and said you were Protestant, the English would give you soup.

[A]

Wow. I've never heard that before.

[B]

So if you, like, pandered English people or, like, you seem to be, like, tap dancing, for instance, you cave, you take the soup. Soup drinker.

[A]

Oh, you're a soup drinker. Oh, that's fire. I love finding new slurs for people. This is, like, one of my favorite things. And it's deep cut, too. They can't even say anything about it. Wow, that's so fascinating. So it seems like things kind of are, you know, generally stable until the 60s.

[B]

And also, sorry, Catholicism was illegal at one point. I think it was maybe Cromwellian times, where. And you have these sort of. You can still see them, like, these secret, like, altars in, like, forests and stuff, where people would, like, secretly congregate and practice their Catholicism because otherwise they would be either killed or sent to America. Wow. So that sort of existed as part of, like, a Catholic rebellion. There was also. The Irish language was.

Criminalized, which is sort of like, it's going through a bit of a resurgence at the minute. Like, the popularity of the Irish language, specifically. Yeah. And I was like, I'm like, I'm signed up to do a Irish language course in January.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

For, like, two hours on Monday nights.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting.

[B]

Like, 10 weeks.

[A]

I mean, didn't this happen with the Scots, like, before the Battle of Culloden, with the British that they, like, banned, like, the tartan?

[B]

They do crazy things. And it's like, they seem to ban. Like, the harp was banned in Ireland, really? Because it was seen as, like, a rebellious instrument.

[A]

The harp. The harp, yeah, the harp.

[B]

The one that you have massages to. The harp.

[A]

The instrument angels literally play just the buns of British.

[B]

Oh, no, not the harp. Don't play the harp. No, please.

[A]

But I get it, like, in the sense that if you're trying to crush a people ideologically, you need to strip.

[B]

Them of their culture and strip them of their identity. So I think there's a big movement at the minute, that Irish people should sort of reclaim their identity by reclaiming our language. There is a feeling, and this feels very wishy washy of like, I only speak English. I don't speak any other languages. Like, you know, like touristy Spanish, touristy French, but like, I speak English and that's all. That's the only thing I speak fluently. But there is a feeling of like, it still feels like your second language. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's something in me that's like. And then I read about how the Irish language functions and do you know there's no. And Irish people speak English in the grammar of Gaelic. So for example, there's no word for yes or no in Irish in Gaelic. So if you say like, if you ask me a question like, are you going to this gay glitter? I would be like, I am. You can't say yes. You always have to use the verb.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

So that's why Irish people talk like that.

[A]

Oh, that's fascinating.

[B]

Like, I am. I'm not. You will. You won't.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So there's no yes or no. There's just this sort of.

[A]

Oh, there's another interesting one. I actually saw this from Noel Gallagher, but he says something like, which I know he's from Manchester, but I think their family is.

[B]

I think they're Limerick people. His mom and dad.

[A]

But like, he would say, like, will, like, I will do or something. Like, I don't even know exactly how he said it. But like, like I, like I, I forget exactly what it was. But it was like, I will. I. Like, I will do. Yeah.

[B]

Well, there's also like asking, like, would you like a drink? It's. Or like, do you want to drink? It's like Irish people more likely say, like, will you have a drink? Or like, are you having a drink?

[A]

Right?

[B]

And it's just this. It feels more leading. There's something like, yeah, you will. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you, like, you will.

[A]

That's why you drink so much.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's leading the witness every time. They're not like, do you want to drink? It's. Are you gonna have one? Yeah, because those are very different questions. I never want to drink, but I will have one. Yeah, I will, I will have.

[B]

You will have one.

[A]

It's almost predetermined. It's outside of my control.

[B]

I'm not asking if you want it. I'm asking if it's going to happen.

[A]

Because I don't want it. But I Will have it. That's fascinating. I can see that being conflicting as an Irish person, because you're looking back at your history. You only speak your. The. Your English language. You don't speak the language of your ancestors, but you do speak in this sort of like, there's a. There's an element of the DNA still there linguistically.

[B]

Hiberno English is what people call it. Hiberno. Ireland was known. Known as Hibernia, which I think was the Romans, which means the land of eternal winter. Because I think the Romans got there and were like, this place sucks.

[A]

It's a little dramatic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, just go open an ice cream shop, do what the actual Romans are doing. You know, that's so funny.

[B]

Which is why there's a football team or soccer team in Edinburgh called Hibernian Football Club, and that's Irish people in Scotland.

[A]

Oh, interesting. Well, also, I want to talk about football. Rangers, Celtics. Protestant, Catholic is another element of this whole political saga. Yeah. And when they play, it is El Clasico. It is like this.

[B]

Yeah. It's sort of massive rivalry, Huge rivalry and sort of occasional violence and deep hatred. And I'm a big Celtic fan, of course. Sort of like you. You just are. If you grew up Catholic in Belfast, it's like you can have a team that you support, like in the English Premier League or whatever, but you support Celtic.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Just sort of passively. It's just part of. Part of being a Catholic is supporting something.

[A]

So it seems like basically, per my research, basically the 60s happens. Catholics in North Ireland are getting discriminated just throughout life there. No government, no housing, you can't own shit. You are in a voting system that is designed to block you out. And Catholic activists in Ireland seeing, you know, this American moment, they're like, all right, it's time. So 1968, police in Derry beat civil rights marchers with batons.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And the footage is now around the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

People are seeing this. Like, there's these.

[B]

Yeah, they marched. They were marching from Belfast to Derry, I think was like, the plan. And they were singing. And you actually said earlier, I think they were singing like, We Shall Overcome, which I believe is like a black civil rights song.

It would be funny if, like, that continued now, like, if there was another civil rights campaign or like a bigger campaign to unify Ireland. But we were doing, like, we gon be all right.

[A]

We done, boys. That's fire. Yeah. It honestly would work. You guys would crush rap, dude.

[B]

I mean, well, kneecap.

[A]

Yeah, there's a couple there's a couple.

[B]

Of y', all, Jack. I think Kojak's a lesser. A lesser known Irish rapper, broadly. But Kojak is a very good rapper from Dublin and he's got. Yeah, I think. I don't think he's getting the. I mean, kneecap are obviously brilliant and getting this huge attention all around the world, but I think there's more. There's like. And Jordan out of Tunji. I don't know if you saw that. He got like. He's from Belfast. He got nominated for a Grammy.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

I think this is so funny. I know half of this because it actually comes out on the 17th on the BBC. I did voiceover for a documentary about Northern Irish hip hop, really, which was very, like, very weird. Like, the whole script was like, from the Bronx to Belfast.

My first ever voiceover gig as well. It was very, very funny.

[A]

From selling crack to what's the crack? Yeah, yeah.

That'S great, dude.

[B]

Yeah. Different accent, same struggle.

[A]

Oh, that's so interesting. So basically, as time goes on, there is this. There's a resentment from the Catholics in Northern Ireland. And then the IRA is splitting into the Provisional ira, the Provost.

[B]

So the IRA still exists in the south as sort of like a remnant of, like, the old guard that, like, fought in 1916 and all of these things. But, yeah, the Provisional IRA sort of decides that armed struggle and, like, bombing campaigns are the way to. Like, that's the option. There has to be sort of a violent side to this, like, just to fight for their freedom and to fight for their rights, essentially. Especially because of that March in 1968. Like, it was a peaceful civil rights march. And they had, like, you know, it was one man, one vote, all that stuff. And they were met with again, you know, batons and bricks and violence. So you sort of think like, well, if you can't vote and you can't protest peacefully, you're left with very few options would be the argument.

[A]

So then you have the Provost on the Catholic side, basically battling the UVF and the uda.

[B]

Yeah, and the UVF and the udf. So there's real sort of skirmishes amongst. And they both are just like sort of paramilitary group.

[A]

It's just civilians kind of bombing just like ice cream shops, pubs.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, where do Protestants hang out? Target that. Where do Catholics hang out?

[A]

Like, it's sort of with the deliberate effort of killing people or damaging property or both.

[B]

Generally. I think the party line of the IRA is that they were never interested in killing civilians. They were Trying to damage property. Which is why they always sort of called up before a bomb went off and was like, evacuate this place. The bomb is going to go off in five minutes.

[A]

Apparently kids would also be, like, patrol. Like, they would have kids, like, bang, Trash can lids to approach of, like, armies coming in.

[B]

Oh, that was the. The women and the children in, like, Catholic areas of Belfast. If the British army were coming in to do, like, a raid where they would, like, try and find, like, guns that were smuggled or, like, stash places. If they heard them coming in, the women and the children would take, like, the metal, like, trash can or, like, bin lids and, like, smash them on the ground so that everybody who was doing bad stuff could stop doing it. It was crazy stuff. And those terraces, like, rows of houses in Belfast where all of the attics is. You use the word attic in America.

[A]

Yeah, the top part.

[B]

Yeah. They were all connected. So if you were running away from the police or the British army, you could go into one house, out the other, down the whole street, out a different house. And, like, everybody in those communities just, like, had their doors unlocked because basically the boys would need to, like, pop in. And also they would just come in and be like, here's a gun. Can you bury this in the garden?

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And you just sort of had to go along with that.

[A]

Everyone was a part of it.

[B]

Yeah. And it would be like a gun would come in. In, like, a place like the Divis Flats, which is. Where. Have you seen say Nothing, the TV show? It was on, like, Hulu. Big recommend on that. So there's a book by a guy called Patrick Radden Keefe who wrote Empire of Pain. You know, the book about the Sackler family.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Sick book. And they made it into, like, a Netflix documentary. And st.

He wrote a book called say Nothing about the Troubles. And it's, like, a phenomenal book. And he writes for the New Yorker, I think. But a lot of that's set in the Davis Flats. And, like, a gun would come in and it would be, like, handed out the back windows of all these, like, apartments and, like, passed along. So no matter where they went in, like, they couldn't. And they went into the next place and it would just go out and around. So they're sort of chasing these guns that were being Pastor Scooby doing around. Apartment complex.

[A]

In one door, out the other door.

[B]

Yeah. Fully big Scooby Doo.

[A]

Turkish, Turkish. Turkish ice cream shop. I thought I had the gun.

[B]

Yeah, it's big Turkish ice cream.

[A]

What's up, people. We're gonna take a break really quick because I have amazing news. I'm coming on the road. That's right. My very first headlining tour, where I'm going to every city that will possibly allow me to go there. I'm going to Fort Wayne, Indiana, Chicago, Hoboken, New Jersey. I'm going to Salt Lake City. I'm going to Washington, D.C. and Charlotte, North Carolina, in February. Those tickets will be announced soon. And of course, I'm doing my monthly show at Mary Lou in New York City on December 16th. The best comics in the city will be coming out, and I'll be working out some new material. It is a grand old time. You can get all the tickets at Mark Yagnon Live, and I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. And this seems like it culminates into Bloody Friday. So the IRA is dealing with informants internally. They're, you know, they're. They have their own sort of, like, process for people that are going to the British side, and then they're playing snitches.

[B]

And totes is our word for it. T O U T S touts.

[A]

What is that?

[B]

Like, snitches.

[A]

Does it translate in a way, or is it just the word?

[B]

So, like. Yeah, it's basically, like, for, like, sort of like, to snitch on someone.

[A]

You're touting information.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

And they were fairly brutally dealt with, whether it was a kneecapping, so, like, being shot through the back of the knee or, like, driven over the border to the south. And either your. But if you were, like, a tight. Your body would be, like, dumped at the side of the road with, like, a bullet in the back of the head to be like, this is what happens. And they would. If there was any women who would, like, fraternize with the British army, they would be, like, tarred and feathered and, like, chained to a lamppost.

[A]

Horrible, horrible stuff.

[B]

And the ira, like, as much as ideologically, you can argue for them or whatever, undeniably a lot of them were, like, horrible, horrible. Like psychopaths. And it's the same in any war. I think war attracts people who want to do horrible things. And now they have a justification.

[A]

Yeah. And then also horrible things in addition to that, like the generational components of trauma. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like people are acting in violent, malicious ways.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they also, like, killed a lot of people for being informants who weren't informants. And they basically tortured confessions out of Them, but that, like, you. You can torture anything out of anybody.

[A]

If you really want to. This is not reliable information.

[B]

And a focus of the book and the TV show saying nothing is this woman, Jean McConville, who is a mother of 10 in the Davis Flats. And she. The story goes that there was a soldier who'd been shot, like, on the sort of walkway outside the front door of their apartment.

And she went out and, like, put a pillow under his head, basically, as he, like, sort of died.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And then it was, like, spray painted on their door, like, Brit lover and, like, all this stuff. And then it went, right. She was, like, taken away and, like, disappeared. So I think it's 13 people were what's called disappeared during the Troubles, where they were never. Their bodies weren't left in the street. They weren't, like, killed outright anywhere. They were just never seen again. Sometimes, like, a postcard would be sent from Australia and the IRA would, like, spread misinformation. It was like, oh, yeah, he's in New York or he's in England. Like, he's been seen here, been seen there.

[A]

He's a runaway. We never.

[B]

Yeah, whatever.

But then, like, there was a huge campaign for the disappeared for their bodies to be, like, located. And then people like Jerry Adams, who was never in the ira. That's his. That's like, the party line of Jerry Adams is that he was never in the ira. Even if you speak to anybody who was in the IRA at that time, he was in charge. Like, it's. It's crazy, but he's not a politician, so he can never admit to having been in the ira. The Syrian guy's doing the same.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

At the minute, where he's like, no, no, it wasn't me.

[A]

Yeah, different guy. It was my brother.

[B]

Yeah, but. So he was part of that whole thing. And Say Nothing is a really brilliant sort of, like, book and TV show. As with any historical thing, like, people would argue it doesn't cover every single aspect of the book.

[A]

It doesn't say it the way I like.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, you forgot this one thing. And it's like, yeah, it's a big book already. Like, there's only so much you can put in here. So very conflicting feelings around all that stuff. Where the IRA did terrible things. It spawns from a civil rights movement without the terrible things happening, without the civilian deaths, do you achieve the peace that you eventually achieve? Do Catholics get sort of equal rights? Do you lead to what feels like an inevitability of a United Ireland. Like it's these questions that you'll never have answers to. Where you go, like you'll never know. You'll never know. If this many people needed to die or if half that number of people died, would you have still been able to achieve the same thing? They definitely wrongfully killed people and had some horrible people involved.

[A]

That's the nature of Warren Conflict. Right. Like again, I view history maybe unemotionally, maybe I should be more emotional, but I just look at it as sort of like this is what happened. Right. Like, were the American revolutionary forces justified in the rebellion against the British? I don't sure. Like, but it just is. It's just.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And did civilians die in the American Revolutionary War? Probably, yeah. Like there was. Was it a good movement that got co opted. Were there bad actors in a good movement? Sure. Again, I'm just, It just is.

[B]

But the guy, Freddy's Capitci, who was known as Steak Knife, he was the head of what's called the nutting squad. So they were, their job was to find informants and get rid of them from within the ira. Turns out he was the biggest informant the whole time. And this is all like the horrible like dirty muckiness of war where he was feeding back to the British like Secret Service and the Special Branch and the army the whole time. And he would say, oh, we've got this guy lined up to be killed for being an informant. And the British knew that that person wasn't an informant, but they didn't stop him killing that innocent person because.

That would have given away their top informant Right. In the ira. So for the sake of holding on to their like tout, basically kill the. They knowingly just like let innocent civilians be like tortured and murdered. And there's a great podcast series on that called Steak Knife, but it's S T a K E Knife. There's Scarpatici Steak Knife.

[A]

Another Italian.

[B]

Another Italian in Belfast we don't have the best reputation, but he turned up recently, like a few years ago he turned up in Guildford in England and then died a couple years ago. Wow, horrible guy. Supposedly the way they got him to be an informant and they had all sorts of different ways of getting people to be informants is they found animal porn on like his computers and they were like, we'll out you, we'll like tell everyone about this or like arrest you for whatever the fuck.

[A]

Like actual animal porn.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Having sex with like a Welsh woman.

[B]

Okay, that's, that's, that's nasty stuff. And I would like, to disavow.

[A]

That's. I don't even know the Welsh. I just thought that was the other place.

[B]

Yeah. That was a stray bullet there. That was fucking crazy.

Needless.

[A]

And we'll cut that. We're back in.

So they're fighting. They're. They're planting stuff on their computers.

[B]

No, he actually is into animal porn.

[A]

Okay, okay.

Okay. So they actually.

[B]

So they would find stuff about these people that was like, either arrestable, humans and animals. Very embarrassing. I think a mix.

[A]

Because if it's animals and animals, I think we need to.

[B]

I think it's a bit of both stuff. And then maybe. I don't know if he's one of the one that was. Some of them are like pedophiles. Yeah. And stuff. And they were like, okay, if you work for us.

[A]

Yeah, you'll get immunity.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Classic.

[B]

Classic.

[A]

Sort of like informant ship.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

What do you need? We will give it to you.

[B]

Yeah. Whether it's money, whether it's promise of safety, or you get caught doing one thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's like, okay, well, there's. You can go to witness protection.

[A]

Yeah, interesting.

[B]

Double agents, triple agents.

[A]

So I have a thing about the nutting squad, which we'll get into. But Bloody Friday specifically is this moment.

[B]

So that was organized supposedly, by all accounts, by Jerry Adams. Wow. And Brendan Hughes. Those were like, the two leaders of the Belfast Brigade. Allegedly. Jerry Adams has always denied any involvement in the IRA or IRA related.

[A]

I still want to go do shows in Belfast one day. Okay, well, after this comes out, after you've slandered my name amongst the political class.

[B]

Well, is Jerry Adams gonna whack you?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

We were right.

[A]

On this one day. They plant 26 bombs that detonate within 80 minutes.

[B]

They fuck it up.

[A]

Streets are covered in smoke, blocks are shut down. Like it's an absolute war zone. And the IRA claimed that they sent.

[B]

Warnings, but they fucked up the warnings.

[A]

People say the warnings came too late.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And by the end, nine people are killed. Civilians, teenagers, 130 people are injured. It is a war zone.

[B]

Horrific. Yeah, Horrific.

[A]

And the bombing gave the British justification for a massive retaliation. And they say this can't happen. So 10 days later, British army launches Operation Motorman. The largest deployment of troops in Northern Ireland since World War II.

[B]

When the troops initially arrived in Belfast, the Catholics thought that they were gonna protect them from these sort of loyalist killing gangs. Cause that was a lot of what they were worried about. And Catholic women would bring them cups of tea and Biscuits and stuff. And then it became quite clear that that is not what they were there for.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah, not at this time. So, like. But this would have been before that.

[A]

Right, so you basically have bulldozers going into no go areas that the IRA once controlled.

[B]

Yeah. So the IRA would set up like barricades and like block off streets, sort of like that. What was the. That zone? Was it in Seattle?

[A]

Oh, yeah, Chaz. Yeah, the Capitol Hill town.

[B]

Is that still there?

[A]

No, that was a movement led by artists.

[B]

And, yeah, that's what happens when It's.

[A]

Poets lasted 40 days. I think that was it. But, yeah, a similar thing where it's like, we're here. If you want to get in, you have to kill us. And the state is like, well, we don't want to kill you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we can just. You just have it.

[B]

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But once you start killing us, then we have justification to go in and do it. Which they did. They bulldozed the whole thing. And at that moment, the IRA is forced to, like, kind of adapt. And so controlling these big sections of Belfast is now no longer the case. They need new weapons, new tactics, and they need help, maybe from a man named Muammar Gaddafi.

[B]

Shout out to Gaddafi. So Gaddafi, the plastic surgery looked good right till the end.

[A]

The.

[B]

I mean, he was the pioneer of too much Botox, wasn't he? Yeah, he was a crazy looking. Get a picture up.

[A]

It's like Donatello Versace by the end.

[B]

Man, he looked like a Halloween mask.

[A]

Yeah, it's a bit tough. Yeah, he's kind of melting. He looks like Jafar from this is.

[B]

What Simon Kyle looks like.

Yo, that drip up at the top further up, scroll up, scroll up on the right. Oh, yeah, that's so sick. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, and then with his, you know, army of models, though, that would go around him like super villain, but people actually do support him. Yeah, Like. Like unironically. You're being obviously tongue in cheek, but people are like, no, no, these people love him.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think he might be. Is he sort of an example of one of those guys who. Yeah, you know, Robert Mugabe was like, like started off as like a freedom fighter, like civil rights, blah, blah, blah. And just like completely, like went mad.

[A]

Well, this is how these things go, right? Like you can look at which again, I'm gonna piss off Ethiopians. Haile Selassie, you know, he's like, hey, we're gonna take Ethiopia back from the Italians. And then you get power, become a dictator. You become a demigod by the Rastafarians, and then a couple Tigrayans are killed in a famine and then some Somalis die, and it's like, yeah, these things become. Yeah, it's almost absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[B]

What is it?

[A]

Saddam is the same way.

[B]

Is it in the Hunger Games where Katniss Avenue, like, kills the leader of the revolution, like, on day one of them. Like, I didn't see it. You haven't seen Hunger Games?

[A]

I have a lot of stuff to catch up on, brother. I know.

[B]

This is like. It's a super gay film to be like, that's sick.

[A]

It's not the Hunger Games.

[B]

Every movie.

[A]

I haven't seen movies.

[B]

Oh, oh, yeah. Was telling me that you don't watch movies.

[A]

It's not on purpose. I just. It's a whole. This is going around. Aaron, what the hell, dude? That was between us, bro. It's a whole thing.

[B]

Look, I heard you just hate films and stories.

[A]

I don't know. That's not. Don't sit. Don't. Don't. You don't even start with that, all right? I love films. I love the narrative. Okay. The art of storytelling is a passion of mine. I just don't have time. Get busy. I get busy.

[B]

We're on flights all the time.

[A]

I read books about Libya.

Obviously. Obviously, that's what I'm doing. But, like, to this point, Saddam, he's like the bath party of, you know, Iraq is like, hey, the British are us over. We can create this Pan Arab League where we kick out our colonizers and we all. We save our people.

[B]

You're like, nice, Arab Spring.

[A]

And then you get your kids in charge and they start murdering people and stealing women at weddings and, you know, wanna.

[B]

Is it. I think some of Saddam's, like, descendants are still, like, around. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, Uday and Koussay were killed, but I'm sure he had a litany of children.

[B]

Somebody. Somebody came out against something recently and it was very funny that they were like, what this person's doing is disgrace. But it was like one of Saddam Hussein's, like, nephews or something crazy.

[A]

Well, then it would know evil, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But basically Gaddafi at this point is the ruler of Libya. And the IRA is looking for. They need some support.

[B]

And Gaddafi is on a mad one at this point. He is funding just chaos around the world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He just looks around and goes, right, who's doing the maddest shit? Yeah, have some money, have some guns, do whatever the fuck you want.

[A]

And also, like putting a thorn in the side of the British.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Any kind of colonial Western thing. He's like, that's under.

[A]

So he's shipping weapons to the ira, like rifles, machine guns, surface to air missiles.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Are getting sent.

[B]

Why the fuck did the IRA need those?

You know what I mean? There's no airstrikes on Belfast, I guess.

[A]

If you're gonna get it. You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, if he's. I bet like fucking Jerry Adams was like a rocket launcher.

[A]

Yeah. He didn't ask, do you want a rocket launcher? He said, you're gonna have a rocket launcher. He said, yeah, I am gonna have a rocket launcher, actually. And the shipments now are changing the scale of the conflict. And so the Libyan connection almost had a moment to change the entire thing. In 1987, one of the biggest shipments, 120 tons of weapons is seized by French authorities. And this is. I mean, it's a major loss, but like, you have to think 120 tons of weapons could have changed the entire conflict.

[B]

Yeah. Crazy. It's funny, they had these like sort of missionaries going around the world, like, convincing, like they came to America a lot. And a lot of the. What's it called? Norad. Was a lot of fundraising done in America for the cause? Yeah, yeah. In like Boston and New York and stuff. There's all these.

[A]

Oh, interesting.

[B]

And they would just go around to like these Irish community centers all around the world and depending on the state that they were in, they would like push either element of it.

[A]

I'm sure the church here and there, they're already collecting money for sure.

[B]

And if it was like a left leaning state, they would push the anti colonial liberations and the civil rights side of it. But if it was a right leaning state, they would be like, oh, it's a republican movement that's anti the Crown on the same ideals that America was founded on. And they would just lean towards either direction of it. And I had a crazy one recently. So Brandon Hughes, who was known as the Dark, he was in the Belfast Brigade and he used to be in the merchant navy and he used a cruise liner called the Queen Elizabeth II to like transport guns from America to Ireland. And when I did my tour show in Dubai, which I regret, I. There's. So the QE2, the Queen Elizabeth II, that cruise liner is just like in Dubai permanently, just like in the docks. And my show was on the boat, in the theater of the boat. So I performed on the boat that used to run guns for the ira.

[A]

I mean, that's a pretty good way to do it. Yeah. That's crazy. How was the show?

[B]

Yeah, good, fun. Kind of crazy. Like, weird place. It was 95%, like, not locals.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And like, so there was like two people from Dubai there. And then it's all these just like Irish T shirt teachers who are like, I'm just trying to make some money so I can go back and buy a house. That's.

[A]

So they're getting all these weapons, which I think not a lot of people realize. I didn't know that before I even started looking into this. Like, that they're just getting shipments of weapons kind of from around the world. I mean, America, Libya specifically. But now this is causing a massive issue for the British because they're like, okay, we have this rebel force that hates us and now they're getting massive funding from foreign governments.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like, this is an actual. This is not like, little, like, the fact you guys called the Troubles is what's crazy.

[B]

And it was never. It was never declared as a war by the British or by anybody.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it is just like it exists in this sort of liminal zone where it doesn't have the same protections legally. Like, I'm sure you have something about Bloody Sunday in there. The people who did Bloody Sunday, which is basically there was a civil rights march in Derry in the 70s and.

The British army just opened fire. Like the parachute regiment just opened fire on the crowd and like 13 people died and were like shot in the back and they were all unarmed, blah, blah, blah. And the results of the trial, which concluded three weeks ago, like today. Three weeks ago, yeah. Was that the regiment acted unlawfully and killed those people unlawfully, but they couldn't arrest any or put. They couldn't imprison any of the. Or convict any of the individuals. And I'm like, well, who the fuck who did it?

[A]

It's just a little murder mystery.

[B]

Yeah. Crazy. So he's known as like, Soldier F.

[A]

The guy that did it.

[B]

Yeah. And what, like, basically they couldn't absolutely prove, I think, that he. That it was like a bullet from his gun that, like, I guess.

[A]

Yeah. Under the, you know, scrupulousness of the law.

[B]

And I did a fun riff on the podcast a lot of people didn't like on my podcast of like, Soldier F, but like singing Soldier boy.

Soldier F Up in this hoe Watch me cracked up Watch me roll Shoot that protester and Superman that. Oh, you shoot that protester and you.

People didn't like it.

[A]

Why did they like it? Don't they know that you're the voice of Belfast hip hop. Like, they should understand the connection from.

[B]

The Bronx to Belfast.

[A]

Yeah, that's another thing I should probably. I should probably make clear here. I don't have any emotional connection to this. So for me, I'm like, this is history. There are people that really live this that I imagine have a. Yeah. Assorted relationship with it.

[B]

Yeah. And it's very, very difficult. Like you say, it's very easy to be detached and be like, well, this is what happened and it doesn't matter what should have happened. And there's still people who are, like, waiting for justice. And people hate the fact that Jerry Adams is, like, just a politician now when he sort of built his reputation on the backs of people who don't have anything. They were like, they fought for the IRA and believed what they were fighting for, and they fought alongside Jerry Adams and they were getting paid, like, basically the IRA salary, which is just like, you don't have to have a job, like, spend all your time working for the ira, but it's not loads. And these people now just live in, like.

Like apartments and they're. They're all really traumatized. Also a crazy thing is, like, talk about a mental health crisis. A lot of the men and women who were involved.

In the conflict and in the IRA and stuff, they can't go to therapy because therapists in the UK don't have, like.

Doctor patient confidentiality.

[A]

So if you admit to having done a crime that you do to this by. I killed a woman. And I feel so traumatized about it, I can't sleep. Wow.

[B]

So all these people have nobody to talk to, to process these, like, horrific things that they were involved in or they witnessed or whatever. And it's like, I think it's like, massive. There's also a crazy mental health, like, massive uptick in suicide in my generation of people of, like, ceasefire babies. So people who didn't live through the conflict but grew up with parents who were sort of like, didn't talk to us about their childhoods. And there's a disconnect and almost like a guilt that we didn't live through the horrible thing and sort of the ripples of a conflict and how it sort of meets out in the following generations.

[A]

And then, not to mention, like, the parenting style of a father and mother that are traumatized.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, like, we talk about, like, children that are raised by, like, great Depression parents. Like, they live a different life. And I can imagine your parents, maybe not your parents specifically, but Parents that lived in that generation are raising children still with this trauma, and it's sort of passed on without the actual experience.

[B]

And it's little things that you don't even realize. Like, we never were allowed gun toys ever, because my mom and dad were like, guns aren't fun.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Because it was just like, they'd seen too much of it.

[A]

You get given a gift of a thing, a little Nerf gun, and your.

[B]

Parents like, no, no, no, we don't do guns. There's pictures of, like, soldiers on the streets of Belfast next to children, and some of them are, like, very crazy. Like a fully kitted out soldier with like a, you know, AK47. And there'll be like, just a kid stood next to them. And, like, some of the soldiers would, like, let the kids, like, hold their gun or do whatever and, like, very weird place to sort of grow up. Yeah, look at those.

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's so recent. Like, this kid is, you know, seven.

[B]

Year old, just going to school, little sort of rucksack on. And a British soldier with the biggest gun you've ever seen. Like, that gun is the height of the child, literally.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Very crazy. Very crazy. But then kids would also just, like, throw stones at them. That's the thing people don't talk about either. Riots are fun. I'm. I've not been involved in any of those. But if you talk to anybody from that generation who was involved in, like, the skirmishes or like, throwing petrol bombs or like, you know, Molotov cocktails or any of these things, they're like, it was exciting and fun.

[A]

That's so funny.

[B]

Like, and people are fine.

[A]

I can imagine. Like, there's an energy, there's a. Everyone's kind of doing like you're feeling. Yeah. Like, it's like being at a concert. Like a mosh pit. Maybe. Like, as a proxy, more people have experienced where it's like, it's violent, but you're not trying to hurt each other. You know, you're just fucking angry and, like, you're getting it out.

[B]

Yeah. And you're, like, emboldened by ideology. And I think that's often the thing with war and stuff is, like, people like, particularly men between the age of like, 16 to like, 25, they just want, like, some. They need. They want somebody to go, here's what you need to do. Because with so much energy and just like, I need to be doing something. And somebody goes, okay, here's a righteous cause. Like, this is what we believe in and this is what you should fight for. It's the right thing to do to serve your country. Put all your energy into that. Yeah. And as a 16 year old, like.

[A]

Thank God I had like the opposite.

[B]

Problem of like when I was 19, I was like, God, what am I doing with my life? I need to figure this out. I would have loved somebody to come along and go, hey, run in that direction.

[A]

Take this brick, throw it in the.

[B]

Window, Run in that direction. Do this.

[A]

Well, that's, this is. I talk about this all the time. But like Sebastian Younger, he's a war journalist. He did the film Restrepo, which I think won some awards and he talked about PTSD with soldiers coming back from war in the Middle east back to America. And he says the PTSD begins once they return home.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that it's not necessarily from. It is obviously what they've done and what they've experienced and what they've gone through, but it is more so the loss of the support system. So you leave and you're no longer with people that understand you. You no longer are competent. You were trained for one specific job and you were the best person in your platoon to do it. And now you're in America where like you're selling insurance and that's your whole self worth.

[B]

Is I am the guy that can do this thing.

[A]

Yes. And then you lose your purpose.

[B]

No longer needed anymore.

[A]

You don't like your purpose is now gone. Whether it's for fighting for your nation, fighting against terrorism, fighting, you know, to get your kids to go to college, whatever your thing is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And now you're back in America feeling.

[B]

Like, I think there's lots of men.

[A]

In Belfast that feel that, that there was a unity. I mean the French are notorious for their protests and like the Gilets Jean protest that was happening in Paris, you know, for workers compensation. Even after the secession was made by the French government to appease the unions, they continued to protest.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they just wanted to hang out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like for three months after the pro, they were like, what are you protesting for? They're like, oh, nothing. Like our means are met. But like this is my people, that's what I do. We come out here every Saturday and we do this.

[B]

Yeah. Like the IRA was like a social like community thing for a lot of people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's that sort of link to the church as well. And I think we lose that nowadays because people aren't, this is why I'm going to become crazy religious.

[A]

Now we're talking. Here we go. You're Going to. You're going to become a man of the cloth.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Also, I'm sorry for my.

[B]

No, it's okay. It's quite exciting.

[A]

My erectile.

[B]

Just a little bump because it sits there and it's fine. And then it just loses its mind. But it's very.

[A]

I think you can punctuate some good jokes.

[B]

I've never used one of these little. I like them. The low. What they call the low profile.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Mike thing. But little.

[A]

New addition.

Low enough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The hunger strikes. Another interesting ripple in this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So the 1980s. You're familiar with Bobby Sands?

[B]

Very familiar.

[A]

This is a thing that is taught.

[B]

My great uncle served at his funeral.

[A]

You're lying.

[B]

Father Liam Moen. That's my great uncle.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And he also baptized Liam Neeson.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah, same guy.

[A]

Wow. That's your great uncle?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's wild.

[B]

Yeah, my granny's brother.

[A]

So could you explain who Bobby Sands was?

[B]

Bobby Sands, Boy from Twinbrook is what he's known as often. He was a member of the ira, and there was a thing called internment, which is basically, you could be put into prison without trial on suspicion of being in the IRA or in a paramilitary group.

[A]

This is the Maze prison, specifically.

[B]

Yeah. And then there was. I'm quite bad at remembering all these things. And then there's like the hitch blocks as well. And basically what the prisoners wanted was political status because they weren't like. They wanted to be viewed as, like, freedom fighters and political prisoners because they were fighting for a political aim. But Margaret Thatcher at the time was very against that. I think she sort of actually joined in the middle of it, and it was a real sort of thorn in her side the whole time. And they did try. And the IRA did try and blow her up and got very close right to Brighton bombing. Great book about that. It's called Killing Thatcher, which I think is going to be made into a series. And if it isn't, I'm going to try and make it into a series.

[A]

That's fascinating.

[B]

So sick. Because each chapter goes like, you're in the police headquarters trying to find the people that blew it up. And then the next chapter, you're the guy who's, like, planting the bomb and trying not to get his fingerprints anywhere and doing all this stuff. And can you imagine a series where it's like a bomb plot, but each episode, one episode, you're on the, like, you're following, like, the bomb side of.

[A]

It, and then you're on.

[B]

And then you're on the baggy side and I think that would be like, you know, to alternate those points of view episode to episode. I think it'd be very cool way to.

[A]

Especially if you tell both perspectives with what their actual goals are.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Like what they think they're doing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because then you kind of leave it being like, I see both sides.

[B]

And then with the. Like in the book, it does that really, really well. But anyway.

[A]

Well, basically, there's this plot to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. IRA member Patrick McGee checks into a hotel and brought components for a long delay bomb. And he built it within the sixth floor and then hid it in the bathroom.

[B]

Unscrewed the panel from the bathtub under there.

[A]

And the goal is to literally, like, strike the hotel at night. So Thatcher is staying on the first floor. But the design made the interiors vulnerable. Each bathroom sat directly above the next in a straight vertical shaft, meaning that if the structure failed on the upper floors, it would collapse onto the lower floors. So 2:54am On October 12, the bomb exploded, blowing out the central spine of the hotel, causing floors six through one to fold into each other. Kills five people. Thatcher survived only because she was awake in the sitting room reading over her conference speech while her husband Dennis had gone to sleep. If you look at the bathroom, like, you can see it's destroyed.

[B]

Yeah, she'd been gone for a. She'd be dead.

[A]

Crazy.

[B]

Truly would be dead.

[A]

9.30Am, hours after a rescue operation begins, she insisted that the conference go on is scheduled. But the message from the IRAs, which.

[B]

Is like, I think she's a horrible lady, but that was such a baller move.

[A]

Yeah, it's badass. It's like on some Trump, like, say.

[B]

What you will, but be like to.

[A]

Get shot at and then stand up. Yeah, it's like it optically says a lot to you.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And yeah, it sends a pretty clear attack sign.

[B]

Yeah. So that's after the hunger strikes, because the view was that she'd let those people die by not, like, acquiescing to their sort of demands to be treated as political prisoners. And the distinction of being political prisoner means that you don't have to wear a prison uniform and you can, like, associate freely and, like, mingle amongst each other and sort of hang on.

[A]

And then there's a big prison escape that happens that we didn't fully get into, but.

[B]

But then. So, like, a lot of the IRA prisoners refused to wear the prison uniform, so they became what's called the blanket men. And like, the like did the blanket protest where they would just wear Their blankets. And then there was a dirty protest where they would like refuse to use, refuse to wash and then refuse to use like the toilet. So they would like smear their. All over the walls. And it's crazy. If you get a picture up of like the dirty protest in the hits blocks, I think it's either the hits blocks or the maze. It looks grim.

That's their all over the walls. Isn't that. Yuck.

[A]

Damn. And what is the idea that this protest would send a message to the British to say like, hey, yeah, I.

[B]

Guess it's like, if you're going to treat us like animals, we're going to behave like animals and just. Cause like, just make it horrible. Yeah, just make it really, really horrible. And then in a similar vein, there was the hunger strike. So I think they were staggered. They started the hunger strike so like one person would start and then a week later the next person would start. And the idea was, I think they all had to sign a thing to be like, I'm ready to die. Like I. I will, I will not do. I will not eat until I die.

[A]

Wow. And many of them did.

[B]

I mean, by the. Lots of them did. So. And the idea of like staggering the start of the hunger strike was that like, they would die. They wouldn't all die at once, essentially. So it'd be like week after week after week. So it would like mount pressure and pressure and pressure on Thatcher and I think Bobby sands last like 66 days on hunger strike. And it's crazy. Like go blind. Like your body just starts to completely eat itself.

Yeah. And then he died. I don't think they did the force feeding. There was this pair of sisters that come up a lot and say nothing. The Price sisters, Dodo's Price and Marion Price, they went on hunger strike in England because they were put in a male prison and they wanted to be sent back to a prison in Belfast because they did a bomb at the magistrates court in London.

And they were force fed during their hunger strike and then they were like very close to dying and then it was like called off. I think because they were women, it would have been seen as like, much worse to like let them die.

[A]

Right.

[B]

In the same way. But then. Yeah. Was it 66 days? Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That was 1981. Bobby Sands died on hunger strike. And I think It's. Is it 12, 12 hunger strikers died. I think.

I could be so wrong on that. But they, that felt like a big moment. Bobby Sanders was also elected while he was in prison.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like to I think it's Fermana seat of like, he became a member of parliament from prison and that was very, like, legitimizing of like. Well, of course he's a political prisoner.

[A]

He's literally a politician.

[B]

He's a politician. Like an elected.

[A]

Oh, I see.

[B]

Politician.

[A]

Was that an attempt to try to help him or was that just a show of solidarity amongst people?

[B]

I think an attempt to try and sort of help him get political prisoner status. Yeah.

[A]

Interesting. And then.

[B]

And it was sort of legitimizing. So this was the point where the provisional Iraq had the tactic that they called like the Armalite and the ballot box. So the Armalite's like a type of gun, I think. So they wanted to combine both their sort of violent campaigns with a more political approach to try to get elected and, like.

[A]

And are they getting more political access at this point now than they were in the 60s?

[B]

Yeah, well, they're getting sort of elected.

In certain places that are sort of Catholic strongholds and.

Sort of meeting with the British to try and figure out a way to end this conflict gradually over this whole process.

[A]

Right. And then the snipers of South Arma Armagh.

[B]

Arma Armagh, yeah.

[A]

This is not something that I was familiar with. In the early 90s, the IRA basically needed methods that didn't require groups, bomb setups or anything too high risk. And so they start to get these disciplined units that could operate quietly and using these Barrett.50 cal sniper rifles.

[B]

Like from Call of Duty 4.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Modern Warfare.

[A]

So the Irish are literally purchasing snipers legally in the United States by using people with clean records who supported the cause. And then they would ship the guns overseas, take the rifles into Europe and then smuggle them into the Irish coast using fishing boats. And then once they were in Ireland, the guns were concealed in farm buildings. And then with the rifles in place, the IRA formed two dedicated sniper teams. And when the sniper teams fired, it was always during these small, predictable soldier movements and with no real warning. And so the first one was the Ghost sniper attack in May 1990 near the village of Keedy.

[B]

I don't know how you spelling that. K E A D. Y. I'd say maybe K A D. K E, D. Yeah.

[A]

And the Royal Highland Fusillers Patrol stopped near a checkpoint and killed one of the soldiers immediately. And then another one happened in 93 on the outskirts of Cross Maglin, Cross McGlan, Cross McGlynn. And one of the most heavily militarized times like towns in the area also.

[B]

If you haven't, as most People who are listening to this won't have been to South Armagh. Like, I can't explain, like, driving around it. Like, there's all these, like, tall trees and it's all woodland and sort of rural. Like, the thought of being a British soldier, like, patrolling around there at that time.

Like, there's just that's. It's sort of known as, like, bandit country, like, in and around the border. So I thought about it was like, right on the border. And it's like, I could, like, I can't imagine how terrifying that would be to just not know the lay of the land. And then these snipers are just like. Who know their way around these, like, horrific lands.

[A]

Vietnam, shit. Right. It's like you have a native population that's using any taxes they can.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

With this patrolling force that's supposed to come through and clean it up. And it's like, there might be a sniper, there might be a bomb under this. You have no idea. And I didn't realize that that was all happening there. And no one even knows who that person is. So there's people that associate it. There's a bunch of different names. The Karahur family.

[B]

Yeah. Karaher.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know anything about them, but people suspect that the family was involved with this operation specifically. And they just called him the South Armor Sniper. And they were just taking out these British units. And then fast Forwarding to the 1990s, mid-1990s, the Good Friday Agreement. British and Irish governments are now talking. U.S. diplomats are getting involved.

[B]

Clinton, yes, Clinton comes over.

[A]

IRA leadership is realizing that they could fight forever without actually uniting Ireland. And the British government is realizing that they will never get rid of the ira. Like, you can control it, but this resistance will exist forever.

[B]

You can't kill an idea type stuff.

[A]

So Catholic and Protestant communities are now exhausted by three decades of bombings and assassinations. And moms on both sides are burying their children on a regular basis. And by 1994, the IRA declares a ceasefire. But as ceasefires tend to be, it was not permanent. Two years later, in 1996, there's an IRA bombing that goes off at London's Canary wharf that kills two people.

[B]

What day it's that? In 1996.

[A]

I don't have the exact date here.

[B]

Just the year I was born. I wonder if I was born on a big bomb day.

[A]

Could you pull up the Canary Wharf in London? The Canary Wharf bombing?

[B]

I used to live near there.

[A]

Really? February 9th.

[B]

Ah, three months before I was born.

[A]

I fuck Ceasefire, baby. You don't Understand what we go through and people are exhausted. So 1997, the IRA announces another ceasefire and this eventually leads to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. And the agreement basically establishes a power sharing government where Catholic nationalists, Protestant Unionists are sharing political control and police are now. The policing was overhauled through the Patton Report, which was a reform for new training oversight rules. And then the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the.

[B]

RUC became the psni, the Police Service. Northern Ireland.

[A]

Yes. Is that still the way it is today?

[B]

Yeah. And this was funny in like 2020, there was a lot of people in the UK being like, God, like, imagine the police in the UK had guns. The police in Northern Ireland have guns.

[A]

Ah.

[B]

So like I've always had like police with guns.

[A]

Cop with a gun.

[B]

Yeah, that's just like. And our police trucks look crazy.

[A]

Really?

[B]

The police vans, it's militarized. Yeah. They're all like mad bomb proof to this day, crazy looking things. And then I always laugh at the police vans in like London because they truly look like a school bus. It's hilarious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The British police are kind of dwabes. They always drive around Belfast all the time.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Kind of sick. I mean.

[A]

Yeah, let me import one of them.

[B]

Yeah, I want to get one of them and like. Or like a decommission one and make it into like an ice cream van. Like, wouldn't that be fun?

[A]

It'd be awesome, dude. That's fascinating. Now there's something in the agreement that's interesting. Northern Ireland's future would be decided only by majority consent. So this meant that Catholics couldn't achieve Irish unification through violence. They would have to convince most people in Northern Ireland to vote for it. And that meant the Protestants couldn't protect the union by keeping Catholics out of government. There would have to be a share. And it's not perfect, but it kind of gives both sides something.

[B]

Some people hated it, some people still hate it on both sides.

[A]

I can imagine. I mean, that's a good negotiations when both sides are angry.

And then you have decommissioning, which is effectively getting rid of weapons. So General John D. Chastelain. I'm not familiar with this guy. He's part of one of the groups that the ira. He's sort of leading the IRA to destroy its stockpiles or. No, he's part of the outside group that is watching the IRA destroy stockpiles and then loyalist groups are getting rid of their weapons. And basically, you know, even after the Good Friday agreement, people are continuing to debate how deep British infiltration is how was the IRA structured? And there's still a lot of looming questions about does the IRA still, you know, does that sort of rebellious force. Is it still existing in the underbelly?

[B]

In the words of Jerry Adams, they haven't gone away, you know.

[A]

Yeah. Which I can imagine causes a lot of stress and tension.

[B]

Yeah, they're still around, like, they're still actually less so now. They've been kind of bought out. They used to run a lot of taxi companies, and there's quite a bit of, like, organized crime on both sides. So what used to be paramilitary organizations are now just sort of like the protection rackets. You know, they'll. They'll sort of. Or like drug dealing and all that sort of stuff.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

And they sort of. A lot of the IRA's thing for a while was that they were, like, policing antisocial behavior. So it'd be like kneecappings for people who were, like, joyriding or, like, stealing or graffiti or whatever, or drug dealing.

[A]

When you say kneecapping, you mean shot through the kneecap. Right.

[B]

Which is pretty. Which is why kneecap. The group are called that.

[A]

Yes. I. I was telling David about this. This is a. It also is a Gaelic term, so.

Nikapam. Have you heard of this?

[B]

No.

[A]

This is a thing I found on Wikipedia that. Okay, let me. Let me pull them up here. Are you pulling it up? Okay, one second. Let me. Let me grab this.

Here.

I'm sorry, my Gaelic is not perfect. Also, I've heard people pronounce it garlic.

[B]

It's not garlic.

[A]

Have you heard that before?

[B]

Gwilga, some people call it. That's like the. There's. Because there's dialects. In Ulster dialect, you would call it the Gaelic language. But in the south, they would much more call it gwealga.

[A]

Gwelga. So there's an Irish phrase. N I C H E A P A I, M. Nichapum. I don't even know how you pronounce that, but it basically means, I don't think so.

[B]

Oh, fun.

[A]

And so they take their name as a wordplay from kneecapping, obviously, which is getting shot in the knees, but then also this Irish phrase, which is like, I don't know. And they say it's intentionally ironic that the group, you know, sings about things that could get us kneecapped.

[B]

Yeah, they do. The IRA don't like it, but they'll never snitch. Which is funny, because people think that, like, kneecap are like, a pro IRA band or whatever, but the IRA aren't fans, they talk about drugs too much.

[A]

Oh, interesting. Yeah. And what does that come from? Like a Catholic sentiment of like.

[B]

Yeah, it's maybe slightly pure conservative or whatever, but kneecap are like my age from Belfast there. Ceasefire babies. Apart from jj, who's the dj.

[A]

Pro vamp.

[B]

Interesting one who was like the. The music teacher. That's why he wears the balaclava. Because he was a teacher and didn't want to get sacked. And then he got sacked.

[A]

They found him.

[B]

I think he needed to leave teaching anyway.

[A]

Probably right.

[B]

Going to get banned from Coachella.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be tough to do, you know, final semester exams.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When you're doing shows. I'm curious, what is the. And again, I understand people are not a monolith, but like amongst you and the people, you know the American idea of the Irish car bomb. The drink.

[B]

Yeah. Pretty crazy to call, like. We don't have drinks called 9 11.

[A]

What would it be? Just a couple shots, you knock them down, they're all falls. But like, I'm curious. Like, we talk.

[B]

They fall in a really, like perfectly.

[A]

Into its footprint at free fall speeds. Seems strange, huh? And there's a little drink on the side that falls over even though no one touched it. Oh, that's so weird. And the guy has an insurance claim against terrorism. It's just a lot of stuff. Anyway, this is a different podcast, but it's a. It's an interesting thing because, like, I went to college in Florida. There's an Irish bar near us that I would go to all the time and they would do these car bombs. You put the shot on top of the Guinness, you bang the table, it falls in. And it sort of. It was like a fun thing. Is there a conversation. Do you guys talk about that? Is that a thing people are aware of?

[B]

We hit Irish Americans. Irish people fucking hate Irish Americans. You guys like, not you, but like, Irish Americans are so racist. Like, so obsessed with being Irish in such a weird way. But seem to use. I think the main thing we hate is that Irish Americans use their Irishness to excuse their racism. And there's interesting books about how, like Irish people were sent over as like indentured servants and would like pick cotton in the fields with African slaves at the time. And. But they could, like, work their way to freedom. They were never considered property and they were never like, owned in that same way. But the way there's a book called how the Irish Became White. And the way that Irish people sort of gained their status in America was by being more Racist to black people.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

By being like, well, at least we're not them. Which is why all Irish people are police officers or in Trump's cabinet.

And. But I would like to keep my visa.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that is an interesting. That is sort of the nature of, like, class warfare, is that if you can keep all the people of the lower class hating. Yeah, for sure.

[B]

Divide and conquer.

[A]

It's like, you know, the. The poor Irish guy and the poor African American dude is like, they have way more in common, but as long as they hate each other.

[B]

There's a woman called Bernadette Devlin who's from Derry, and she was, at the time, I think she was the youngest elected member of Parliament in the history of the uk and she was part of that sort of civil rights movement in Derry. And I think she was on that first March and I think she was at the March of Bloody Sunday. And one of the Conservative politicians in the House of Commons was, like, speaking over her, talking about what happened at Bloody Sunday, but he wasn't there and she was there and she walked across the House of Commons and slapped him in the face.

[A]

No. When was this?

[B]

Must have been the 70s or maybe the 80s. And she got flown over. She was like a big, like, hero and, like, amongst the American Irish or Irish Americans. And she got given the key to the city of Chicago and she gave it to the Black Panthers.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Which is so.

[A]

It's just more like, you know, solidarity symbolically.

[B]

Exactly. And she. Her point was like. Like, she had a real problem with Irish Americans who were being racist. She was like, black people are on our side. They are struggling with what we are struggling with. If you support our cause, you should also support the cause of the civil rights movement for black people in America.

[A]

Oh, that's interesting.

[B]

And that was a huge thing.

[A]

Wow. Was there anything. Obviously, I mean, in an hour and a half, we're not going to cover the totality. Yes. Very Conflict of the Troubles. But was there anything that we discussed or that we didn't discuss that would be worth mentioning in brief, as we wrap up? Or maybe things people should explore on their own.

[B]

I would say, like, book recommendations, like, Killing Thatcher is brilliant. And then say nothing. Nice that there's a book option, because it's quite a chunky book. But also like a TV series, which is really, like. I think the TV series is really well done because the book is so well researched and it's based on the book. I don't think they would ever make a TV show, like, in and of Itself that was that well researched. It's because the book is really well researched, and it sort of comes across really well.

I think, like, a big misconception is, like, the IRA were like, the terrorist group or the paramilitary group, but, like, interesting to learn about, like, that on the Union side, the Protestant side, there were these other paramilitary groups, the uvf, the uda, these types of things that were sort of utilized by the British army to do the dirty work that the British army kind of couldn't get away with.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I mean, my show is a lot about this, actually. The one I'm, like, doing at the minute that I'm about to, like, take on tour around the UK and Ireland and then bring back to America in May. I did it at Union hall the other day.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And it's called you can't say Nothing Anymore. And it's about growing up in the wake of the Troubles, and then, like, the idea of offensive comedy, and then there's loads of stuff about the Middle east and how those sort of line up with each other.

But.

So come see me would be my advice.

[A]

As an expert on the topic.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And if you wanted a digestible way.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. Well, I would. It's so funny in the show, I'm like, I don't know anything about any of this. I am dumb. And I could ask my parents, but they're from, like, the say nothing generation, of course, so they don't talk about it.

[A]

You can't say nothing anymore.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

That's great. Well, Vittorio, thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

I really appreciate this. This was fantastic. And, yeah, check out Vittorio. I'll put the links in the description. You guys can check them out. Thank you guys so much for tuning to another episode of Camp. And let's do this again when you're back, brother Sick. Let's get you to Dublin.

[B]

Look forward to it. Let's do it.

[A]

What's up, guys? Today's episode is sponsored by a little podcast called Camp Gagnon. Yeah, you might have heard of it. Okay. It's a brilliant new podcast that's been around for a few years that's, you know, basically just a host. Just a guy in his 20s trying to figure out life, and he explores the most interesting, controversial topics from around the world. Everything from conspiracy to military to, you know, aliens to religion to history. Everything you can imagine. Okay? So go ahead and subscribe to Camp Gagnon.

[B]

All right.

[A]

And you can also check out History Camp, where that show and that handsome host dive into all the most interesting historical topics. And then Religion Camp, where they dive into all the religion topics as well. And by supporting, subscribing, and liking the videos, you really help me chase my dreams. You help everyone in this studio eat, and you keep the fire burning. Now, let's get back to the show.