Mastodawn

A_Wandering_Albatross Oct 20

I had someone tell me that Antifa were terrorists last night, in a European hackerspace. Because demonstrations can be violent.

Dunno who needs to hear this, but I grew up through the Troubles. I know what *real* terrorism is. It's not violent protests, by any means, even if they are unpleasant and you don't like them.

The inflation of that word to mean anything you don't like has to stop. Just hope and pray that you don't end up in a place that has real terrorism. You really don't want that.

Jenny List Oct 20

Don't get me wrong, German hackerspace adjacent activists can be grade-a fuckwits. But if you think they are terrorists, ask your grandparents about the Red Army Faction.

Jenny List Oct 20

... or ask any Brit over 50 about the IRA.

Ben Evans Oct 20

@JennyList I worked in a space just off Bishopsgate in 2000. When I found out what the rent on it was, I wondered why it was so cheap. Oh.

Jenny List Oct 20

@kittylyst It's amazing how quickly some of this stuff gets forgotten.

Ian Volante Oct 20

@kittylyst @JennyList I'm surprised by this; was there (perceived) squeamishness on the part of potential tenants, or genuine difficulties in renting the place?

@SometimeHippy my guess would be that potential tenants were afraid of negative associations for their brand?
@kittylyst @JennyList

sloth_hug_planet

@JennyList can't forget the UVF and UDA

Jenny List Oct 20

@mactunag Very true.

lpbkdotnet Oct 20

@JennyList it's weird to look back on my school days and just how large a part of daily life IRA bomb threats were

It was 100% normal for some adults in my life to check the underside of their car with a mirror on a stick before getting in

The effects were long lasting after peace too, it wasn't until the 2010s that litter bins came back to a train station I used regularly

I was never anywhere near a bomb going off, but all that was needed to impact lives was a phonecall

Jenny List Oct 20

@lpbkdotnet This indeed.

Advanced Persistent Teapot Oct 20

@lpbkdotnet @JennyList I worked in a building around 2002 that was evacuated twice due to bomb threats. IRA bombings were very fresh in people's minds.

lpbkdotnet Oct 20

@http_error_418 @JennyList indeed! Not just the IRA either, the ALF and related groups had a history that was still being felt in the mid 2000s (we had a couple of buildings evacuated in ~2005 due to ALF-adjacent threats)

Such a strange time to look back on, growing up in it made it normal.

That NI peace deal at the end of the 90s felt so fragile, like it couldn't possibly stick.

Joan of Contention 😷Oct 20

@lpbkdotnet @http_error_418 @JennyList I remember several times my sister was evacuated from places in Dublin city centre due to incendiary devices being planted - at her after-school job in a department store, and a vintage clothes shop known to be popular with teens.

One Christmas when I was 12, in town with my mother, someone stood on a metal covering on the street, giving a massive bang, and I went into full shock thinking a bomb had just gone off.

Jenny List Oct 20

@clickhere @lpbkdotnet @http_error_418 definitely dark times.

Pino Carafa Oct 20

@clickhere @lpbkdotnet @http_error_418 @JennyList And the IRA's terrorism went beyond these islands, too. I grew up in Limburg in the Netherlands. The IRA murdered Australians and others in Roermond and across the border in Germany.

hanktank61 Oct 20

@lpbkdotnet @JennyList Nice memories. Working behind the bar as young Dutch at King's Cross / Euston. In a mixed team from the four UK-countries. I worked European trains 30 years after that, but these few years were real sensation. Guiding public outside the station because bomb-scare. Sitting 4 hrs below Charing Cross in the Tube, smelling the smoke. That bomb went off. Funny: I also worked in smaller stations far from London. People were panicking there, while in London nobody cared really.

Phil Thane ✅Oct 21

@lpbkdotnet
In the 80s we lived near an RAF base (intelligence and logistics, no planes). The base has been built in wartime on a field with a footpath across it and despite war, secrecy, security the footpath remained open. You could walk from the main gate right across the base and out by a little gate at the back, or vice versa. There was a guardhouse by the main gate and a sentry box at the back that was very rarely manned, the gate was left unlocked. 1/2
@JennyList

Phil Thane ✅Oct 21

@lpbkdotnet
Except when the IRA threat level was raised. The back gate was locked and guarded and the guards on the main gate extra-vigilant. You could still use the path though, they just sent a guard to escort you through. The RAF wasn't going to let some terrorists take away the right to walk on a public footpath.
@JennyList

Snooklalala Oct 20

@JennyList
... or any Irishman over 5 about the Brits.

Franchesca Oct 20

@AJSnook2 @JennyList The Brit’s did like to shoot children in the head in my home city, from the comfort of their watchtowers. My dad saw them shoot someone in the back who was going to help another person dying (that they also shot). They also gave weapons and support to loyalist terrorists. Yet English people are always confused when I mention the British civil war, like they weren’t aware it was THEIR war and we were a foreign country or something.

Jenny List Oct 20

@AJSnook2 I am not disputing that.

Joan of Contention 😷Oct 20

@JennyList Meanwhile, Loyalists with links to sectarian murders and drug dealing are hanging around with Dublin-based "patriots" at anti-immigrant "protests" in Belfast.

We're so far through the looking glass, we've lost sight of it.

"Ask any old colonialist about the resistance to colonialism"

Jenny List Oct 21

@burnoutqueen I suspect this isn't the answer you want to or are expecting to hear, but any Brit, or any Irish person over 50 has been through the war, the difficult peace, the reconciliation, and confronting the difficult revelations that resulted. How they handle that legacy of bitterness is up to them; some become more arseholes about it, while most are anxioys to move on and seek a just peace.

Jenny List Oct 21

@burnoutqueen Stating that the IRA were terrorists is just lived experience for us. Fully understanding Bloody Sunday, or the actions of some British Army units or the RUC, is something which if we have any sense, we've made the effort to do.

Jenny List Oct 21

@burnoutqueen for me, the path to understandimg came through listening to the words of Cardinal Cahal Daly, the Roman Catholic primate of Ireland, when he used to come on the BBC in the 80s. He was the only person at the time talking genuine peace.

haui ☭ 🇵🇸Oct 21

@JennyList One reason I don't visit my local hackspace often. It is tiring to have rightwingers on site, unopposed, in the name of "freeze peach".

The core issue is "unopposed". The amount of german capacity for "wegsehen" (looking the other way) is shocking, to say the least.

Simon Brooke Oct 21

@JennyList But the modern British government says that if I wear this shirt, I'm a #Terrorist. And the Prime Minister is a Human Rights lawyer, so he must be right, mustn't he?

But you will be glad to know that the #IDF are the most moral army on Earth. We know that's true, because they say so, and very moral people never lie.

#Starmer
#UKPol
#PalestineAction
#GazaGenicide
#Terrorism
#HeyWhatIsTruthMan

Craig Stewart Oct 21

@JennyList Brit here under 50, I remember the Good Friday agreement being a big deal.

"The Troubles" makes it sound like a bit of a minor diplomatic issue, not regular bombings and soldiers being deployed to the streets of Northern Ireland.

@JennyList over 40. I'm 44 and still remember the bus bombings. Sure things were slowing down but still scary AF. Still annoys me that train stations in the UK don't have bins because of it.

AllesInBewegung Oct 20

@JennyList
The real terrorists murdered RAF members in their prison cell. Without supporting their acts post-war Germany had a lot of Nazis in the establishment. THIS was freightening to the youth I guess

Dudula the Dud Oct 20

@JennyList anyone who grew up in the UK during the 70s and 80s knows what terrorism is. Bombings, shootings, kidnapping, and more. There was international terrorism, with hijacking. Old people holding pieces of paper are not terrorists. Farage is closer to being a terrorist than the blind man they arrested a few weeks ago.

Jenny List Oct 20

@BackFromTheDud they were talking about German antifa who can be let's say troublesome. But yes. Not terrorises, however much they are idiots.

Dudula the Dud Oct 20

@JennyList I think the German antifascist groups have reason to be a bit more proactive. Remember what happened last time?

Jenny List Oct 20

@BackFromTheDud There is that. :)

Franchesca Oct 20

@BackFromTheDud @JennyList Dutch antifa blew up train lines and burned a records office in Amsterdam trying to stop Jews being shipped to their deaths. The largest bank robbery in history was carried out by a Dutch banker (Wally van Hall), to fund the Dutch resistance. Certainly the Nazi occupation considered these people as terrorists. At what point is action that is beyond placard waving acceptable? People are dying in ICE custody right now, and it’s like they already expected more resistance

Konosocio Oct 20

@JennyList protests are terrorism, disagreement is censorship - they haven't seen much of the world, have they. must be nice living at the top of the food chain.

Gentleman Technologist Oct 20

@JennyList and, of course, if your non-violent protest group is going to be classified as a terrorist organisation anyway, then there’s no reason not to start blowing shit up.

It encourages violence.

HighlandLawyer Oct 20

@GentlemanTech @JennyList
"Those who peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable"
~ John F Kennedy

"As well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb"
~ traditional

Gentleman Technologist Oct 20

@HighlandLawyer @JennyList zackly. You’d think this would be well-known by now 🙄

Simon Zerafa (Status:

Amen Civil Disobedience and Criminal Damage is also not Terrorism.

Skjeggtroll Oct 20

I think three boxes have to be checked in order to call someone a terrorist: 1) they have to engage in violence, 2) against civilian targets, 3) with the purpose of effecting political change.

One can always quibble about what constitutes violence or a civilian target or what's a political change, I think one should at least be able to present an argument for each of these factors being present before calling something terrorism.

Jonathan Kamens 86 47 Oct 20

@JennyList My understanding is that the allies in WW2 were pretty violent. Does this individual think that means they were terrorists? smdh

Helgi Crookehorne Oct 20

@JennyList oh sure, that's not terrorists, they say, that's legitimate resistance, just bomb a pub and wear a mask and it's OK, if you're native, right? Hamas are native. IRA are also native. So what next?!

@Helgi @JennyList

Hamas is evil. They held civilians hostage for two years.

Israel is worse. They've held Palestine hostage for 77 years.

Helgi Crookehorne Oct 21

@LevZadov @JennyList there's morals, from the same quran they preach, no shooting random civillians! But maybe they read hadiths? Fatwa? Like one imam al Qassam went to Damascus to get one, that allows massacur of random civillians. Imagine living next to such religious bunch who could start killing you anytime. Because your land used to be to Al Andalus! Or my city, the steppes of Crimea Khanate. Muslim land! Jihadis are on there way with rockits!!

@Helgi @JennyList

Jihadis suck. Christian Nationalists are worse.

Helgi Crookehorne Oct 22

@LevZadov @JennyList in terms of being Russian shills, most of them could be, even if the police grab them all the time. It's both Tommy Robinson in Britain or Thomas Sewell in Australia, their base could praise Putin. So one guy asked, why a Russian troll like Maram Sosli would attack Tommy Robinson, a fellow pro-Zionist Russian shill... but Mimi must be more of an Iranian troll. Resistard much! Raise yer fisting, with machine guns, Mahdi is coming!!

LadyCajAsca (Saca)Oct 20

@JennyList Antifa isn't even an organization anyway... Unless the splinter orgs who agree in one thing 'anti-fascism' count?

Talya (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️✡️Oct 20

@JennyList yeah, the fact that this kind of talk is spreading out of the US unchallenged is really worrying.
a few days ago i listened to a debate on the national radio where they were talking about a potential minister being actual proper neo-Nazi (he claims it's just "my dark sense of humor"), where at some point someone said "but what about [politician] who was filmed with the antifa flag? the US says they're terrorists", to which amazingly nobody replied "and you actually believe that??"

Talya (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️✡️Oct 20

@JennyList
more context about the Nazi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filip_Turek#Controversies
the other politician is Bartoš, but there doesn't seem to be much coverage about this in English, justifiedly as this is not a big deal in any way.

Filip Turek - Wikipedia

Kid Mania Oct 20

@JennyList
Never use the made up word "Antifa" ALWAYS force them to say the REAL word "antifascism".

Jenny List Oct 20

@clintruin it's the word they used, and I am describing the conversation alone.

Kid Mania Oct 20

@JennyList
I know...I was more speaking in general terms. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

sherbang Oct 21

@clintruin I like this principle, on the other hand the gay rights movement had a lot of success by owning labels (like gay itself) that were originally coined as negative and turning them positive.

I wonder which tactic makes more sense in this case?

Kid Mania Oct 21

@sherbang
One word "Antifa" was made up for the purpose of confusion and distraction (did you know there are Americans who actually believe the word means anti-family?)

The other word "Antifascism" is an actual world that means exactly what it says.

I think in this case it is best to get people to use the actual word which means exactly what it says.

Dave Goldsmith Oct 20

Jan.6 was state-sponsored terrorism. Anti-fascism demonstrations like NO KINGS rallies are anti-terrorist.

Jenny List Oct 20

@Dave_Goldsmith well, yes

Robin Barton Oct 20

@JennyList I suspect that is where they will end up as Trump will never let go of power

Ray McCarthy Oct 20

@JennyList
Terrorism is acts to create terror. Burning crosses on your lawn. Beatings. Picture of a drill in the post. A bullet in the post. Indiscriminate shootings and bombing against civilians. Graffiti threatening death. Fake bomb alerts.
That's why though N.I. Assembly isn't democratic, the 1998 GFA agreement is largely a success. Brexit threatens it.

Protest isn't Terror. IRA hijacked the Civil Rights movement and later created terror.