The Northern Irish population voted to stay in the European union, with 55.8% voting to stay. Could this trigger a vote for leaving the UK, and uniting with Ireland?
I've heard it say that Ireland isn't particularly keen on NI mainly for economic reasons. It would prove a drain and a burden. Also many in the North would lose out on certain social and economic benefits (certain healthcare costs for example). It seems these facts are stronger than the ideals of unification. These social and economic factors real and imagined (and magnified and played upon!) during the Brexit referendum played the key part, and thus it was that Northern Ireland voted for the UK to remain in the EU, not for themselves.
I've also heard it say that the old school nationalists feel unsupported. The major Irish historically nationalist party is seen to be almost compromised as they are pro immigration and open borders where historically they were more, well .... nationalist!
Indeed that's a challenge of all nationalist parties across Europe who campaign for independence seen in Catalonia for example. Should a nationalist seeking independence be pro Europe at the expense of their own nation?
> Should a nationalist seeking independence be pro Europe at the expense of their own nation?
It is interesting, that from my point of view, what you're talking about has even no sense. What does "at the expense of their own nation" even mean? Do you mean that any "nationalist" government means isolationism? Have you confused nationalism with nazism? How you equalise immigration and occupation in one sentence is also interesting.
There has been a change. The traditional supporters of reunification are outdated.
The original Irish nationalists would not want a weaker national identity but a stronger one through unification. I've heard that the older supporters feel that something has been compromised. I'm not saying older supporters are racist - rather that the ideals they have of an Irish people and nationhood are not being promoted by their previous political champions. The people hold outdated views. Newer adopted ideals of immigration and open borders are perceived to be more important than campaigning with these older ideals for reunification which many consider to be at odds with each other in some ways.
My impression is that their old views are comfortably dissolving away than being actively or angrily being fought for which leads to less enthusiasm about the issue. The notion of what Ireland is to them is less important now. They have more peace with a corresponding weakening of the Cause.
Many modern people today consider the very notion of national identity as outdated and troublesome. From Ukraine to Palestine, its based on the thorny issue of nation and people. The Troubles were based on the issue of nation and people.
I think you're just using terms loosely. Also I think Wikipedia article on nationalism is pretty good and should remove any confusion.
In my opinion there is nothing outdated in the term "nation". Also, if you're from the US, you need to understand that Europe is very diverse, and there are a lot of nuances.
In the topic of our discussion - nationalism in countries which were colonies or under control of a "perceived" foreign state for a long time are pro-independence from that state first, and their flavour of nationalism is very different than in the ones which were historically "colonisers" themselves.
As an example, you can see that a lot of people which voted for Wales independence, were actually pro-EU, and Brexit actually increased the amount of people in Wales who wanted independence. So Welsh nationalism is very different than British nationalism, however the territories and people can intersect.
So there should be no surprise that Irish nationalism is about governing Ireland independent from UK first, and can be pro-EU, especially, when British nationalists can be against-EU (which may not be the case in reality or not uniformly).
Any national government tries to rule based on the values of their people. And these values can differ from one territory to another.
Also, speaking of Ireland you need to account that almost half of the Ireland population emigrated because of different hardships in the last century, so it is difficult for a county to have isolationism values when its population values moving to different countries as well.
> Most of the troubles we see across the world from Ukraine to Palestine are based on the thorny issue of nation and people.
I cannot speak about Israel-Pelestine conflict, but living in Ukraine I can assure you that you are very wrong here. There is zero issue with the question of nation and nationalism related to this conflict.
Only England was stupid enough to depart from the European Union. Catalonian separatists were actually expecting support from the EU, they had zero intention of not being an EU member state.
I'd wondered a bit about this. Hard to be all that excited as a nationalist when you participate in the EU. It's more about which non-Irish authority you're looking to bow to; Brussels or London.
Biggest benefit to reunification would seem to be that NI would be able to draw in more companies who may be seeking the lower tax rate, which could help the local economy a bit more. That, and rejoining the single market, for however long the EU manages to hang on for.
I suspect the EU is actually what makes separatism viable. Without the EU and related treaties you'd suddenly have a hard border across a previously united country with all the social and economic consequences we have seen in the partition of India or Austria-Hungary.
My understanding is that Irish nationalism (as with many nationalist independence movements) are actually pretty left wing and do not share the characteristics of what we would traditionally consider nationalism.
> I've also heard it say that the old school nationalists feel unsupported. The major Irish historically nationalist party is seen to be almost compromised as they are pro immigration and open borders where historically they were more, well .... nationalist
That's quite inaccurate. The Nationalist movement in the context of Northern Ireland has fundamental differences from "Nationalist" movements elsewhere in Europe, to the point where the name is somewhat misleading to outsiders. Ideologically they were until recently a left-wing liberation movement. You may dispute the honesty or validity of that, but that was the basis of their politics.
These days things are changing, of course, but still, your mention of immigration and borders is, while relevant, not based on a good understanding of the dynamics of the various movements in contemporary Irish politics.
Thank you. Sorry to have confused matters with the usual right wing nationalist associations. My intention was to highlight how the ideas and beliefs of nation and people (or tribe/group identity) towards unification have been challenged in modern times. For the better I might add in that it increases peace.
If Northern Ireland did vote to leave the UK, what would happen? Would the UK actually let them leave? Would the EU allow it?
When Catalonia voted for independence from Spain, Spain arrested the people who organized the vote, and even the EU said they would not accept an independent Catalonia.
Despite police violence meant to disrupt the vote, there was about 42 percent voter turnout, and about 90 percent voted for secession. Nonetheless, Catalonia is still part of Spain.
The scenario is different compared to Catalonia, the Catalonia scenario is more like the Scottish independence referendum, a new country would be created in that scenario.
The Good Friday agreement permits Northern Ireland to leave the UK and to join the ROI, there is no path to independence here.
Reunion can only happen by mutual consent of all people in Ireland, and the document demands two simultaneous referenda to occur to fulfil this, one in NI, the other in ROI.
The referendum in NI, can be called at any time the UK’s Secretary of State for NI, deems that it would be likely that it would prove to be successful. This stance is shared by the Tories and Labour in Westminster.
Unlike Catalonia, there is also likely to be wider support for reunion from other important third parties - namely the US and EU - The United States, both from her people and government, proving to be key mediators in the Good Friday negotiations, and subsequent important negotiations like the Richard Haass talks.
The EU, prior to the UK’s withdrawal from it, funded large regeneration and reconciliation projects within NI. I believe this would continue forward post reunification.
Some years ago I predicted to a Northern Irish acquaintance that Ireland would unify by 2035.
I based this on various things, but primarily because it's the "obvious thing to do". It brings NI into the EU, and that would appear to be a long-term good.
Seeing the UK economy suffer from Brexit, the treatment of NI by Westminster (who mostly pretend if doesn't exist anyway), and ultimately the aging of the UK support in NI, the end result is "obvious".
Ultimately its hard to predict time lines with geo-politics, but I expect to see real movement in this direction over the next decade.
> The Good Friday agreement permits Northern Ireland to leave the UK and to join the ROI, there is no path to independence here.
Which, despite what most people think, isn't the utopian goal of the Catholics there, afaik. More like something they might settle for, if it's pragmatic and generally beneficial to the people. I've been told it's not exactly the golden ticket to the promised land outsiders seem to think it is.
There seems to be this American view that the U.K. wants NI. Nobody wants NI, it’s just that any change from the Good Friday status quo is a disaster for one side or another, both of whom have used violence for their cause.
Democracy is shit when 40% of your country have major everlasting change thrust upon them against their will.
Huh? No assumption was made in my statement about what the UK wants or doesn’t want. Just that a significant, irreversible change from the status quo should probably require a supermajority vote. This prevents outcomes like Brexit where you get a deeply divided nation, or issues related to voter turnout causing an actual minority side to win.
What’s important is that no matter if it’s 52:48 or 92:8, the losing side don’t lose everything. In the case of NI leaving the U.K., all NI citizens who want to should be able to retain their U.K. citizenship, in the case of the U.K. leaving the EU the same should have applied, and the same with Scotland, Catalonia, Texas etc.
I would be no happier with brexit had the result been 80:20 to leave, but if the 20% could have retained their EU citizenship it would have made things far more palatable.
I guess one big difference is that Northern Ireland would probably vote to join Ireland instead of just being independent from the UK. Not sure if that could impact EU’s stance.
‘Getting’ new territories from a non-EU country sounds even worse than allowing a chunk of a member state to become an independent country.
Yeah almost nobody there wants independence. It's either joining Ireland or staying in the UK.
Also if the UK permits the vote as part of the good Friday agreement the EU won't have an issue with it. Don't forget they also had no issue with the Scottish independence referendum when the UK was still in the EU.
There was a bit of doubt whether an independent Scotland could join the EU however, which I believe was mostly why they voted to remain part of the UK (ironically due to the Brexit vote that came after they had to leave the EU anyway, they probably would have been able to stay in the EU if they had voted to leave the UK!)
But if NI joins Ireland there won't be any issue from the EU side I think. The situation will be very different to Catalonia.
It course it would. Unlike Spain the U.K. population is happy with the principle of self determinism (Chagos islands are somewhat special as is an American base with no population for the last 50 years, historical claims to land are somewhat different)
Realpolitik sometimes gets in the way of this - why doesn’t the US recognise Taiwan as a country? Why doesn’t Brazil recognise Kosovo?
If Scottish people want to be independent, or northern Irish, or Cornish, or Yorkshire, or Falklands, or Gibraltar, or Ceuta, or Catalonia, or Crimea, or Texas, or Kosovo. or North Cyprus, then that’s upto the people who live there.
Northern Ireland had a referendum and one side decided as they wouldn’t win they wouldn’t take part. Scotland had a referendum too and decided to stay. There’s been no real change in opinion in Scotland, despite the travesty of the EU vote.
The problem with NI, Scotland and the EU is the opinions is roughly 50/50, whatever you do half the country are losses off.
In reality if the people of Northern Ireland wanted independence they would only want it if they could join Ireland, and joining Ireland would require the Irish government to accept a basket case of an economy, not to mention the continued partisan issues that have plagued the country for centuries, nobody wants change, but as predicted in Trek, an act of terror (brexit) may well lead to it as brexit changed the status quo.
Catalonia wanted complete independence, although as you said though, less than 40% of the adult population wanted it in that vote. Certainly they should be allowed if the majority want it, as long as Spanish citizenship is not removed from any resident who doesn’t want it removed and every resident got Catalonia citizenship as well if they wanted it (my view would be you would only grant independence if over half the adult population agreed to forfeit their Spanish citizenship).
Catalonia would then be free to apply for EU candidate status as a free and independent country, just like Scotland. Spain would not want that, so Catalonia would have to be a small independent country and start from scratch.
Spain doesn’t recognise Kosovo either. Their view is that territory is more important than self determination. See their view on Gibraltar. Spain would thus be unlikely to recognise an independent Scotland or Northern Ireland, and thus EU membership as an independent country would be out.
So with Ireland not wanting the economic drain of the north (only 1 in 8 Irish Republic citizens want unification if United Ireland had to pay), Spain not wanting any independence move to succeed, Northern Ireland is stuck in the continued compromise it has been since 1997. Brexit of course massively damaged everything, and far more want the U.K. to join the EU than want say Catalonian independence, but we are where we are.
Most of the recent polls show that Ireland would support reunification with NI with 60-66% saying yes.
There is one poll from 2015 that asks if you would support it if it means you'd have to pay more tax, is that the one you're referring to? Even then support is over 30%
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_a_United_...
Given a contiguous region large enough to make sense, which Catalonia clearly is, secession should be an option. Denying this is just politicians protecting each other's power.
I doubt the Brexit fallout will trigger a reunification vote, however changing demographics may with time. If it got to the state where there was a clear majority in the north for rejoining it could lead to a vote.
That was DS9, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite"[1]. And the date is 2042. That doesn't exclude a different reference that was made somewhere in TNG but I don't remember any and this episode is very memorable.
Potentially triggering, I am curious how America's would have felt if the script instead declared that Al-Qaeda achieved their aims in the US through terrorism. I am struggling to understand why what happened was acceptable, but this alternative is clearly not.
Meanwhile American media and discourse in 2024 is quite fascinated with the idea of civil war: Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, Alex Garland’s upcoming Civil War, and the Texas border standoff
Your response sounds very distant from the reality you are talking about.
A civil war means people, many people, dying and the rest being emotionally traumatized for generations.
The madness we are in should be solved by more reasonable means before we devolve to war.
A society that is comfortable with contemplating civil war has forgotten it's horrors, and why reasonableness and compromise were so important in order to avoid it.
Wars don't always succeed either. There are civil wars that accomplished making a country weaker. See Lebanon for example. And wars that put generals in power.
Madness would be a civil war in the modern United States. Either you have the best funded and most advanced military in history fighting militias, or fighting itself.
If it's the first, the militias get crushed until they go full on terrorism. If it's the later, it's catastrophic. And then there's always the chance that someone uses nukes, say against the other side's capitol or military bases.
watched a political commentary with the primary cast having views similar to yours pretty recently, i believe the most applicable line that would resonate with your intentions would be "the only good bug is a dead bug"
chilling stuff! interesting future we're headed into with messages like yours being the norm.
Every man who ever owned a slave in the U.S. is dead. Would you say when the last of that cohort died something improved over when the last slave was freed? Or that killing them sooner would have prevented (or even changed) what was done after Slavery was ended?
It's like saying Germany would be better if every Nazi had been shot. Whatever harm those Nazi's have caused Germany was less then the results of killing people on that measure.
So the people who inherited their slaves were all nice guys, that didn't use whips, rape, murder, and separation of family to force people to do demanding physical labor?
The civil war happened because everyone involved knew it was wrong, but one side valued the money higher and invented these less than human ideas to justify it to themselves.
Everyone who owned slaves should have had all their wealth generated from slaves confiscated and redistributed to the people who did the work. They should have been tried for their crimes, some slave owners were way worse than others, and if that resulted in you being hanged because you were an awful human that was particularly murdery and rapey, then we would have all been better off.
Of the four boxes of liberty [1], does anyone believe that anything but the ammo box will be effective at this point in our history?
Free speech exists only in echo chambers, every election is between a shit sandwich and a douche, and a sitting federal judge openly confirmed that our courts of law have little to do with truth or justice.
I would rather face the terrifying anarchy of a revolution than continue to suffer the indignity of the current tyranny.
Do you enjoy a steady supply of food, fuel, electricity, clean water, and easy communication? Do you experience very little violence in your day to day life? Are you generally free to share your opinions without fear of violent retaliation?
These are things that quickly disappear in civil wars.
Probably. More and more people are anti-protest as well. "Why do they have to block traffic?" If it's not disruptive, it's pointless. "Can't you just protest in a way that's easily ignored?"
If a protest tactic turns more people against you, it's probably counterproductive. Sure, it's hard to know if in the end it'll count as a net positive, but protest for its own sake, without strategy for winning mindshare or representation, is pointless. What was the strategy of shutting down a bridge in California "for Gaza". You're just going to get removed from the bridge and arrested. It's not like anyone is going to pressure Israel because they can't get to work on time this morning.
The Canadian trucker action had more of a strategy, I'm not sure how much it achieved. I consider these things to be more direct action than protest per se. The 2003 Iraq war marches were protests, and while they were not successful in stopping the war they made it clear it was not a popular war.
With direct action, perhaps you make it too costly to oppose your cause. Restaurants can only handle so many sit-ins where they refuse to serve and there's no room for paying customers. Sabotage might make it too costly to insure a project and its contractors could pull out. Blockading important shipping routes might mean that you get invited to the table to avoid an actual battle. But this must be balanced against the risk that you will be arrested, injured or killed with popular support. The same people who blocked the bridge for Gaza probably found the trucker action illegitimate.
I've participated in all aspects of politics and one thing I know now is how important communications are and how difficult to do right. The right wing in the US has been working very hard at that for 50 years, through heavy persuasion and agenda setting. If you start to show interest in their POV, they will reach out to you constantly with direct mail, push polling, focus groups, rallies, clubs, and of course Fox News and talk radio. Other causes, like climate, peace, environment, and equality, are less coordinated, although at times they are able to set the agenda. They rarely stay in front for very long, and attempts to unite their work often break down to fighting over which one is more important.
Sorry for the rant, but this has been very front-of-mind recently for me.
Disrupting any official proceeding is now a federal felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, so 60s style anti-government protest would be shut down quickly.
The Jan 6th trials (most of which were based on that charge) set a precedent that will haunt us for a long time.
_Corruptly_ disrupting an official proceeding (or doing so by threats or force) is a felony, and it became one under Sarbannes-Oxley in 2001, so not just as a result of Jan 6th.[1]
Yes, but that was originally written to punish evidence tampering. The Jan 6th trials were the first time it was applied to protests, and that use is so novel that the Supreme Court has agreed to review it.[1]
And the "corruptly" term was effectively eliminated by UNITED STATES v. ROBERTSON (2023)[2], when the appeals court ruled that it means simply “acting ‘with consciousness of wrongdoing.’” (mens rea) and with “independently unlawful means or purpose”.
Almost all disruptive protests involve some minor "independently unlawful means" (such as jaywalking, trespassing, disorderly conduct, or failure to comply with a police officer), so they fit that definition.
The court's example to illustrate the meaning of the term was: "a witness in a court proceeding may refuse to testify by invoking his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination, thereby obstructing or impeding the proceeding, but he does not act corruptly".
The court actually said that taking the fifth is obstructing an official proceeding (but not corruptly).
Imagine how little it takes to commit a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison now. Have you seen the movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7"? If that happened today, not only could they be convicted of "corruptly" disrupting an official proceeding for the protests, they could be convicted for their behavior during the trial. (In the latter case, the independently unlawful means would be behavior that was in contempt of court)
PS: I should add that the 20 years comes from a different law with the same phrasing, 18 U.S. Code § 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant, section (c)(2). The existence of two laws with the same phrasing, both for specific crimes (evidence tampering and witness tampering), makes it clear that the legislature didn't intend for these laws to apply broadly.
What's the alternative? Let hundred weirdos storm your Capitol and let them rule? Smash a democratic institution and then leave them to go home unpunished?
You can't cosplay as a revolutionary. If you want to do insurrection you have to expect the government will surpress you and bring a force that can actually perform revolution.
I don't know what the alternative is for the US matters. That's for US citizens to decide. Personally I don't believe there was any fraud in the US elections.
I know about my own country. And what happened here is this: they saw what Trump did and were seriously alarmed. In order to stop our Trump equivalent from winning, the supreme court basically staged its own silent revolution.
They gave themselves the power to do whatever they wanted. Then they implemented censorship, unheard of in Brazil since the military dictatorship of the 20th century. Blatantly unconstitutional censorship. Then they went to public events to brag about all of it. How would you feel if an unelected judge censored Trump and then publicly bragged about how he defeated Trumpism?
Smash a democratic institution? This is not a democracy. Unelected judges are running this country. They tried to pass "anti-fake news" censorship laws, Google even campaigned against it and got arbitrarily fined by these judges. The law was rejected. Then about a week ago they rammed the law through anyway via "electoral court resolutions". They determine what's fake, of course. Literal ministry of truth. They regulated AI too.
What do you do when your supreme court seizes power like this? What do you do when the guys who are supposed to enforce the constitution start shitting on it? The police obeys their "court orders". Do you see the point I'm making? They're arresting and persecuting everyone. People who protested this got worse sentences than murderers, rapists, drug traffickers.
Seriously doubt there will be any kind of civil war. Unlike the US, nobody here is willing to die over this cursed, corrupted land. The only solution for Brazil is the airport, as they say. Who knows though, maybe our current "president" will anger the israelis so much with his palestinian support they will nuke Brasília off the map. I mean, this guy is a communist so out of touch he publicly accused the jewish nation of holocausting the palestinians.
If the war is so bad, Ukraine could stop it right now. All it has to do is surrender and then do whatever Russia wants. No one wants to resign themselves to that brutally oppressive fate though. Looks like they'd rather send all their men to their deaths than do that.
Sometimes there's no diplomacy and only violence gets your enemy to stop.
"You may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Churchill
https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/06/northern-ireland-vote-brexit-...