아이랜드 폭동에 대한 글입니다.
물론 폭동이 잇엇고 그것이 인종, 난민간의 문제라는 보도는 맞는것 같습니다.
하지만 현지인들이 보는 시각이 다르고 좀 더 깊은 내막이 잇을 것이다는 것은 당연한 추론입니다.
아래 글은...아일랜드 폭동의 원인에 대한 심오한 분석이라기 보다는
아일랜드 정부가 인종갈등 난민문제등을 다루어 온 방식에 대한 문제점을 주로 이야기 하고 잇습니다.
당연히 공론화 되어 토론되어야 할 심각한 사회 문제를 쉬 쉬 덮어 버리는 방식으로 처리 햇다는 것인데
이런 글을 읽고 잇노라면 항상 우리자신들의 모습이 투영되어 보잇다고 햇지요?
한국은 인종 폭동, 종교 폭동이 없는 참 기이한 나라입니다.
하지만 한인들이 본시 그런 폭력성이 없다거나 적은 특이한 민족이라서가 아니고
그 마큼의 폭력과 광기를 다른 쪽에서 빼기 때문입니다.
현대사에서 한국 만큼 동족간의 참 대단한 살륙전을 벌린 나라를 세계사에서 찾아 볼 수 잇는지 모르겟고
여전히 반공 이데오르기는 작동중이지요.....정치적 대립은 거의 정신질환 수준이고..
이런것들은 여전히 일정한 김빼기 역할을 하고 잇습니다.
반공과 정치가 사라져 버렷을때 한인들이 얼마나 평상심을 유지하며 폭력을 제어 할 수 잇는지는
다른소린 모릅니다.
하지만....참 악질적인 종들이다는 것은 잘 알지요..
종북좌파 사냥질이나...노무현교 할렐루야 ...는 그런 의미에서는 나름의 긍정적인 생산성을 갖고 잇다고 할 수 도 잇겟지요.
국가 민족 애국 종교의 광기에서만 벋어 나도 사람들이 훨씬 더 자유롭고 평화로울 수 잇다는 것이
다른소리의 생각입니다.
절대 함부러 확신적이고 결론적으로 생각하지 마시기 바랍니다.
By PlutoniumKun
Since there is so much nonsense been commented and written about the riots here, I thought I’d take the opportunity to put down some thoughts. My apologies if this email gets way too long and rambling but… I think a lot of things are going on simultaneously, and unless you want to shove what happened into some pre-existing narrative (which is what 95% of the commentary is doing), then there has to be a lot of context.
First off, the riot itself:
It was very short, sharp and nasty, but contrary to what was often portrayed in the media, it occurred in a very small and narrowly defined area – about 200 yards of main street (with some other outbreaks). It took less than 2 hours from flaring up to burning out. It started when a man (thought to be Algerian) attacked children leaving a small junior school – called a Gaelschoil here (a voluntary Irish speaking school, more on this below). He was stopped by brave action by a number of passersby including an American female tourist and a Brazilian delivery man.
I was in my office around 400 yards away at the time. I saw on the news what happened and decided that the last thing anyone needed was sightseers, so stayed in put in the office. But it was quickly obvious a riot was taking place around the corner, so around 6.30pm I left my office and did a walk around. It was apparent something nasty was building, with lots of youths arriving – some attacking police cars. Unfortunately, it was recycling day for shops, so there were convenient bundles of cardboard stacked on the streets. The overwhelming number of rioters I saw were local teens and youths – none chanting – obviously out for a fight without needing a cause. There was no overt political presence, but there was a ‘far right’ protest at the place where the original attack took place. Many of those there were obviously prepared – they had fireworks and some inflammatory materials, but no obvious weapons. Within an hour or two, 2 buses, a light railway and some cars were burned out, and sportswear shops were looted. By 8pm it was all blown over. As riots go, I’ve seen much worse in my time, but it was very intense in that small area. The police were caught completely unprepared.
The area is the upper end of O’Connell Street in Dublin with the junction of Frederick Street and Parnell Street. This is the commercial fringe of the roughest, most deprived area of Dublin. O’Connell Street is shiny and modern, with new hotels, but also has a lot of street drug use, crime, with some very rough residential areas nearby – these extend north for maybe half a mile before the inner suburbs, and east into the traditionally poorest residential part of the city into the docklands, where the highest density of the traditional working class community lives. It’s an area I know very well – my mother came from there (not so poor, more down and out petite bourgeoisie-쁘티 브르조아) and I was brought up with stories of the horrors of the slums by my mother and my father, who was a policeman in the 1950’s and 60’s. I can remember as a child in the 1970’s watching the last of the most horrifying slums get demolished, along with the home my mother grew up with. I’ve lived in the area for more than 20 years, I know it very well.
The immediate area of the riots, apart from commercial buildings, is the closest there is to a Chinatown in Dublin – full of Asian restaurants and an increasing number of Arab/North African owned businesses. It’s ‘rough’ as we say here, but generally vibrant and fun.
The immediate and wider area, while leaving a lot to be desired, is probably in better shape than at any time in the last century. The old slums are gone – replaced with public housing and some low grade private accommodation including numerous Georgian buildings subdivided into flats – mostly used by immigrants – the ethnicity over time – currently I’d say mostly Brazilian. It’s not great, but anyone who claims that the area is in decline doesn’t know what they are talking about – it was much worse in the not so recent and recent past.
A lot of commentators are talking about the area being ‘abandoned’, etc., but in reality it’s better than it has been in the past. There have been some very good public housing/park developments, and there is plenty of work at the moment for anyone capable of it.
The Irish working class community are mostly in public housing which is kept firmly within families – so the housing crisis hasn’t really touched them, despite what many would claim. There is a particular issue that (as always in Dublin), the local government is very weak, most real decisions are made at national level – Irish politicians have always ensured Dublin would never be an independent powerbase, it’s just too big compared to the rest of the country. But politically, it’s lost most of its community activists over the years – the last election was the last one that genuine local independents representing the local community won – now all local elected reps belong to the main parties – including the leader of Sinn Fein.
The big issue of contention is quite simple – the government has been shoving in refugees in all available property – mostly short lets or older hotels. What has most upset locals is that many of the most ‘problematic’ refugees – young men from North Africa, the Middle East, etc., are being crammed into these communities. There is deep resentment that they are getting the ‘worst’ dumped on them, and when they complain, they are accused of being racist. To an extent, this is entirely true – there is a crisis in accommodating refugees (not to mention other homeless), and the authorities are pushing for the easiest solution, which is putting them in either old deprived communities or small towns with lots of empty hotels.
What was very noticeable during the riot and the aftermath is that despite the very large immigrant community in the area there was no attempt whatever to attack any Asian/Arab owned property, or attack individuals. Indeed, I saw some Chinese people actually walk right into the riot on their way home, and none came to harm. They didn’t seem to have any idea what was going on, perhaps simply assuming that fights and rioting is quite normal in Ireland.
Anyway, political context:
One of the peculiarities of Irish politics is that it has no significant far right/anti immigrant political party. There have been attempts to create one, but none have succeeded. I think the reasons for this are (in no specific order):
Needless to say, the Irish woke left simply assume that Irish working class are racists, because they are white and yadda yadda, etc.
Now, it should be seen as a good thing that Ireland does not have a far right political party. But this has a downside – nobody is representing people who have ‘concerns’. There is a virtual omerta in Irish political talk on issues of immigration and race and so on. Politicians refuse to engage and the media here are relentless in their view (actually overtly expressed by some journalists on twitter), that it their job ‘not to inflame things’. This extends from the mainstream press to the far corners of the tabloids. So there is an absolute refusal to in any way engage with what people are talking about.
It is very noticeable that apart from the police, only one other group was attacked during the riot. Journalists. Several were targeted specifically. Needless to say, none were interested in asking why they were so hated by those youths. i suspect they genuinely have no idea.
I want to give one specific example of the way the Irish system works to simply pretend certain things aren’t happening:
In 2018, a young Japanese man, Yosuke Sasake on a study/work programme, was stabbed to death in a town by an Egyptian asylum seeker. The Egyptian was undergoing a deep psychotic episode and just attacked the first person he saw. The town was shocked, and thousands came out in a vigil for him and his family. Several Japanese people here I know were very touched by the reaction. But not by what happened after.
Essentially, the entire incident was memory holed. The trial took all of 20 minutes. Three psychiatrists briefly stated their opinion that the killer was suffering deep psychosis. He was sent to a secure mental hospital indefinitely (he’ll probably never get out). The Japanese embassy was as furious as it’s possible for a Japanese embassy to be. They had no opportunity to make submissions for extradition, the family were not allowed any say. The small Japanese community here were extremely upset. The trial barely got a mention in the news. The Irish establishment simply decided that it was better not to ask any questions, least of all why a mentally ill Egyptian who had been refused asylum in the UK had washed up in a small Irish town without his medication.
This attitude, of simply pretending things aren’t happening, has become endemic. Some very difficult situations in small towns with refugees are simply not reported (of course, people talk about them, and you see them on social media), but it’s never actively discussed in the media.
Now to more recent events – the trial ended recently of a Slovakian accused of a particularly horrible murder. He randomly attacked a young woman out jogging and stabbed her to death – with seemingly no motive whatever. In the month that it happened, there had been two other nasty attacks on young women by East European men.
In the trial, the victims brother talked about how ‘Ireland gave a home, job, social welfare’, to the killer, and how he betrayed this. The media of course did not report this, but it was all over social media.
This view, incidentally, is not just shared by Irish people – my Asian friends in particular regularly complain to me vociferously over why refugees get free accommodation and don’t to pay for visa applications, while they have to go through the long, onerous and expensive process of applying for naturalizations. They really, truly resent this. Culturally they find it baffling that the Irish will give money to refugees while making life so difficult for hard working immigrants who go through the system the official way.
So, there is this brewing deep-lying resentment towards …. not immigrants, but a particular type of immigrant. It’s very noticeable that there has been very little overt racism expressed (even in the darker corners of X). It’s mostly a very strong resentment aimed at poor incomers, mostly North Africans, central Asians and Ukrainians.
Now, another feature of the Irish ‘turn a blind eye’. In the north inner city I’ve heard many times complaints about how a type of ‘sorting’ is going on in local schools. Some ethnic groups are becoming dominant, others are suffering racism, Irish people are retreating to specific schools. A Japanese friend withdrew her daughter from one school saying the east European kids were bullying her. A friend in a rural village said three Russian kids had been transferred to protect them from being bullied by Ukrainian kids in the main town school. In typical Irish style, the authorities are just ignoring this and allowing the ‘sorting’ to take place, but insisting that teachers don’t talk about it.
This may be significant because the stabbing was outside a Gaelscoil – this are Irish language schools favoured by a mix of hipster parents and working class nationalists, with a smattering of others (my American friends who moved here from Arizona 8 years ago put their mixed race daughter in one and loved the mix within the school). But it has also been claimed – with some justification – that some Irish parents put their kids in these schools specifically to avoid immigrant kids. So… people immediately started wondering if this is why this particular school was attacked. Needless to say, this thought is only in people’s heads, not in the media. The police are still being very tightlipped over the name of the attacker and any motive. I don’t doubt for a moment that they’ll try to have him declared insane so there won’t have to be a trial. That’s just how it works here.
--지금까지 글에서 강조 하는 것은 ...인종 문제 보다는 인종문제의 해결방식임을 알 수 잇습니다.
문제가 잇다면 제대로 인식하고 공론화 시켜 해결책을 찾지 못하고...쉬쉬 묻어 버렷다는 것이지요.
Now, to politics:
I’ve heard allegations recently that Irish politicians are ‘out of touch’. This is one of those statements that immediately disqualifies the person saying it from ever being listened to again on the subject of Irish politics. Nobody is in ‘more touch’ than an Irish politician, whether a local Council Rep, or a government minister. You simply don’t get elected if you don’t know every whisper of what is going on in your area. Every single one has a crew of volunteers whose sole job is to tell the politician what people are saying in pubs, hairdressers, supermarket queues, etc. They know.
This time last year I heard an interesting interview with a senior politician which made me sit up and take notice. He was quite open about the fact that he was hearing that ‘bad things’ are brewing and that the next 2 years would see a lot of unrest. Since then, I’ve been trying to get the sense of how they perceive things. It’s been progressively very obvious that all are doing all they can to avoid certain topics, and even left wing politicians have been slowly inching away from any overt support for things like welcoming more Ukrainians, etc.
But it’s not just immigrants. There have been at least three major ‘right wing’ movements getting traction in Ireland in the past year or more. I don’t think any of them are ‘organic’.
I always avoid the dark depths of social media, but I do try to keep up with what is happening in my area. One thing that has been very noticeable is a concentrated effort to focus on the refugee issue. An anecdote:
Early last year there were claims that a young woman was raped by a refugee and the police were ‘covering it up’. Now I know the place where it allegedly happened – I know it well, I walk past it every day, twice a day. It most certainly did not happen, the story was a compete invention. The initial claims were from what seemed to be locals (no doubt the same people who started the riot), but then I noticed something very interesting. A wave of people came online to back up the claim, all claiming to be local residents. It was perfectly clear that these people were not. In fact, it’s perfectly clear that they were all Americans – you could tell from the word choice and writing pattern.
Now there are three explanations for this – one is that this was just typical right wing incels piling on to any issue with lots of potential for trolling. The second is that there are local links to US based right wing groups. There are known Irish American fascist groups in Boston. The third is that this was deliberate astroturfing, that it all originated from the US.(이런 행태는 중국의 신장 위그르 문제에서도 꼭 같은 페턴으로 진행되어 왓습니다..
미국 정부의 예산에는 이런것에 대한 지원이 들어 잇습니다.....신장인들은 보지도 듣지도 못한 인종적 핍박과 비 인권적인 대우를 유투브를 통해 알게 되엇고 마구 흥분 하지만 정작 현장의 위그르 인들은 보지도 듣지도 못한 이야기에 머쓱해 하곤 합니다) I don’t know the answer as to who could be behind this. But it may be related to the second issue:
The second issue is a wave of anti-Green rural activity, based around clampdowns on nitrates and reductions in cattle counts in order to.. well, stop the destruction of Irish rivers and to meet long standing EU Directive obligations (the Nitrate directive dates back to 1991 and has been ignored since then). But what is very obvious to me is that these movements are entirely driven and financed from the US by astroturf organisations, they follow the standard playbook. One rural politician was widely mocked for making a speech denying climate change while changing from his rich Tipperary accent into American prosody while reading out his speech. His press release even used US spellings.
Apart from showing how stupid some of these people are, it is quite clear that there is a funded US effort (in the Netherlands too, I don’t believe for a moment that the farming anti-nitrates directive there arose naturally). I think some well-funded groups see an overlap of climate change and agriculture as a leverage issue for the Anglosphere far right in Europe.
Who is behind it, I don’t know, although you probably don’t have to look too far from various Koch Brothers(미 택사스 석유 제벌...극우 공화당 지지자)projects. But, I have to say, it’s having a real impact. The farming media here has gone full on conspiracy right wing, without the rest of the media noticing (and the farming newspapers matter in Ireland, they are read by nearly all rural people).
Finally…. wokism. Over the summer there were a number of protests at libraries stocking pro-trans books for children. I’d more or less ignored this until one very strange event.
Late Spring I was driving West with a colleague and we stopped at the small pretty town of Carrick-on-Shannon for lunch. It was a nice day, so we went to the Shannon riverside park (beside the town carpark) to have a sandwich and coffee. To our astonishment, a fight broke out.
The main protagonists were several obvious trans and some blue haired supporters, (all locals), and a group of anti-woke protestors. There was a lot of shouting, with the latter retreating to the nearby carpark. One of them, a woman in her late thirties, sat next to us – she was visibly rattled. She had a strong English Midlands accent.
This isn’t unusual in rural Ireland – lots of returned emigrants, etc, but she was clearly English as, it became apparent, were all the others. They were all early middle aged and entirely unremarkable looking people, apart from their placards and what they were doing. I did want to ask what on earth brought them over to Ireland to protest outside a small local rural library, but I thought better of it. All the accents I heard were English Midlands and they all climbed into UK registered cars and vans.
I noticed that all the vehicles were very old and rusty. At the time I thought they maybe were not very well off or semi-professional activists, but it later occurred to me that these old cars were maybe ‘burners’, bought cheap to be abandoned later so they couldn’t be tracked. All very peculiar and I’ve no explanation whatever for why a group of what looked like a group of Lib Dem activists wound up so concerned about the contents of Irish libraries (so far as I could tell, nobody local cared a jot, apart from the blue haired ones).
So… to summarise. All I know is that what is happening is not really what is being claimed.
There is no question that Irish people are completely fed up with refugees being housed in communities all over (it’s not just the city – many small towns are crammed as it’s cheap for the government to just rent half empty hotels). The resentment is not particularly racist – I’ve not heard one single story of a physical attack on black or Asian people – but obviously they are worried. It’s primarily aimed at what are perceived as freeloaders, fake refugees, and also the drifting population of east Europeans who just wind up in small Irish towns and often end up isolated with the result that some turn violent.
Of course, it will be easier for politicians and the media to call out racism rather than deal with these issues (even though the politicians know full well what is happening). The journalists are probably genuinely as clueless as they appear.
It is absolutely clear that the one thing that really, genuinely makes people angry is that they know they are being ignored and/or patronised. This is making things much worse, especially the absolute refusal of the authorities/media to discuss possible motives for the attacks on the school, or for that matter the number of rapes/attacks on women by immigrants (yes yes, of course, as the left will say, most domestic murders and rapes are by Irishmen – this is both true and completely irrelevant).
I have no idea how this will play out. No doubt external activists along with some locals will try to stir things up. The political class – including Sinn Fein – will try to pretend nothing is happening and most likely have two scripts prepared – one for the public at large, the second for saying privately on the doorstep. I do suspect things will calm down, as I think many people were quite freaked by what happened. It’s like a glimpse into the void, and even within the deprived working class communities there, they didn’t like what they saw.
So… things may change… or may not. I really don’t know..
필자의 주의 주장에 100% 동조할 필요도 없고....판단은 각자가 하는 것이지만...
멀티 미디어 세대가 꼭 챙겨둬야 할 것 중 하나가....조회수 올리고 의견 달고 와글 거리는 것이 반드시 바람직한
방식은 아니다는 것이지요..
어떤 정보를 접 햇을때,,,,가장 먼저 챙겨야 할 것은 그 정보의 fact여부 입니다...
반응을 보이기 이전에 상식과 기본적 지성에 기반하여 먼저 사실관계의 여부 부터 판단해 보는 버릇을 들여야 합니다.
-러시아 놈들이 한살짜리 여자아이 강간햇다....까야야야야.......악..........................
한살짜리 어린애 (유아)가 아무리 조숙햇다 하더라도...러시아 군발이 쇗끼들의 거대한 좆 대가리가 들어갈 죶 구멍은 갖고 잇지 못합니다...
이런것은 상식이나 매우 간단한 생물학적 지식으로도 얼마든지 판단 할 수 잇습니다..
저런 말을 씨불 거리는 년놈들이 잇다면....침을 툇 뱉어 버리세요..
또
정보가 사실이다는 것이 분명 하다 하더라도...어느 시각에서 어느쪽에 촞점을 맞췃느냐에 따라 전혀 달라집니다..
이런것도 생각해 본 후....찬찬히 반응을 보인다고 하여 ...누가 욕 하지 않습니다..
특히 정치인들의 주의 주장은 거짓과 과장이 잇다는 것을 반드시 먼저 챙기고 그리고 나서 찬찬히 반응을 한다하여 칭찬을 받앗으면 받을일이지 욕 먹을 일은 아닐 것입니다..