As a foreigner this difference in the people’s mentality really fascinates me. Why are there so little protests compared to other European countries?

42 comments

  1. They’re hardly comparable situations. What I would say though is people are too caught up in the day to day. Just trying to survive and get by. The don’t have the time or mental energy to stop and think about it all.

  2. A cost of living crisis is not really comparable to 800 years of British occupation.

    Edit: To the people saying it was only 400, please get in the bin.

  6. As a foreigner you should know that this isn’t just an Irish problem then, this is bigger that Ireland or Europe.
    Not much point in protesting for something the government can’t really do anything about.
    They can however do something, like the windfall taxes which are planned to be implemented at the moment.
    You expect the government to pick up the tab of the shite happening in Russia? Who do you think will pick up the tab afterwards?

  7. I mean mate bills being harder to pay isn’t really the casus beli that shooting people in the street for asking for suffrage is

  8. Yeah it’s sounds like you think the only reason our ancestors where fighting the English is because they couldn’t afford the next iPhone 😂. There is a big difference between fighting to reclaim your county from a foreign invader and Global recession that effecting everyone around the world, yea rich people stay rich etc, but unfortunately we can only really blame external forces for most of the issues Irish people are having to deal with today.

    You need to read up more on why for 800 years our ancestors fought for this country’s autonomy and gave it way overnight to Europe for a few Motorways. I would put that meme down to a lack of understanding of Ireland’s History and kinda proof that foreign countries never bothered looking into Ireland’s history in any depth.

  10. There was a post of a similar nature here a few years ago and one of the commenters gave an insight from there parents or grandparents that basically said when the state was new and people had issues with what the govt was doing they didn’t go protesting because a) there was still a hangover from the civil war and b) people had the outlook of “well at least it’s an Irish govt and not the British govt” so that kind of outlook has been passed on to the next generation and the next one

  11. Yeah because if you reduce complex history down to dumb simplistic memes it’s no wonder you have a hard time understanding

  14. Are ya really comparing those two things? I mean, I see your point; it is pathetic we cannot and do not seem to hold those in power accountable and we do need to change this and understand our collective responsibility to the country. But that comparison is seriously flawed.

  16. The country was won by a relatively small cadre of violent revolutionaries that initially were not well liked by the majority of Irish people at the time because they were thought of as being too radical and violent, causing instability. That same mentality exists in Ireland today. The first picture represents a very tiny minority at the time, the second the vast majority that has always been the actual Irish character.

  19. Most people are actually doing ok in Ireland. The cost of living and housing crisis is falling disproportionately on younger adults

  21. What the fuck is up with the recent spate of foreigners telling us to protest? Feels like there’s a new post every single day here of this same thing. Plus aside from the French, who’d protest if their tea was too milky, I’ve seen fuck all protests in other countries.

    Plus the Irish do protest, we’ve seen many large scale protests throughout this country in the last few years. The current issue is that everyone is still getting over Covid mentally, we’re all exhausted and most under 40s are seeing another massive recession in their adulthood. We’re not sitting around twiddling our thumbs all shy and shit, we’re not protesting because we’re currently fucking tired and need time to process yet another shitshow currently coming our way. Like can people give us a break? We just survived a massive global level of trauma (Covid), theres a massive war in one country (which is causing the cost of living to rise), there’s civil unrest everywhere, global warming has start to show it’s horrifying effects so yeah maybe give us a fucking break and let us bury our heads in the sand for five minutes before we consider our next options.

  23. (Foreigner here, and French to boot!) Nothing or nobody stopping you from protesting yourself OP. What are you currently doing to try and help change things?

  27. Our protesting power is 100% renewable and generated entirely from some folks coming over and doing fuck all but moaning about the weather and the times places close, as if any of this was a surprise or impossible to find out prior to booking a flight.

  30. Besides many other better points made in the comments; the thing is while what is happening in Ireland is already well over the baseline of unacceptable… Ireland is nowhere near to even approaching “Civil Unrest” levels of life dissatisfaction.

    The world is shit, the continent is in flames, and people don’t tend rise up over being mistreated unless there is widespread state violence or everybody is hungry.

  32. Military control has given way to economic control.

    When there are enemy soldiers wearing enemy uniforms working for a foreign power, who your enemies are is much clearer and simpler.

    Class war is recognising our enemies as the people whose interests are opposed to ours – what they want is the opposite of what we want. Them getting what they want harms me.

    My landlord and I are enemies – he wants my money and I want my money. My factory owner wants me to work as many hours for as little as possible, I want to work as little as possible for as much pay as I can get. My bank puts its profits over my right to a home.

    They and I are competing over my life. Our goals are incompatible.

    In all these cases, these people are motivated *against* my well-being, health, wealth and happiness. They are actively trying to reduce my life to enrich their own.

    They are my enemies.

    But they are not wearing a uniform, they are not from a foreign land, and they are own the newspapers and politicians, so the newspapers and politicians keep talking about how great they are and how terrible I am.

    We need to see our enemies for what they are again.

  34. There’s a protest on the 24th of September. I went to the housing protest last year, the protest this year and I’ll be at this one, it’s an effort for sure and I’d rather be anywhere else (and this is why I think many don’t protest) but it’s worth it, you can kind of make it into an event or something usual to do for the day. Be there or be square.

  36. Spoilers shortly after 1920 the *victorious* IRA purged their entire fucking socialist wing so the British govt would sign a deal with them.

    Perhaps as a foreigner you should do a little more research before posting stuff like this.

  38. I guess the Black and Tans running up my field trying to kill my neighbours is.. a tad different to a government not building houses!

  41. There is no solidarity amongst the workers in Ireland. Wage slaves with no balls who are afraid of authority and think they deserve the misery bestowed upon them – thank the Catholic church for that.

    I’m down to protest any day it happens. Let’s absolutely fuck shit up. I travelled to Dublin twice for the protests to the water charge, once in the pissing rain. 5 hrs by bus.

    I was out of work back then because the recession and was lumped in with all the ‘spongers’ and such even tho i had never been unemployed til the country got bent over by the banks. But it was those same spongers that defeated the charge, was it not?

    And the rental crisis and housing crisis is actually affecting the low paid and middle paid workers the most. Because you can’t get council housing and can’t afford your own gaff on your wages. This is why there’s no protests – people are afraid of losing the little bit they have. We won’t see change until there’s an absolute dystopia and large swathes of us are homeless and have nothing to lose any more by getting properly aggressive about it towards the powers that be and toss them out, physically remove them and take their jobs away because they’re not fit for them. And it will take a lot of brave people who just DGAF any more until that happens. It could be done more easily than people think – our police force would be called in but it is undermanned and they don’t get paid well. They would easily be overwhelmed by very large groups and they dont have the room or men to jail a large amount, they would lose morale quickly and most dont carry lethal weapons either.

    But it comes down to bravery and time and working people here have very little of either.

    People with jobs are too busy working and too tired or have other stuff they need to do in their limited spare time. And loads of people in this country are still too well off to care about those of us that aren’t.

    Also, since I’ve gotten employed and had a few jobs come and go since 2011-now I realize that the average working person here is fucking spineless. They’re too worried about what they have to lose to stand in solidarity with another. If you have had any problems at your place of employment recently and tried to talk to your colleagues about getting any of those problems changed you will know exactly what I mean – they won’t want to know. In fact, they’ll hope you bury yourself so they can get more brownie points for themselves by siding with management. Very few jobs in Ireland have unions and then when the ones that do try to protect the workers like the teachers union – well, now everyone hates teachers and thinks they’re spoiled. I worked at a pharma company that used to try and get managers to suss out if you were anti or pro union. This company makes billions.

    Corporations and banks are our masters forever now because our political figures allow it and benefit from it. They feather their own nests and have their petrol all paid for by the taxpayers all the while so they don’t care what anything costs, they’ll be fine.

  42. > Why are there so little protests compared to other European countries?

    Proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (PR-STV)

    Your vote in Ireland counts for a lot more than in many other European countries such as UK and France. Even small political factions are well represented in the Dail.

    So we don’t protest, we vote. I highly recommend it.

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