This popped up on my facebook feed – https://www.facebook.com/LincolnCourtsYCA/posts/pfbid02ERhdSdha9SGk2pi5XFZKzn1D4gAn9NYvfoB8urF1szykP7eRJKR7KdsvQqGH55MYl

I know, shouldn't be on shitebook but anyway, how can youth clubs be funded to take kids around shrines to active terrorist organisations then be fed a very one sided take of the troubles as well as pose with weapons? It'd like taking a bunch of kids from Creggan up around Junior McDaid house and filling their heads with shite about joining the armed struggle.

Edit – and to be fair to them, looking through the last few weeks of posts, it seems like a good setup of classes to help kids and cross community projects etc but that doesn't really excuse the above.

by DoireK

20 comments

  4. The posing with weapons and what those particular weapons represent in a historical context is extremely inappropriate, especially alongside murals of terror gangs. This is just messed up.

  7. What’s next, up to Greysteel, posing beside The Rising Sun? Re-enactments of gun-downs? Or how to terrify multiple communities like a butcher by dumping bodies like carcasses into alleyways? Dick. Heads.

  8. Difficult to comment without knowing more or how the tour was narrated. The murals they visited do show images of victims of a particular type of terror.

    Conversely, the memorials or tributes shown aren’t dishonest in that regard. Provided they tempered it with balance and framed it within a larger context to add some sort of depth and broader nuance.

    The toy guns thing is a bit cringe. Toy guns are (sadly) solid in every toy shop from land’s end to Timbuktu. They seem to be considered a ubiquitous “boys toy” culturally. The context isn’t there to qualify why they were posing with them (is it licensed merch from some sort of popular video game etc)?..

    Unconventional outing though. Isn’t it usually the zoo, the folk park, the tayto factory or nature walks/ orienteering etc?

  9. Of course, more Brit bashing. I’m sure if they visited the Irish Republican history museum in Belfast that also has display models of weapons used by the IRA another active terrorist organisation (picture included below)it would be considered much more inclusive.

    https://preview.redd.it/8u3vxgm3tn4e1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92790e08dd26dcb1a5d321dba3f6bb90b664a7ed

    history is history. Because a youth group has taken their kids to a troubles museum tour that has display models of weapons used at that time, isn’t as controversial as your making it out to be.

    (Edit: I’m not spending my time replying to silly argument having to defending a kids visiting museum about our shared history, catch yourselfs on like 🤡)

  11. Those are the same deactivated, antique weapons you get to hold at WW2 reenactment events at various National Trust properties.

    I’ve no idea what the content of this event was, but I do know you have to make young people interested before you can teach them anything. Start out holding the guns, acting the lad. Learn a lesson later about what those guns can do/did.

  14. Better than avoiding it in my opinion. They’re just wee lads. I doubt any of them would take up the gun but at that age I’d pose for a photo with guns too because I’d think I was rambo

  16. WE scour NI for THINGS TO BE OUTRAGED ABOUT so YOU don’t have to

  17. Doesn’t even look like a proper museum or anything. Just a community centre where someone’s brought (hopefully) deactivated guns that they keep in the attic.

    Looks like pretty much anything’s allowed these days. Sure, you still have loyalist mafias alive and well, not even pretending to be paramilitaries anymore. They meet with local politicians, the politicians claiming that it’s to convince them to stand down, which they should’ve done 30 years ago, and you have the PSNI telling immigrants to ask the local mob boss for permission to move in to avoid intimidation. And those who are intimidated are told to leave their homes rather than getting police protection and the perpetrators arrested

  18. To save the bother for all you who are also blocked by it, [here’s Larissa’s choice little comment…](https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/northernireland/comments/1h5pkb1/_/m07x95h/#comment-info) or one of the many edits of it.

    I thought I should share it more widely as it shows clearly how it is definitely very reasonable and nuanced and surely not just a thick kneejerk loyalist apologist grasping at straws:

    > DandyLionsInSiberia 1 point an hour ago* (last edited 38 minutes ago)
    >
    > Difficult to comment without knowing more or how the tour was narrated. The murals they visited do show images of victims of a particular type of terror.
    >
    > Conversely, the framing isn’t dishonest in that regard. Provided they tempered it with balance and framed it within a larger context to add some sort of depth and nuance.
    >
    > The toy guns thing is a bit cringe. Toy guns are (sadly) solid in every toy shop from land’s end to Timbuktu. They seem to be considered a ubiquitous “boys toy” culturally. The context isn’t there to qualify why they were posing with them (is it licensed merch from some sort of popular video game etc)?..
    >
    > Beyond that the group seems fairly decent and engaged in many cross community type initiatives etc difficult to comment really.

    (PS Hi Larissa! xx)

  20. I swear kids here look like clones of eachother with slight variations

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