Camp Gagnon - CATHOLIC v PROTESTANT: Ireland’s War Was Never About Church

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at Ireland's Civil War. We’ll talk about the IRA’s dark tactics, Bloody Friday, Gaddafi's involvement, growing up during the IRA era, the Nutting Squad, and other interesting topics... Welcome to camp! 🏕️👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: http://camp-rd.com🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Meet Vittorio Angelone4:03 Vittorio’s Going Religious + Nation of Islam Alien6:57 Vittorio's Ice Cream Shop Bombed 13:05 Irish Mexicans17:50 Palestine’s Irish Connection19:33 The Irish Famine Was FAKE23:40 Easter Rising27:16 Guerilla Warfare + Northern Ireland Civil War33:57 Catholic vs Protestants41:40 The IRA’s DARK Tactics52:09 The Nutting Squad54:55 Bloody Friday + Gaddafi Sends IRA Weapons1:04:05 Blood Sunday + Soldier F1:06:34 Growing Up During IRA Era1:12:21 The Hunger Strike + Thatcher Assassination Attempt1:20:04 The Ghost Sniper1:23:50 Good Friday Agreement + Kneecapping1:28:58 The Irish Car Bomb + Lowkey Irish Racism#podcast #foryou #horror #mystery #history #crime #knowledge #education #foryou

Most resistance groups fade out pretty fast, but this one didn't just survive. It became one of the most feared underground armies of the 20th century, a group that started with stolen rifles, homemade bombs, and farmers on bicycles, but somehow ended up fighting the British Empire. There weren't special forces, they weren't trained soldiers, they were just simple Irish Catholics living in neighborhoods that the government barely bothered to protect. This is the IRA. They built safe houses under grocery stores, smuggled weapons from the Middle East, and even ran their own spy networks. This episode is absolutely amazing. I'm joined by my friend Vitorio Angelone, who is a brilliant comedian from Belfast.

I just want to make it clear. We make some jokes during this episode. I don't mean to be irreverent about a very difficult and complex situation. But in the way of the Irish and of comedians, I typically like to find what's funny, even in the dark places. So if you were interested in Irish history and in religious history, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Vitorio Angeloane. Smashed it.

How are you, sir? I'm very well. How are you, Mark? I'm doing excellent, brother. Thank you so much for joining me in your final hours here in New York City. Yeah, you're caught me just before I disappear. I assume forever. At every point in my visa application and arrival here, I've assumed I will be kicked out at some point.

Any moment. Any moment. Any moment. But it makes it fun, right? Yeah, there's a good sort of spice to everything. I've tried to make the most of my one week here on the assumption that I will never be back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also tough as like a foreign stand-up comic on a visa because you're like, you know, even if I try to stay, people know where I'm going to be.

Yeah, you're advertising. Because I post it on my website. For sure. It's like, hello, ice. These are the locations where you can snatch me whenever you would like. Exactly. We met on the street here in New York City. Yeah, so fun.

And my buddy, David, who is coincidentally in the room. How are you, David? All right, all right, all right. We literally are on the street, and David has a knack for finding Irishman. I don't know how he does it. Is he like a hobby? You can't hear it. It is an interesting affliction that you have to find the Irish.

And he's a massive fan of all Irish music. Like, I mean... Yes, I love the Irish people. Yeah? You guys love to... You guys are very nice. Really? Like, the stereotype of Irish music.

Irishman is that you guys are mean. But every Irish person I've ever met in New York has a hoop hearing like you. Loves the Fontains. And I'm like, this is my type of guy. That's so funny. So you're a big Fontaines guy? Huge. The drummer followed me yesterday on Instagram.

I was very excited. No way. Our buddy Miles, you just met, met Greene at a bar last week. And I was so jealous. Green chatting was quite rude to me once. Whoa. Well, he's a fucking rock star. Yeah.

He is. This is the thing. He's a fucking. And I just sort of respected it because I was at a gig, a band called Lankham. who were like a spooky Irish folk band. They're really, really great. And there was like a drinks thing afterwards. And it was him,

Grant Chatton and the singer, Rady Pete from Lankham. And I went up and was like, oh, sorry to interrupt. You guys are both, just think you're both really great and love what you're doing. And Grant turns around and goes,

all right. But also, that's what I want. Okay. If I meet Liam Gallagher, I want him to go, who the fuck are you laugh? Yeah, I want him to fuck off. I want him to tell me to piss off.

And I would be like, yes, he did it. He was what I wanted, you know? Thank you, Liam. I don't want me to be like, oh, it's great to meet you. You want a photo? No, no, no, no. Be a rock star, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, I mean, the Irish in my book have always held a special page. You know, we've done shows in Dublin. Fantastic shows, always. The sing-songy culture of, like, the pub and going in and just everyone knows how to play music, which is brilliant. And there's a long musical legacy. Damien Rice. That guy is fantastic. That's the float like a cannonball guy?

I believe so, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, like... If you had a song, because every Irish person has, like, a song. for like end of a party. Everyone has a party piece. What would be your song? If I could take any song?

You just have to sing it at the end of a party. Mr. Brightside by the killers. Crazy. Acapella. Acapella. Acapella at a pub. Or I would do something real sad. I do like the record of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Everybody pin drop silence and you're going, coming out of my cage and I'm doing just fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not even a question. Are you kidding? I'm actually glad you asked this question because I have like 10 of them in the bank. might do champagne supernova. Yeah, again, crazy.

Or don't look back in anger. Yeah, yeah. Is you a big Oasis guy? Well, the weird thing is I was and I didn't even know it. And then Dave was like, dude, you got to listen to like, you know, definitely maybe, like go through the actual albums. And I was like, oh, I like every song. Oh, they're all, it's sort of an incredible number of hits.

Because I liked seven songs. And you would think if you like seven songs, then you probably like this band. But I never was like, oh, Oasis. I didn't know the lore. Yeah, it's easy to have like a passive like of Oasis and just be like, I know what they do. And I, you know, if it comes on, I'm singing along or whatever. But, like, to do a proper deep dive. Yeah.

Did you go? Sorry. No, no, I did. No, this is your job. You're supposed to deviate. We did go to MetLife, David and I. He wore a bucket hat doing poppers. It was great.

So good. Yeah. So good. But we meet on the street. I find out that you just got past the best comedy club in the world, a comedy seller. Very crazy moments. Which is its own insane story on the side. But I've been wanting to do an episode on the Troubles and the IRA and Irish history.

And I was like, I really needed a lad to do it with it. You know? And then you came across. The inside scoop. And I was like, this is serendipitous. You know what I mean? This is beautiful. I'm big into serendipity at the minute.

I'm like, the universe just points you in the right direction sometimes. Well, I'm starting to believe in magic. I might get really religious. I think that's my next thing. I'm going to get really religious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I haven't picked which one yet. Like, I grew up Catholic, but I'm trying to decide, like, where should I, like, focus my efforts? Like, maybe I'll become, like, a big Buddhist guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's almost too safe. I think you go, like, I think you go, like,

like hardcore cult. Like a Unitarian church of Korea. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. But like go hardcore, go into it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like attending their services, like on Zoom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just go full, like, Muslim. Like, just always wear the candora, just, you know. If I could, like, go to Mecca and come back, I was like, Ahmed Angeloani. Oh, Nation of Islam.

As in, like... Are you familiar with this? No. Nation of Islam is a specific, like, I don't even even call it a sect, because like some Muslims don't recognize it in the exact same way. Yeah. I don't understand the politics.

But it's a specific subset of like black Muslims in America that are hardcore. Is that like similar but the opposite to the black Israeli guys? Type shit. Yeah. As they would say. It's like, Nation of Islam is like if you're a black dude, he goes to prison, there's a good chance you'll become like Nation of Islam. Okay. And it was sort of spearheaded by this dude, the most honorable Elijah Muhammad.

Okay. And then there's all sorts of things. stuff about like... And was that the type of Islam Malcolm X caught into? Or no, he just got like proper old school or is he... I think so.

But that probably deserves its own episode. But then there's this, also this, search the alien in the nation of Islam that created white people. What? Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of lore here. This is awesome.

I think this would be a tough religion for me to get into, but I would like to be just open about like, oh yeah, I was created by an alien, sorry. Yes, this is the nation of Islam. Hold on. Go to images? Yeah.

Yakub. So Yaqube is basically like a god. I think he plays for Asin Villa. You put a ball in the box. He's getting to it, dude. He's going to get a head on that thing for sure. He has two brains, a white brain and a black brain. He created white people and black people, I think. This is potentially extremely sacrilegious to the nation of Islam folks, and if that's the case, I'm sorry. to all the listeners and viewers who are, you know, proponents of the nation of Islam or citizens of the nation of Islam?

Yeah, maybe that might be full-on patriots, you know what I mean? I don't know the exact visa process, but we're not talking about that today. We're talking about the IRA. I don't really know anything about it. But I was like, it's just a fascinating time in history, the troubles of the, you know, this basically sectarian violence between the Catholics and the Protestants. That's actually a proxy war for a political battle of the colonization of the British onto the, to the island of Ireland and sort of what it means for people. It's like such a deep history.

And there's also like terrorism, but then freedom fighting. And it's like all perspective and whatever side you're on depends on like who you rep. And then there's still walls up to this day. I think in parts of Belfast that delineate the Protestant side from the Catholic side. And it all happened like 50 years ago. Yeah. I mean, it sort of nominally ended in 1998. So that's 27 years ago.

Yeah. So like, yeah, that was sort of. But then there was sort of a couple bombs after that. And then I sort of grew up in like the echo of it. So I was born in 96. And then it's like, we had the odd like bomb scare every so often. And you would like miss your music lesson that night because it was like, oh, the bus isn't coming because it might blow up.

The most painful thing for an Irishman. Oh, but we were just so fun. We were just like, like it was so stupid how we were like, oh, yes. Don't have to go to my, don't have to go to this thing. So explain to me into the audience. First, your name is Vittoria. Yes. Which is not the most traditional Irish name.

No, not a tradition, not an Irish name even in the slightest. I'm half Italian. That's my sort of background. So my dad's family are Italian. They moved to Belfast during World War II to get away from all the bombs and violence. Nice. And that was a good move until a few years later. Yeah.

You leave Sudan to go to Russia. Yeah, yeah. This would be a nice area. We got out. Fuck. And then open the ice cream shop. Very stereotypical. But like that was the family's business.

Like gelato? Yeah, like proper. I like fish and chips as well. That was like. Yeah, of course. That's the two things Italian people do in Ireland. Oh, really? Fish and chips and ice cream.

That's what Italians are. That is so funny. Up to. Because I don't know like in America it feels like you would have like a deli or like a, but it doesn't. And then there's some gelato places, but that feels more. more recent that doesn't feel like historically what Italians were doing in America. But yeah, did that. That got blown up in 1975 by the UVF.

Literally blown up? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was bomb. By the UVF. Yeah, so that's the Ulster Volunteer Force. There's so many acronyms for different paramilitary groups. So the UVF, the UDA, the UFF, the IRA, the provisional IRA, the INLA. and then within the IRA there's like the real IRA

the continuity IRA the old IRA and it's like it gets very complicated and why was it blown up I don't know like like now the

this was Iris have ever heard you like yeah we didn't talk about it like well this is the thing I only found out like two years ago that it was blown up because my dad was always like oh it had the clothes like he never said why

it had the close and then I found an article in the New York Times about it getting blown up Because it ended a ceasefire. There's a six-month ceasefire and then my family's ice cream shop got blown up. Why an ice cream shop?

Well, this is, you know, some people would argue that, which I would call victim blaming, that my family must have been doing something other than making ice cream. I have never heard that. And I would like to claim that that is not what was happening. But basically what happened was a lady brought up like a bag to the counter, like the till.

and was like, oh, somebody left this bag in one of the booths. Could you put it in like lost and found? And, or like, lost property. And Belfast in 1975, not a big lost property kind of place. So my dad's cousin, Eugenio, like, slowly opened the bag, saw wires, and then threw it towards the door. And it blew up just after it left his hand. And there was 100 people in the cafe, 39 people were hurt, nobody died, which is like crazy. And he was interviewed on TV immediately after that happened.

but it blew his ear off and he was deaf in that ear for the rest of his life and then there's a really funny TV interview where he is like stood there holding

his ear on was like blood sort of like going down his cheek vein goff yeah yeah exactly and the interview was like and what happened

when the bomb went off and he's screaming because he's deaf he's deaf that's like a sketch brought up a bag and I saw a wire is that fucking ridiculous

bro that is Crazy. Yeah, so that's my... Blown up an ice cream shop seems completely terrific. Actually, one that could get it is the Turkish ice cream shop, the one that pretends to give you

the ice cream that. Oh, I'd blow that up? A million percent, right? Give me my fucking ice cream. I would never... Have you ever had that done, dude? Yeah. I would feel so bad.

It was fun for, like, four of them. And then you started getting real... That guy's good, dude. He's good. I look down, there's a napkin in my hand. I was like, god, damn. I look up. It's like, someone...

It's my dad doing. I'm like, how the fuck? He pulled his mask up? I was like, what is happening? It's like scobey, dude. It's like a bad trip. I'll crack my back. I see his face.

It's crazy. But yeah, that guy can go. But your family seemed like they were a nice guy. I think they were nice guys. They were known for a particular ice cream called the Smoky, which is in a Knickerbocker glory glass, like a tall glass. Vanilla ice cream and then like pineapple juice poured on top of it. And then like a chocolate flake, like crumbled on top of that.

And that was like the, that my family are like weirdly sort of famous in West Belfast for that particular type of ice cream. And everybody argues about what the recipe is. And that's the recipe. People think it's lemonade, but it's pineapple juice. Oh. That's an exclusive. That's an inside scoop.

That's a cigarette recipe. Although you can only get a specific, they don't make the pineapple juice anymore. But my non-o, my dad's dad, still has like a big container of it. Really? Yeah. Just the same.

This from the 60s. Just an old vet scraping out the bottom. Like this will do, all right? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, just for context, can we just pull up a map real quick, my friend Christos, of Belfast? Or actually, maybe just Ireland in general, because I think the geography here makes a little bit of a difference. Yeah, and it's not a big country.

Yeah. But the troubles primarily were happening in Northern Ireland. Yeah, like the absolute vast majority. Like, there was stuff happening around the border where is where a lot of stuff happens to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Yes. And we call them, we call people. from the South Mexicans because they're from south of the border.

Wait, south of what border of the northern Irish border? Yeah, so in Belfast we called people from the south like the Republic of Maryland Mexicans. That's so funny. You guys don't even have Mexicans. There's a bizarrely good burrito chain in Ireland that started in Belfast called Buzum and I asked a Mexican,

is it actually good? And he said it's good Tex-Mex, but it's not proper Mexican food. That's hilarious. I was like, I'll take that in Ireland. I'll fucking take good tax max There is a funny thing Of going to a

Specifically like in the UK And around sort of the aisles here Seeing people that have accents Combined with accents that you don't expect So like meeting like an Indian Scottish guy Oh funny And he went from Mumbai to Glenn Cool Yeah yeah

And he's got an Indian Scottish accent Sort of like twang And I'm like I didn't even know that combo was popular There's a great Irish comedian Who's like sort of crazy but like you used to have a TV show in Ireland like a sketch show David McSavage is his name and he's a stand-up as well and he does this bit that's one of the funniest bits I've ever seen

where he says you can't do like offensive accents anymore like that's obviously not allowed but some accents do mix really well together and he goes for example Scottish and Japanese and then he goes for like five minutes and it doesn't stop getting funny here It's absolutely hysterical. You're right, but. That's great.

It is combinations you just don't expect. So, like, a Mexican dude in Ireland, you're like, loads of Brazilians in Dublin and, like, lots of Spanish people, but Mexicans are a real rarity. Fascinating. My brother studied with a Mexican, and he brought crickets to a party once, and we ate crickets. Literal crickets.

Yeah, not nice. Like, dried crickets, but, like. And just popping them. Yeah, they don't really taste of anything. But I, like, gave it a go, and I was quite pleased with myself. for like trying crickets. I do think personally that there is a connection

between the Mexican and the Irish. Yeah. And I don't know exactly what it is. The flags are similar, sure. But I'm talking like

culturally. Yeah, well the guy who runs the Dead Rabbit, he recently opened another bar in Jersey, I think, called like San Patricios,

which is a Mexican Irish bar. Interesting. So that's like a thing. I used to work at a Mexican Irish bar in London. What is your take?

Like, for me, I just always, I connected just through doing shows. Like, you got to do shows like in, you know, South Texas with a bunch of Mexicans, you go to shows in Ireland, there's an emotional

vivaciousness. Like, it's alive emotionally. There's like an obsession with music. Many of them are like Catholic, which I think also imbues the culture with a specific perspective. Like there is a recent poverty, you could say, within the last few hundred years where, you know, the country's overcome something. There's also like this colonial element, you know, Mexico has America, you know, Ireland has the British. It's like quite an ancient mystical culture that had Catholicism sort of like overlapped on top of it. Placed upon it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I've been reading a lot about, like, Ireland pre-Christianity arriving with St. Patrick and stuff. And it sort of is this very old pagan and the Irish language is one of the oldest languages like in the world that still like exists at all. And I think that's probably what it is. And I think there's a lot of links with like Mexico and then I mean, Ireland also has a huge like North African influence. Which is kind of weird.

So if you zoom out, if that's on maps and you can zoom out from there, if it isn't just an image, yeah, it's just an image. Like North Africa is sort of like, if you miss the bottom of England, if they were doing like a shipping route. Like a lot of people landed in the very south coast of Ireland. Yeah, Gibraltar's right there. From North Africa. So that sort of comes up through that way.

And there's a lot of connections between the languages. So I find Irish people very culturally similar to a lot of these sort of colonized countries and then very ancient, former like, pig. or like older religion country. So like Indians, I find very culturally similar to Irish people

and then Mexicans as well. And I'm sure there's loads of... Like, I bet if I'm at like an Inuit, I think we'd get on. That's fascinating. I think that would be cool. I'm so curious about this. And actually,

there's another interesting thing, which I heard, I forget who said it. I don't even remember who was a podcast or an Irish guy. It talked about the Irish-Palestinian sort of connection. Gaddafi gave guns.

to the IRA. I was just about to bring that up. I have that in the notes. You know what? Maybe we just jump right there. What's up, people? We're going to take a break because we got new merch. That's right. It is the holiday season and the good folks over at Camp R&D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the Christmas sweaters with the aliens. We got the Christmas sweaters with the conspiracy vibes. You already know. I mean, this one might be my favorite one. A Christmas tree full of aliens, full Christmas sweater energy. And then, of course, if you just want something simple, you know, you bust out the

Camp Logo T with the little Christmas lights on it. Come on, bro. Get cute for Christmas. Okay, it is a holiday season. All right, we're celebrating the birth of the savior, okay? And what better way to do it than a cop a couple threads for the person in your life that you know that loves a campsite that loves hanging with us every single week. And right now, we're running a promo through the holidays. That's right. Use the promo code Christmas camp for 15% off. I just made that up on the spot, but I think we can do it, right? I'll call some people. Christmas camp for 20, for 15% off. Sure.

16% off. Whatever you say, Mark. Should we give them more? One more. 17% off people. We don't, I think this is going to work. I'm not positive. We're going to see if we can do it. But I'll, yeah, check it out, guys.

We got all the camp stuff going until the end of the year. Check it out. Thank you guys so much for support in the show. I love you all. God bless and Merry Christmas. But specifically, have you heard of the Black and Tans? Yeah, yeah. So you, okay.

But, Americans don't know about this. Some of the worst cons ever, sort of a death squad sent into Ireland. Quite literally. Yeah. And this is like early 1900s? Yeah.

Was that, it was like, is that, that's early for Churchill. That is early for Churchill. I can't remember who sort of established the Black and Tans. But it's basically a paramilitary force sent by the British to suppress any type of Irish resistance. Yeah. And I believe it was around the same time

that the Black and Tans sort of fell back in Ireland, that they were quite literally the same exact people were repatriated to go be a paramilitary force within British mandate Palestine. Yes, and they trained the IDF and all that stuff. And so the Irish are like, okay, we were oppressed by this literal British paramilitary force. Same guys, same guys.

It's the exact, it's not like the same truth. It's the same humans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you consider like, oh, these two disparate cultures that are different religions, different ethnicities that have this weird sort of coalescence, I think that that is a major thread. Yeah, there's crazy.

Like, you see pictures of, like, Palestinian kids like from, like, last year holding a sign that says free Northern Ireland. Really? And that's so crazy. They're looking out for y'all. This is the thing. How bad is Belfast?

How bad is Belfast? How bad is Belfast? You know, like, guys, thanks for the attention, but let's look at Ireland. Yeah. All right. They need it bad right now. Crazy connection to America to Ireland as well. During the famine, which wasn't a famine.

Alleged. There was enough for. the British just took a lot of it. This is the perfect example of how it was sort of like an attempted genocide in a way, like the famine, where Native American communities, like, donated a bunch of food together and they sent like a ship over to Ireland

because they'd heard about the famine. Right. And it was turned away at gunpoint by the British Army because they thought it would negatively affect, like, the economy if, like, free food was coming in. Wow. So they were, like, protecting, like, the GDP. fucking

famine-ridden Ireland Yeah, crazy And so there's like a big Statue of a feather I think it's in court Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah And that's like To honor their attempt

To like help us It was something beautiful It was like It wasn't the most food But like literally Native Americans dealing with their own genocide That were sending I think it was like a couple of horses

And like some grain Help out And they like Turned it away Because they didn't want anything You guys own a casino I think we should have No I think we should have our own

casino, I think we should get one of them as well. One of the casinos, because they're talking about building the casinos in New York. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that, like, I think that should be run by Irish people. It probably will be, to be honest. Yeah, that's true. I don't know if you hung around New York a ton, but there's a couple of patties running around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's interesting, the famine. Is there a famine denial

movement? Like, similar to a Holocaust denial movement? Right, like, it seems like with any great tragedy, there's a contingent of radicals that say it's not happening. Well, I think there's, like, the, the, The consensus from Irish people is that like a famine is probably like the wrong word to use for it. Because one crop failed like the potato, like blight. And then, but again, we, I think the perception from around the world is like, oh, Irish people just ate potatoes. So the potatoes failed.

And then they were, they all died because they had nothing to eat other than potatoes. But we were growing like corn and wheat and had livestock and, you know, all these things. But then the British were sort of forcible. at gunpoint exporting all of that stuff to England to make sure English people were getting fed and looked after at the sort of hard work of Irish people so there was enough food but it was like just taken away. This is mid-1800s. Yeah and their population in Ireland still hasn't recovered. Right it's still less today than it was

pre-family. Shout out to the people who say the words Ireland's full and hate immigrants. You fucking idiots. These people just haven't had the right Mexican food. I'm telling you That's what they need. Yeah, yeah. If you get a couple more burrito spots, legit ones, not text mix, actual, from Halisco.

You know what I mean? Then they'll be like, oh, we can take a couple. I went to Lost Taco's number one. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's supposed to be like a good one in New York. And I got the cactus one, just because I was like,

oh, I should, similar to the cricket thing, I was like, let's eat the crazy thing. I wish I'd just got, like, chicken or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a novelty. You can't just put all your eggs on it. I think it's for vegetarians. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like the cactus one is just like,

Oh, that's your thing. It's actually an interesting place when you come back that I would love to take you to. If you're an adventurous eater, it's called the Black Ant. Okay. And it specifically specializes in central, like, Mesoamerican ancient cuisine. Okay. Where a lot of it is imbued with insects. Okay.

Good protein in insects, supposedly. Now, I know that there's going to be a lot of conspiracy people who are like, oh, dude, the rich wants you to eat insects. That's not one to talk about, okay? This is like an ancient... The rich wants you to eat insects. This is a conspiracy theory I've heard. That's so. It's closed?

No. No. Their domain? They don't even have a website. Bro, I went like a year and a half ago. I cannot believe

that the insect restaurant is closed. They've been canceled by the woke mom. Dude. The elites, bro. The elites want us to eat it. And we,

and we... The elites don't want us to eat bugs. Yeah. Fuck. That's crazy. Okay. So, I guess for context, the British have been,

uh, I mean, depending on who you ask, treating the Irish unfairly for a long time. Yeah, pushing 900 years now. Yeah.

We can argue about time. Maybe it's 700 years. Who knows, really, right? But as time goes on, Easter Monday, 1916, the Easter rising. Yeah, occupying the post office. Which feels very, like, boring. You know what I mean? It's quite a boring place to occupy.

If you're going to start a revolution. Yeah, yeah. Like the post office, like on some level, there's a funny place. Like if on January 6th, Trump was like, we're going to the post office, people would be like, what? Yeah. The capital's right there. He's like, no, no, no, no.

No one's getting packages. The post office. And then occupying it as well. Like, post office is just where there's always, like, a line. So, like, at what point did they notice? They were like, called the lines thing and forever. And it's just a bunch of guys stood there with guns. We're protesting.

They're like, we get it, okay. No one even knows it's happening. That's hilarious. But basically, this moment is kind of like the birth of the IRA in a way, like, in a formal sense. Yeah, I would say that. It was like the first sort of like the declaration of like, and you have your own equivalent of like the declaration. of independence way

like the Irish proclamation which is like here's this is our country blah blah blah blah a 32 county socialist

republic right and it was all like teachers and poets and artists that's part of the whole like Irish mythology around like

our rebellion was led by artists and stuff which I don't think would work today like if January 6th was all like poets they'd have the same drums

exactly I feel like it would be very pass-aggressive They would go through the cap and just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be kind of cute. And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But basically there's a, you know, there's a standoff, you could say, in this moment. And they weren't well supported at the time. Like the leaders in 1916 of the Easter Rising, like it wasn't, popular opinion was not that they should do this. Like there was, I think a general overall feeling of like, look, the British aren't great,

but we can sort of put up with it. And these are seen as sort of like, real rebels who were like fighting sort of ideologically rather than like for what the people necessarily wanted and the british come in they try to stop it they are successful yeah they eventually surrender and it doesn't seem like oh this is going to be the start of a massive independence movement but it is but then it's because they shoot them all and that really shifted public opinion of like all like they just put them to death and there's a very cute story of a guy called Joseph Mary Plunkett.

I don't know why his middle name is Mary, but that's his middle name. And he was going out with the girl called Grace Gifford. And they were like childhood sweethearts, and it was all very, very nice. And then he went and joined the Easter Rising in 1916. And it doesn't go well. They'll get arrested. They're in prison. And then while they're in prison, the day before he gets taken out and put to death,

he marries Grace Gifford because he was like I want to the last thing I want to do on this earth is just marry you there must be a million songs about them there's one called Grace and it is like a very beautiful song

yeah very beautiful song I love the Irish relationship with music is truly I don't know if there's other places like obviously we've talked about music already but like there's a connection to it in a really interesting way yeah it's always sort of been at the core

of like everything we've done whether it's political was and that's why I know it's 900 years because we're very good at like in all the songs start with like in 1604 like it's always like these are the dates and it fucking happened all right well 1919 the Irish War of Independence officially starts and the IRA has a pretty you know simple strategy don't do you know open field battle yeah and you're going to the British. And so you just attacked them where they're kind of vulnerable. And so you got to find like, you know, a barracks here or there, a targeted killing on a, you know, an intelligence officer.

And even 1916, I think, was tactically, uh, sort of timed during like the First World War because the British were like essentially, like distracted or like couldn't, like didn't have the resources to like shift over Ireland because they were fighting on like two different fronts. So sort of snuck in the back door while they were fighting in Europe. And then I imagine, even 1919, World War I's technically over. But they've been ravines. They're reeling from this brutal war for, you know, all through Western Europe. That's really interesting.

Ah, that's, I mean, I think the same thing happened with, like, Haiti. Like, with their independence came, uh, from the French after a major conflict. I forget which. But it was the same thing that, like, they were basically so destitute financially, but also militarily from this conflict. Yeah. Haiti was like, can we be free? And then they fought for it and they got it.

Yeah, yeah, because it was like, okay. Yeah. Now is the time. It's literally now and ever, felt like. But I didn't realize the IRA had, like, tactically, they were a bit guerrilla. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very guerrilla warfare had to be. Because that's the only way to sort of like, similar like Vietnam and stuff.

If you have a massive sort of imperial army up against you, you can't just like, you know, it's like a boxer who's going up against like Deontay Wilder. Yeah, yeah. Like you can't stand toe to toe and be like, right, let's fucking swing. Yeah, yeah. You got to cheat. Yeah, you've got to kick him in the balls. I'll find a way. So they're getting like messenger boys, like newspaper kids, like farmers,

just like any place that they can basically set up a way to like improvised weapons, like to meet in secret to like basically plan these operations more or less. And it kind of starts there. And it seems like it just kind of continues all throughout like the 20th century. Like this sort of like standoff. Yeah, pretty much. So 1921. Correct me if I'm wrong is when like partition happens and it's sort of there's an Irish

Republic. The Anglo-Irish tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so that's when Northern Ireland, where I'm from, is sort of founded. That's when that sort of starts, which is mad. It's, you know, it's a 105-year-old country. Right. And so it feels crazy young.

And there's people who think that they should have held out for, and the reason that northeast coast of Ireland, that northeast portion of Ireland is maintained as part of the UK is because that's where the most successful plantation was in the 1600s of 80s. So lots of like Scottish landowners and like farmers and stuff were like sort of planted in Northern Ireland and in the North of Ireland. Irish people who had like a farm or whatever, they're like, okay, that's not your farm anymore. These Scottish people own it. Which is why my accent is different to people in the south of Ireland because

ours is heavily influenced by Scotland. Interesting. Oh, I always wonder what that was. Yeah, yeah. Because Northern Irish sound different than Dubliners. Ah, that makes sense. Big Ten. And so that moment in 1921 just radically changes the geography.

There's like, it's a partition effectively. Yeah, a new country is sort of... A new nation. Two new countries, I guess, are sort of born. You have like the United Kingdom of Cripburn and Northern Ireland, and then you have the Republic about it. It also seems like it splits like the force. Like you had this one sort of unified revolutionary force.

They have this treaty. People are for it. People are against it. And then that creates its own division almost internally within the resistance. Yeah. And there's a feeling in the north, I'm sure, from the sort of Republican Catholic side that they've been somewhat abandoned. Mm-hmm. You know, like the people on the side sort of took what they could get and then sort of left them to their own things.

And it was a really like, it was a state that was designed to always have a Protestant majority and always be. run by Protestants. Like all the voting territories were like, it was all gerrymandered and all worked out. So that like, and also I think voting was based on like property ownership. So you couldn't vote or you got more votes or your vote wasn't worth as much. Basically if you didn't own the home that you like lived in. Right. And all of the landowners and property owners were Protestants who were pro-British.

which is a pretty typical British common law thing it's like to vote you have to be a man who owns land and they did that in America for years yeah yeah so that basically locked the Catholics out

of any political way of sort of self-determination or like gaining their freedom via the ballot box which is the argument for why if you don't have equal rights politically that's the argument for like political violence

being the only course of action because everybody argues against political violence is like oh, like you should just like vote and organize and have a political campaign and do it like peacefully, but it's like, well, if you can't vote. Right. Well, that's the MLK thing, right? Like the, what is it, violence is the language of the unheard or something to that effect,

that, you know, you try to go through the democratic process and if it's not working, what other options do you have to not be, you know, crushed by the empire? And it's reasonably, like, like reasonably peaceful, I would say, between then and, like, the 1960s. Like, there's little campaigns here and there. around the border and like the 50s and stuff. And then in the 60s is when it all sorts of sort of cracks off. It kicks off in Northern Ireland.

And it's all inspired like by each other. So there's like civil rights movements in India and then MLK in America. Like the Irish, the Northern Irish civil rights movement, which sort of started the troubles, was very inspired by the black civil rights movement in America. Interesting. I didn't know that. Oh, wow. Is there an influence of like music and culture and sort of like spirituals coming out of America that is that is connecting with Irish?

I don't know. I think there was sort of a shared knowledge and shared awareness that like around the world that was like, okay, civil rights are sort of on the agenda and up for grabs and people like to fight for them. Impossible. Yeah. It's like a four minute mile thing, right? Like one person breaks it. And they thought it was impossible. And then within the next five years, 100 people break. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just this sort of. have to break out of your mental prison first. Right. Before you can break out of your proper one. We've touched on this briefly, but I think it's helpful for people that don't know sort of the religious political component.

That I think people, maybe if they didn't grow up within, you know, the Christian, Catholic worldview, they're seeing this thing against Protestants and Catholics, and they think it's solely about sort of dogmatic, ritualistic theological terms. Yeah. And also they think, like, what's the fucking different? Like, do you know what I mean? They're a bit like, why are Catholics and Protestants getting this weird about each other? it's like very little.

Is it about transubstantiation? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What is actually at stake? Yeah. Could you just explain the Catholic component as it's imbued to the culture? So I think like you put it quite well in the sense that the Catholic Protestant thing sort of, it's like a proxy.

Like it just sort of happens to line up with the actual, like the disagreement is political rather than religious, really. But then it's political because. people were discriminated against because of their religion. Do you know that sort of way where it's like the oppressed have to define themselves by the thing that the oppressor defines them by? And that's what they're unified by. In the same way that like in the Middle East now, you'd be like, oh, it's Muslims against Jews. Like it is. But that's not why it is.

Like, you know what I mean? I think even to that point, like Sunni versus Shia, right? It's like you have like the Sunni versus Shia sectarian violence, people are like, oh, is this all about, you know, the secession of the prophet? Peace be upon them. Or is this actually a proxy for another conflict, which is what it is. Like you have Iran that is predominantly Shia and like the rest of the Arab world, specifically Saudi Arabia, that's predominantly Sunni. And the most Arabs are Sunni, but you have this like, you have Iran backing these different Shia proxies to cause problems in these other countries to destabilize them in order to, you know, get access to precious minerals. So all that to say, it's like these things are actually. both as like ontologically as religious conflicts but also as proxy conflicts for the political part. Yeah. And then so basically the function was that like Irish people who were those people who were forced off their land and the land was given to Scottish people. So it was like Scottish Protestants came over into Ireland and were part of that plantation. And then actually during the famine, if you, there's a phrase in Ireland called like if you pander to English people, people would say like you took the soup. You took the soup.

And that's because during the famine, if you renounced Catholicism and said you were a Protestant, the English would give you soup. Wow. I've never heard that before. So if you, like, pandered English people or like, you seem to be like tap dancing for English people. You sell out, you cave. You take the soup. Soup drinker. Oh, you're a soup drinker.

Oh, that's fire. I love finding new slurs for people. This is like one of my favorite things. And it's deep cut, too. They came to say anything about it. Wow, that's so fascinating. So it seems like things kind of are, you know, generally stable until the 60s. Also, so Catholicism was illegal at one point.

I think it was maybe Cromwellian times where, and you have these sort of, you can still see them, like these secret like altars in like forests and stuff. And where people would like secretly congregate and practice their Catholicism because otherwise they would be either killed or sent to America. Wow. So that sort of existed as part of like a Catholic rebellion. It was also the Irish language was criminalized, which is sort of like it's going through a bit of a resurgence at the minute, like the popularity of the Irish language. It's gay-out specifically? Yeah.

And I was like, I'm signed up to do an Irish language course in January for like two hours on Monday nights. Oh, that's interesting. For like 10 weeks. I mean, didn't this happen with the Scots like before the Battle of Colloden with the British that they like banned like the tartan? They do crazy things. And it's like they seem to bat. The harp was banned in Ireland.

Really? Because it was seen as like a rebellious instrument. The harp. Yeah. The harp. The one that you have massages to. The harp. The instrument angels literally play.

Just the bunch of birds. It's going, oh, no, not the harp. Don't play the harp. No, please. But I get it, like, in the sense that if you're trying to crush a people ideologically, you need to strip them of their culture. And strip them of their identity. So I think there's a big movement at the minute that Irish people should sort of reclaim their identity

by reclaiming our language. There is a feeling, and this feels very wishy-washy of like, I only speak English. I don't speak any other languages like, you know, like touristy Spanish, touristy French, but like I speak English and that's all, that's the only thing I speak fluently. But there is a feeling of like it still feels like your second language. Do you know what I mean? Like there's something in me that's like, and then I read about how the Irish language functions and do you know, there's no, and Irish people speak English in English in. the grammar of Gaelic. So, for example, there's no word for yes or no in Irish.

In Gaelic. So if you say, like, if you ask me a question, like, are you going to this gig later? I would be like, I am. You can't say yes. You always have to use the verb. Interesting. So that's why Irish people talk like that. Oh, that's fascinating.

They're like, I am, I'm not. You will, you won't. Wow. So there's no yes. or no, there's just this sort of... Oh, there's another interesting one. I actually saw this from Noel Gallagher, but he says something like,

which I know he's from Manchester, but I think their family is Irish. I think they're Limerick people, his mom and dad. But like, he would say, like, I will, like, I will do or something to that effect. Like, I don't even know exactly how he said it, but like, uh, like, uh, like, I, I, I forget exactly what it was, but it's like,

I will do. I will do. Yeah, well, there's also, like, asking, like, would you like a drink? Or, like, do you want to drink? It's like Irish people more likely say, like, will you have a drink? Or like, are you having a drink?

Right. And it's just this, it feels more leading. Yeah, you will. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you will like, you will a little bit. That's why you drink so much. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, it's leading the witness every time.

They're not like, do you want to drink? It's, are you going to have one. Yeah. Because those are very different questions. I never want to drink, but I will have one. Yeah, you will have one. I will have one. You will have one.

It's almost predetermined. It's outside of my control. I'm not asking if you want it. I'm asking if it's going to happen. Because I don't want it. but I will have it. That's fascinating. I can see that being conflicting

as an Irish person because you're looking back at your history, you only speak your English language, you don't speak the language of your ancestors, but you do speak in this sort of, like there's an element of the DNA

still there linguistically. Hiberno English is what people call it. Hiberno. Ireland was known as Hibernia, which I think was the Romans, which means the land of eternal winter. because I think the Romans got there and we're like, this place sucks.

It's a little dramatic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just fucking go open an ice cream shop. Do what the actual Romans are doing. You know what I mean? That's so funny. Hibernia. Which is why there's a football team

or soccer team in Edinburgh called Hibernian football club, and that's Irish people in Scotland. Oh, interesting. That's why they're. Well, also, on one of the topic of football, Rangers Celtics. Protestant Catholic.

Is another element of this whole political saga. Yeah. And when they play, it is El Classico. It is like this... Yeah, it's sort of... Massive rivalry. Huge rivalry and sort of occasional violence and deep hatred. I'm a big Celtic fan.

Of course. Sort of like you just are. If you grew up Catholic in Belfast, it's like you can have a team that you support like in the English Premier League or whatever, but you support Celtic. Interesting. Just sort of passively. It's just part of being a Catholic and supporting Celtic. So it seems like basically, basically,

per my research. Basically, the 60s happens. Catholics in North Ireland are getting discriminated just throughout life. No government, no housing. You can't own shit. You are in a voting system

that is designed to block you out. And Catholic activists in Ireland seeing this American moment, they're like, all right, it's time. So 1968, police and dairy beat civil rights marchers with batons. Yes. And the footage is now around the world.

Yeah. And people are seeing this. Because they marched, they were marching from Belfast to Derry, I think, was like the plan. And they were singing. And you actually said earlier, I think they were singing like, We Shall Overcome, which I believe is like a black civil rights song. It would be funny if like that continued now, like if there was another civil rights campaign or like a bigger campaign to Unify Ireland. But we were doing like, we going to be all right. Weedum boy.

That's fire. Yeah, it honestly would work You guys would crush rap, dude I mean Well, kneecap Yeah, there's a couple There's a couple of young boys I think cojack's a lesser

A lesser known Irish rapper broadly But Cojack is a very good rapper From Dublin Oh really And he's got them Yeah, I don't think he's getting the I mean kneecapper Obviously brilliant

Than getting this huge attention All around the world But I think there's more There's like And Jordan Aetunji I don't know if he saw that He got like He's from Belfast

He got nominated for Grammy. Oh, wow. I think. This is so funny. I know half of this because it actually comes out on the 17th on the BBC. I did voiceover for a documentary about Northern Irish hip-hop. Really? Which was very, like, very

weird. Like, the whole script was like, from the Bronx to Belfast. My first over voiceover gig as well. It was very, very funny. From selling crack to What's the Cracks? Yeah. That's fine. That's great. Yeah.

Different accents, same struggle. Yeah. Oh, that's it. Oh, that's so interesting. So basically, as time goes on, there's this, there's a resentment from the Catholics in Northern Ireland. And then the IRA is splitting into the provisional IRA, the provost. So the IRA still exists in the south as sort of like a remnant of like the old guard

that like fought in 1916 and all of these things. But, yeah, the provisional IRA sort of decides that arms. struggle and like bombing campaigns are the way to like that's the option there has to be sort of a violent side to this like to fight for their freedom and to fight for their rights essentially especially because of that march in 1968 like it was a peaceful civil rights march and they had like you know it was one man one vote all that stuff and they were met with again you know batons and bricks and violence so you sort of think like well if you can't vote and you can't vote and you can't protest peacefully.

You're left with very few options would be the argument. So then you have the provos on the Catholic side, basically battling the UVF and the UDA. Yeah, and the UVF and the UDF and there's real sort of skirmishes amongst. And they both are just like sort of paramilitary group is just civilians. Kind of bombing just like ice cream shops, pubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like where do Protestants hang out, target that, where do Catholics hang out?

Like it's sort of... With the deliberate effort of killing people or damaging property or both? Generally, I think the party line of the... The IRA is that they were never interested in killing civilians. They were trying to damage property, which is why they always sort of called up before a bomb went off. And was like, evacuate this place. The bomb's going to go off in five minutes or whatever. Apparently kids would also be like patrol.

Like they would have kids like bang trash can lids to approach of like armies coming in. Oh, that was the women and the children in like Catholic areas of Belfast. If the British Army were coming in to do like a raid where they would like try and find like guns that were. smuggled, they're like stash places. If they heard them coming in, the women and the children would take like the metal, like trash can or like bin lids and like smash them on the ground so that everybody who was doing bad stuff could stop doing it. And there's crazy stuff in those terraces, like rows of houses in Belfast where all of the

attics, is you use the word attic in America? Yeah, yeah, the top part of the house. Yeah, yeah. They were all connected. Oh, interesting. So if you were running away from the police or the British Army, you could go into one house. Out the other. Down the whole street.

Out a different house. And like everybody in those communities just, like, had their doors unlocked because basically the boys would need to, like, come in. And also they would just come in and be like, here's a gun. Can you bury this in the garden? Wow. And you just sort of had to go along with that. Everyone was a part of it. Yeah.

And it would be like a gun would come in in like a place like the Davis Flats. which is where, have you seen Say Nothing, the TV show? It was on, like, Hulu. Big recommend on that. So there's a book by a guy called Patrick Radden Keefe who wrote Empire of Pain. You know the book about the Sackler family? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sick book, and they made it into like a Netflix documentary and stuff.

He wrote a book called Say Nothing about the Troubles, and it's like a phenomenal book. And he writes for the New Yorker, I think. But a lot of that's set in the Davis Flats. and like a gun would come in and it would be like handed out the back windows of all these like apartments and like passed along so no matter where they went in

like they couldn't and they went into the next place and it would just go out and around so they're sort of chasing these guns that were being passed around just Scooby-Doo around apartment complex in one door out the other door

and passing around big Scooby-Doo Vice. Turkish Ice cream shops I thought I had the gun yeah it's big Turkish ice cream shop by what's up people we're going to take a break really quick

because I have amazing news I'm coming on the road. That's right. My very first headlining tour where I'm going to every city that will possibly allow me to go there. I'm going to Fort Wayne, Indiana, Chicago, Hoboken, New Jersey. I'm going to Salt Lake City. I'm going to Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, North Carolina in February. Those tickets will be announced soon. And, of course, I'm doing my monthly show at Mary Lou in New York City on December 16th. The best comics in the city will be coming out and I'll be working out some new material. It is a grand old time. You can get all the tickets at Mark Yagnon Live, and I'll see you guys. there. Let's get back to the show. And this seems like it culminates into Bloody Friday. So the IRA is dealing with informants internally. They're, you know, they're, they have their own sort of like process for people that are going to the British side. And then they're playing an op. And tauts is our word for it. Tout. Touts. Touts. What is that? Like snitches. Does it translate in a way or is it just the word? So like, yeah, it's basically like for like. So we've like to snitch on. You're touting information?

Yeah, yeah. Ah, interesting. And they were fairly brutally dealt with, whether it was a knee capping, so like being shot through the back of the knee, or like driven over the border to the south. And either your body, if you were like a tout, your body would be like dumped at the side of the road with like a bullet in the back of the head to be like, this is what happens. And they would, if there was any women who would like fraternize with the British Army, they would be like tarred and feathered.

and like chain-tailed lamp post. Horrible, horrible stuff. And the IRA, like, as much as ideologically, you can argue for them or whatever. Undeniably, a lot of them were, like, horrible, horrible, like psychopaths. And it's the same in any war, I think war attracts people who want to do horrible things, and now they have a justification for doing horrible things. In addition to that, like, the generational components of trauma. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's like people are acting in violent, malicious ways. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they also, like, killed a lot of people for being informants who weren't informants. And they basically tortured confessions out of them. But that, like, you can torture anything out of anybody if you really want to. This is not reliable information.

And a focus of the book and the TV show saying nothing is this woman, Jean McComwell, who was a mother of tan in the Davis Flats. And she, the story goes that there was a soldier who'd been shot, like, on the sort of walkway outside the front door of their apartment. and she went out and like put a pillow under his head basically as he like sort of died and then it was like spray painted on their door like Brit lover and like all this stuff

and then it went right she was like taken away and like disappeared so I think it's 13 people were what's called disappeared during the troubles where they were never their bodies weren't left in the street they weren't like killed outright anywhere they were just never seen again sometimes like a postcard would be sent from Australia and the IRA would like spread misinformation

it was like oh yeah he's in New York or he's in England like he's been seen here, been seen there she's a runaway, yeah, whatever but then like there was a huge campaign for the disappeared for their bodies to be like located and then people like Jerry Adams who was never in the IRA that's his that's like the party line of Jerry Adams is that he was never in the IRA even if you speak to anybody

who was in the IRA at that time he was charge. Like it's crazy, but he's not a politician so he can never admit to having been in the IRA. The Syrian guy is doing the same at the minute where he's like, no, no, it wasn't me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a different guy. He was my brother. Yeah, but so he was part of that whole thing and say nothing is a really brilliant sort of like book and TV show. As with any historical thing, like people would argue it doesn't cover every single aspect of the whole. It doesn't say the way I like. Yeah, exactly. Just then it's like, well, you forgot this one thing. And it's like, yeah, it's a big book already. Like, yeah.

There's only so much you can put in here. So very conflicting feelings around all that stuff where the IRA did terrible things. It spawns from a civil rights movement. Without the terrible things happening, without the civilian deaths, do you achieve the peace that you eventually achieve? Do Catholics get sort of equal rights?

Do you lead to what feels like an inevitability of the United Ireland? Like, it's these questions that you'll never have answers to where you go like, you'll never know. You'll never know if this many people needed to die or if half that number of people died, would you have still been able to achieve the same thing?

They definitely wrongfully killed people and had some horrible people. This is the nature of war on conflict, right? Like, again, I view history maybe unemotionally. Maybe it should be more emotional, but I just look at it as sort of like, this is what happened, right? Yeah.

Where the American Revolutionary Forces is justified in the rebellion against the British? I don't, sure. Like, but it just is. It's just, yeah, just it. And did civilians die in the American Revolutionary? War probably. Yeah.

Like there was, was it a good movement that got co-opted? Were there bad actors in a good movement? Sure. Again, I'm just, it just is. But the guy, Freddie Scapatici, who was known as Steakknife, he was the head of what's called the Nutting Squad. So they were, their job was to find informants and get rid of them from within the IRA. Turns out he was the biggest informant the whole time.

And this is all like the horrible, like, dirty muckiness of war where. he was feeding back to the British like Secret Service and the special branch in the army the whole time and he would say oh we've got this guy lined up to be killed for being an informant

and the British knew that that person wasn't an informant but they didn't stop him killing that innocent person because that would have given away their top informant in the IRA so for the sake of holding on to

their like tout basically kill casual they knowingly just like let innocent civilians be like tortured and murdered and there's a great podcast series on that called steak knife

but it's S-T-A-K-E knife there's Scapatici steak knife another Italian another Italian in Belfast we don't have the best reputation but he turned up

recently like a few years ago he turned up in Guilford in England and then died a couple years ago wow horrible guy supposedly the way they got him to be an informant and they had all sorts of different ways of getting people to be informants

is they found animal porn on like his computers. They're planting stuff on their computers. No. He actually is into animal porn. Okay. Okay. Okay.

So they actually found it. So they would find stuff about these people that was like either arrestable or very embarrassing. I think a mix. Because if it's animals and animals, I think we need to just. I think it's a bit of, of both stuff and then maybe

I don't know if he's one of the one that was some of them were like pedophiles and stuff and they were like okay if you work for us yeah you'll get immunity yeah yeah yeah classic classic sort of like informants shit yeah exactly what do you need

we will give it to you yeah whether it's money whether it's promise of safety or you get caught doing one thing yeah and it's like okay we'll look after you you can go to witness protection hmm yeah interesting double agents triple agents so I have a thing about the the nutting's which we'll get into.

But Bloody Friday specifically is this moment where... So that was organized, supposedly, by all accounts, by Jerry Adams. Wow. And Brendan Hughes, those were like the two leaders of the Belfast Brigade. Allegedly. Allegedly. I always denied any involvement in the IRA or IRA-related virus. I still want to go do shows in Belfast one day, okay?

Do you? Well, after this comes out, after you've slandered my name amongst the political class. Well, is Jerry Adams going to whack you? I don't know. Then we were right. on this one day they plant 26 bombs that detonate within 80 minutes

they fuck it up streets are covered and spoke blocks are shut down like it's an absolute war zone and the IRA claimed that they sent warnings but they fucked up the warnings people say the warnings came too late yeah and by the end nine people are killed civilians teenagers 130 people are injured

it is a war zone horrific yeah horrific and uh the bombing gave the British justification for a massive retaliation. And they say this can't happen. So 10 days later, British Army launches Operation Motorman, the largest deployment of troops in Northern Ireland since World War II.

When the troops initially arrived in Belfast, the Catholics, like, thought that they were going to protect them from the sort of loyalist, like, killing gangs, because that was, like, a lot of what they were worried about. And, like, Catholic, like, women would bring them, like, cups of tea and, like, biscuits and stuff. And then it became quite clear that that is not what they were there for. Whoa.

Yeah. Not at this time. So like this would have been before that. Right. So do you basically have bulldozers going into no-go areas that the IRA once controlled? Yeah, so the IRA would set up like barricades and like block off streets. Sort of like that, what was the, that zone? Was it in Seattle?

Oh, yeah, Chaz. Yeah, the Capitol Hill autonomous zone. Just still there? No. That was a movement led by artists. Yeah, that's what happens when it's poets. It lasted 40 days, I think. I think that was it.

But yeah, a similar thing where it's like work here, If you want to get in, you have to kill us. And the state is like, well, we don't want to kill you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we can just have it, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But once you start killing us, then we have justification to go in and do it, which they did. They bulldoze the whole thing.

And at that moment, the IRA is forced to, like, kind of adapt. And so controlling these big sections of Belfast is now no longer the case. They need new weapons, new tactics. And they need help. Maybe from a man named Mulmar Gaddafi. Shout out to Gaddafi. So Gaddafi. Great guy.

The plastic surgery looked good right till the end. I mean... He was the pioneer of too much Botox, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. He was a crazy looking fucker. Get a picture up of Gaddafi towards the end. Man, he looked like a Halloween mask. Yeah, it's a bit tough.

He's kind of melting. He looks like Jafar from... This is what Simon Kyle looks like. Yo, that drip up at the top... Further up, scroll up, scroll up, on the right. Oh, yeah. That's so sick. Yeah, I mean, and then with his, you know, army of models that would go around to him.

Like, super villain ship. But people actually do support him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, unironically, you're being obviously tongue-in-cheek, but people are like, no, no, these people love him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think he might be, is he sort of an example of one of those guys who, yeah, you know, Robert McGarbey was like, like, started off as, like, like a freedom fighter, like civil rights, blah, blah, blah, I mean, just, like, completely, like, went mad.

Well, this is how these things go, right? Like, you can look at, which again, I'm going to piss off Ethiopians, highly Salasi. You know, he's like, hey, we're going to take Ethiopia back from the Italians. And then you get power, become a dictator, you become a demigod by the Rastafarians, and then a couple Tigrayans are killed in a famine. And then some Somalis die.

And it's like, yeah, these things become... Yeah, it's almost like... Power corrupts, absolutely. What is it? Saddam is the same way. Is it in the whole? Hunger Games where Katna's

Evano like kills the leader of the revolution like on day one of them like I didn't see it you haven't seen hunger games

I have a lot of stuff to catch up on some inside joke I know it's a whole thing it's a super gay film to be like no no it's sick it's every movie

I haven't seen movies oh yeah Aaron McCann was telling me that you don't watch movies I just not a purpose I just it's going around Aaron what the hell that was between us bro

it's a whole thing look I heard you just hate films and stories I don't know that's not Don't sit, don't, don't even start with that, all right? I love films. I love the narrative, okay, the art of storytelling is a passion of mine. I just don't have time.

I get busy. I get busy. You're on flights all the time. I read books about Libya. Obviously. Obviously that's what I'm doing. But like, to this point, Saddam, he's like the bath party of, you know, Iraq is like, hey, the British are fucking us over.

We can create this pan-Arab league where we kick out our colonizers and we all, we save our people. And you're like, nice. Arab Spring shit. And then you get your kids in charge and they started murdering people and stealing women at weddings and, you know. What is it... I think some of Saddam's, like, descendants

are still, like, around. Yeah, I mean, Uday and Kusei were killed, but I'm sure he had a litany of children. Somebody came out against something recently and it was very funny that they were like, what this person's doing is a disgrace, but it was like when a Saddam Hussein's,

like nephews or something crazy. Well, they would know evil, right? Yeah. But basically Gaddafi at this point is the ruler of Libya and the IRA is looking for, they need some support. And Gaddafi's on a mad one at this point. He is funding just chaos around the world. Yeah. He just looks around and goes right, who's doing the maddest shit?

Yeah. Have some money. Have some guns. Do whatever the fuck you want. And also like putting a thorn in the side of the British. Yeah, yeah. Any kind of colonial Western thing, he's like, that's under. So he's shipping weapons to the IRA, like rifles, machine guns.

guns. Yeah. Surface to air missiles are getting sent. Why the fuck did the IRA need those? Do you know what I mean? There's no airstrikes on Belfast? I guess if you're going to get it, you know what I mean? Like he's all right.

I bet like, like, Jerry Adams was like a rocket launcher? Yeah, you didn't ask, do you want a rocket launcher? He said, you're going to have a rocket launcher? And he said, yeah, I'm going to have a rocket launcher, actually. And the shipments now are changing the scale of the conflict. And so the Libyan connection almost had a moment to change. the entire thing. In 1997,

one of the biggest shipments, 120 tons of weapons is seized by French authorities. And this is, I mean, it's a major loss, but like,

you have to think 120 tons of weapons could have changed the entire conflict. Yeah, crazy. It's funny. They had these,

like, sort of missionaries going around the world, like, convincing, like, they came to America a lot, and a lot of the,

what's it called, nor raid. There's a lot of fundraising done in America for the cause. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

and like Boston and New York and stuff, There's all these. Oh, interesting. And they would just go around to, like, these Irish community centers all around the world. And depending on the state that they were in, they would, like, push either element of it.

I'm sure a church here and there. They're already collecting money. For sure. And if it was, it was, like, a left-leaning state, they would push, like, the anti-colonial, like, liberations and the civil rights side of it. But if it was, like, a right-leaning state, they would be like, oh, it's a Republican movement

that's anti-the-crown on the same ideals that, like, America was founded on. And they would just, like, lean towards either direction of it. And I had a crazy one recently. So Brendan Hughes, who was known as The Dark, he was in the Belfast Brigade and he used to be in the merchant navy and he used a cruise liner called the Queen Elizabeth II to like transport guns from America to Ireland. And when I did my tour show in Dubai, which I regret, I, so the QE2, the Queen Elizabeth the second, that cruise liner is just like in Dubai permanently, just like in the docks.

And my show was on the boat in the theater of the boat. So I performed on the boat that used to run guns for the IRA. I mean, that's a pretty good way to do it. Yeah, that's crazy. How was a show? Yeah, good fun, kind of crazy. Like, weird place. There was 95% like not locals.

Yeah. And so there was like two people from Dubai there. And then it's all these just like Irish t-shirt teachers They're like, I'm just trying to make some money so I can go back and buy a house. That's all it is. Very weird place. So they're getting all these weapons,

which I think not a lot of people realize. I didn't know that before I even started looking at this. Like that they're just getting shipments of weapons kind of from around the world. I mean, America, Libya, specifically. But now this is causing a massive issue for the British. Because they're like, okay, we have this rebel force that hates us and now they're getting massive funding from foreign governments.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, this is an actual, this is not like a little... Like, the fact you guys called the troubles is... It's crazy. And it was never declared as a war by the British or by anybody.

So it is just like it exists in this sort of liminal zone where it doesn't have the same protections legally. Like I'm sure you have something about Bloody Sunday in there. The people who did Bloody Sunday, which is basically there was a civil rights march in Derry in the 70s.

And the British army just opened fire, like the parachute regiment, just opened fire on the crowd. and like 13 people died and were like shot in the back and they were all unarmed blah blah blah blah and the results of the trial

which concluded three weeks ago like today three weeks ago yeah was that the regiment acted unlawfully and killed those people unlawfully but they couldn't arrest any or put they couldn't imprison any of the

or convict any of the individuals and I'm like well how does that mean who the fuck who did it? Who did it? It's just a little murder mystery. crazy so he's known as like soldier f um the guy that didn't yeah and well like basically they couldn't absolutely prove i think that he that it was like a bullet from his gun that like i guess yeah under

the you know scrupulousness of the law and i did a fun riff on the podcast a lot of people didn't like on my podcast of like soldier f but like singing soldier boy soldier f up in this ho watch me crack though what's me row we shoot that protester and superman that, oh, you shoot that protester and you. People didn't like it. Why didn't they like it? Don't they know that you're the voice of Belfast hip-hop? Like, they should understand the connection.

One from the Bronx to Belfth. Yeah, that's another thing I should probably make clear here. I don't have any emotional connection to this. So for me, I'm like, this is a history. There are people that really live this that I imagine have a sordid relationship with it. Yeah, and it's very, very. difficult, like you say, it's very easy to be detached and be like, well, this is what happened, then it doesn't matter what should have happened. And there's still people who are like

waiting for justice and people hate the fact that Jerry Adams is like just a politician now when he sort of built his reputation on the backs of people who don't have anything. They were like, they fought for the IRA and believed what they were fighting for and they fought alongside Jerry Adams and they were getting paid like basically the IRA. salary, which is just like you don't have to have a job, like spend all your time working for the IRA. But it's not loads. And these people now just live in like shit like apartments. And they're all really traumatized. Also a crazy thing is like talk about a mental health crisis. A lot of the men and women who were involved in the conflict and in the IRA and stuff,

they can't go to therapy because therapists in the UK don't have like a doctor patient confidentiality. So if you admit to having done a crime that you traumatized by, I killed a woman and I feel so traumatized by it.

They have to go to the police. Wow. So all these people have nobody to talk to you, to process these horrific things that they were involved in or they witnessed or whatever and it's like,

I think it's like massive. There's also a creativity. mental health, like massive uptick and suicide in my generation of people of like ceasefire babies. So people who didn't live through the conflict but grew up with parents who were sort of like didn't talk to us about their childhoods and there's a disconnect and almost like a guilt that we didn't live through the horrible thing and sort of the ripples of a conflict and how it sort of meets out in the following generations. And then not to mention like the parenting style of a father and mother that are traumatized. Yeah. You know, like we talk about like children that

raised by like great depression parents like they live a different life and i can imagine your parents maybe not your parents specifically but parents that lived in that generation are raising children still with this trauma and it's sort of passed on without the actual experience and it's little things that you don't even realize like we never were allowed gun toys ever because my mom and that were like guns aren't fun wow because it was just like they've stayed seen too much of it you get given a gift of a thing, a little Nerf gun, and your parents are like, no, no, no, we don't do guns. And there's pictures of, like, soldiers on the streets of Belfast next to children, and some of them are, like, very crazy. Like, a fully-kid out soldier with, like, a, you know, AK-47.

And there would be, like, just a kid stood next to them. And, like, some of the soldiers would, like, let the kids, like, hold their gun or do whatever. And, like, very weird place to sort of grow up. Wow. Yeah, look at those. Yeah, I mean, it's so recent. Like this kid is, you know, a seven-year-old guy. Just going to school little sort of rucksack on and a British soldier with the biggest gun you've ever fucking seen.

Like, that gun is the height of the child. Literally. Yeah. Yeah, very crazy. Very, very crazy. But then kids would also just, like, throw stones at them. That's the thing people don't talk about either. Riots are fun.

I've not been involved in any of those. But if you talk to anybody from that generation who was involved in, like, the skirmishes or, like, throwing people. petrol bombs or like, you know, Molotov cocktails or any of these things, they're like, it was exciting and fun. That's so funny. Like, and people just don't, like, it's horrifying. I can imagine. Like, there's an energy,

there's a, everyone's kind of doing, like, you're feeling. Yeah. Like, it's like being at a concert, like a mosh pit maybe. Like, as a proxy, more people have experienced. Where it's like, it's violent, but you're not trying to hurt each other. You know, you're just fucking angry and like you're getting it out. Yeah, and you're, like, emboldened by. Ideology.

Odds on your. And I think that's often the thing with war and stuff is like, people, like, particularly men between the age of like 16 to like 25, they just want like some, they need, they want somebody to go, here's what you need to do. Because with so much energy and just like, I need to be doing something. And somebody goes, okay, here's a righteous cause. Like, this is what we believe in and this is what you should fight for.

It's the right thing to do to serve your country. Put all your energy into that. Yeah. And as a 16 year old, like, Thank God. I had like the opposite problem of like when I was 19, I was like, God, what am I doing with my life? I need to figure this out. I would have loved somebody to come along and go, hey, run in that direction.

Take this brick, throw it in the window. Run in that direction. Yeah. Well, this is, I talk about this all the time, but like Sebastian Younger, he's a war journalist. He did the film Restrepo, which I think won some awards. And he talked about PTSD with soldiers coming back from war in the Middle East, back to America. And he says the PTSD begins once they return home. Yeah.

And that it's not necessarily from, it is obviously what they've done and what they've done and what they've experienced and what they've gone through, but it is more so the loss of the support system. So you leave and you're no longer with people that understand you, you no longer are competent. You were trained for one specific job and you were the best person in your platoon to do it.

And now you're in America. We're like, your son insurance and that's your whole self-worth is I am the guy that can do this thing. Yes. And then you lose your purpose. It's no longer needed anymore. You don't, like your purpose is now gone, whether it's for fighting for your nation,

fighting against terrorism, fighting, you know, to get your kids to go to college, whatever your thing is. Yeah. And now you're back in America feeling like... I think there's a lot of men in Belfast that feel that. There was a unity.

I mean, the French are notorious for their protests. And like the Gilles-Leges-Jean protest that was happening in Paris, you know, for workers' compensation. Even after the secession was made by the French government to appease the unions, they continued to protest. Yeah. Because they just wanted to hang out. Yeah.

Like for three months after the pro... They were like, what are you protesting for? They're like, oh, nothing. Like our means are met, but like, this is my people. That's what I do. We come out here every Saturday and we... do this. Yeah.

Like the IRA was like a social, like community thing for a lot of people. Yeah. And it said that sort of link to the church as well. And I think we lose that now this because people aren't. This is why I'm going to become crazy religious. Now we're talking. Here we go. You're going to become a man of the cloth.

Yeah. Also, I'm sorry for my. No, it's quite exciting. My erectile. I have this. Just a little bump because it sits there and it's fine. And then it just loses its mind. But it's very, way.

I think you can punctuate some good jokes. I've never used one of these little, I like, Like them, the low, what they call the low profile? Yeah. My thing, but a little... New edition. There we go. That's low enough.

Yeah. The hunger strikes another interesting ripple in this. Yes. So the 1980s, you're familiar with Bobby Sands? Very familiar with Bobby Sands. This is a thing that is taught in our history. My great uncle served at his funeral. You're lying.

Father Liam Mullen. That's my great uncle. Wow. And he also baptized Liam Nason. What? Yeah, same guy. Wow. That's your great uncle.

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, my granny's brother. So, could you explain who Bobby Sands is? Bobby Sands, a boy from Twinbrook is what he's known as often. He was a member of the IRA and there was a thing called internment which is basically you could be put into prison without trial on suspicion of being in the IRA or in a paramilitary group.

This is the Mays prison specifically? Yeah. And then there was, I'm quite bad at remembering all these things and then there's like the H blocks as well. and basically what the prisoners wanted was political status because they wanted to be viewed as like freedom fighters and political prisoners

because they were fighting for a political aim but Margaret Thatcher at the time was very against that. I think she sort of actually joined in the middle of it and it was a real sort of thorn in her side the whole time and they did try and the IRA did try and blow her up and got very close to Bright and bombing. Great book about that.

It's called Killing Thatcher which I think is going to be made into a series and if it isn't, I'm going to try and make it into a series. That's fascinating. So, because each chapter goes like, you're in the police headquarters trying to find the people that blew it up, and then the next chapter, you're the guy

who's, like, planting the bomb and trying not to get his fingerprints anywhere and doing all the stuff. And can you imagine a series where it's like a bomb plot, but each episode, one episode you're on the, like, you're following, like, the bomb side of it. And then you're on the police. And I think that would be like,

you know, to alternate those points. Points of view, episode to episode, I think it would be very cool way to... Especially if you tell both perspectives with what their actual goals are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what they think they're doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because then you kind of leave it being like, I see both sides. And then with the like in the book, it does that really, really well.

But anyway... Well, basically, there's this plot to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. I remember Patrick McGee checks into a hotel and brought components for a long-delay bomb. And he built it within the sixth floor and then hit it in the bathroom. Unscrewed the panel from the bathtub. under there. And the goal is to literally like strike the hotel at night. So Thatcher is staying on the first floor,

but the design made the interior's vulnerable. Each bathroom sat directly above the next in a straight vertical shaft, meaning that if the structure failed on the upper floors, it would collapse onto the lower floors. So 254 a.m. on October 12th, the bomb exploded blowing out the central spine of the hotel, causing floors six through one to fold into each other,

kills five people. Thatcher survived only because she was awake in the sitting room reading over her conference speech while her husband Dennis had gone to sleep. If you look at the bathroom, like you can see it's destroyed. Yeah, she'd been going for her shit. She'd be dead. Crazy.

Truly would be dead. 9.30 a.m., hours after a rescue operation begins, she insisted that the conference go on is scheduled to put the message from the IRAs. Which is like, I think she's a horrible lady, but that was such a baller move. Yeah, it's badass. It's like on some Trump shit.

To say what you will. To get shot at and stand up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. like it optically says a lot to people. And yeah, yeah, yeah, it sends a pretty clear attack. Yeah, so that's after the hunger's dice because the view was that she'd let those people die by not like acquiescing to their sort of demands to be treated as political prisoners. And the distinction of being political prisoner means that you don't have to wear a prison

uniform and you can like associate freely and like mingle amongst each other and sort of And then there was a big prison escape that happens that we didn't fully get into. But. But then, so, like, a lot of the IRA prisoners refuse to wear the prison uniform. So they became what's called the blanket man. And, like, did the blanket protest where they would just wear their blankets. And then there was a dirty protest where they would, like, refuse to use, refuse to wash. And then refuse to use, like, the toilet.

So they would, like, smear their shit all over the walls. And it's crazy. If you get a picture up of, like, the dirty protest. in the H-Blox, I think. It's either the H-Blox, it was amazing. It looks fucking grim. That's their shit all over the walls. Isn't that fucking yuck?

Damn. And what is the idea that this protest would send a message to the British to say, like, hey? Yeah, I guess it's like if you're going to treat us like animals, we're going to behave like animals. And just cause, like, just... Recaving. Horrible. Yeah, just make it really, really horrible. And then in a similar vein, there was the hunger strike.

So I think they were staggered. They started the hunger strike. So, like, one person would start. And then a week later, the next person would start. And the idea was, I think they all had to sign a thing to be like, I'm ready to die. Like, I will not eat until I die. Wow. And many of them did.

I mean, by the same. Lots of them did. And the idea was, like, staggering the start of the hunger strike was that, like, they would, die they would not die at once essentially so it would be like week after week after week so it would like mount pressure and pressure and pressure on thatcher and i think bobby sounds last like 66 days on hunger strike and it's crazy like go blind like your body just starts to completely eat itself um yeah and then he died i don't think they did the force feeding there was this pair of sisters that come up a lot and say nothing,

the Price sisters, daughter's price and Marion Price. They went on hunger strike in England because they were putting a male prison and they wanted to be sent back to a prison in Belfast because they did a bomb at the magistrates court in London. And they were force-fed during their hunger strike and then they were like very close to dying.

And then it was like a cold off. I think because they were women. Wow. It would have been seen as like much, worse to like let them die right in the same way uh but then yeah was it 66 days yeah nice um yeah that was 1981 bobby sans died on hunger strike and i think it's is it 12 12 hunger strikers died i think uh um i could be so wrong on that but they that felt like a big moment bobby sans was also elected while he was in prison right like to i think it's a fermana seat of like

He became a member of parliament from prison. And that was very like legitimizing of like, well, of course he's a political prisoner. He's literally a politician. He's a politician, like an elected politician. Oh, I see. Was that an attempt to try to help him or was that just a show of solidarity amongst the people? I think an attempt to try and sort of help him get political prisoner status. Yeah.

Interesting. And then it was sort of legitimizing. So this was the point where the provisional IRA had the tactic that they called like the Armalite. in the ballot box. So the Armolites like a type of gun, I think. So they wanted to like combine both their sort of violent campaigns with a more political approach to try to get elected. And are they getting more political access at this point now than they were in the 60s?

Yeah, well, they're getting sort of elected in certain places that are sort of Catholic strongholds. And sort of meeting with the British to try and figure out a way to end this. conflict gradually over this whole process. Right. And then the snipers of South Armagh? Armagh. Armagh. Armagh.

Yeah. This is not something that I was familiar with. In the early 90s, the IRA basically needed methods that didn't require groups, bomb setups, or anything too high risk. And so they start to get these disciplined units that could operate quietly and using these Barrett 50-Cal sniper rifles. Like from College of U.D.4? Yeah.

Modern warfare? So the Irish are literally purchasing snipers legally in the United States by using people with clean records who supported the cause. And then they would ship the guns overseas, take the rifles into Europe, and then smuggle them into the Irish coast using fishing boats. And then once they were in Ireland, the guns were concealed in farm buildings. And then with the rifles in place, the IRA formed two dedicated sniper teams. And when the sniper teams fired, it was always during these small, predictable soldier movements

and with no real warning. And so the first one was the ghost sniper attack in May 1990 near the village of Keedy. I don't know. How you spell on that? K-E-A-D-Y-A-D-Y. I'd say K-A-D-A-D. K-A-D.

Yeah. And the Royal Highland Fusilers Patrol stopped near a checkpoint and killed one of the soldiers immediately. And then another one happened in 93 on the outskirts of Cross Maglan. Cross-Maglan. Cross-Maglan.

and one of the most heavily militarized times, like towns in the area. Also, if you haven't, as most people here listen to this, won't have been to South Armagh. Like, I can't explain. Like, driving around it, like there's all these, like, tall trees

and it's all woodland and sort of rural, like the thought of being a British soldier, like patrolling around there at that time. Like, there's just, it's sort of known as, like, bandit country, like, in and around the border. So I thought about it was, like, right on the border. And it's,

like, I can't imagine how terrifying that would be to just not know the lay of the land. And then these snipers are just like, who know their way around these like horrific land. It's Vietnam shit, right? It's like you have a native population that's using any taxes they came with like this patrolling force that's supposed to come through and clean it up. It's like there might be a sniper. There might be a bomb under this. Like you have no idea.

And I didn't realize that that was all happening there. And no one even knows who that person is. So there's people that associate it. There's a bunch of different names. The Karaher family. Yeah, Karaher, yeah. I don't know anything about them. But people suspect that the family was involved with this operation specifically.

And they just called them the South Armagh sniper. And they were just taking out these British units. And then fast forwarding to the 1990s, mid-1990s, the Good Friday Agreement. British and Irish governments are now talking. U.S. diplomats are getting involved. Clinton. Yes. Clinton comes over.

IRA leadership is realizing that they could fight forever without actually uniting Ireland. And the British government is realizing that they will never get rid of the IRA. Like you can control it, but this resistance will exist forever. You can't kill an idea type stuff. So Catholic and Protestant communities are now exhausted by three decades of bombings and assassinations. And moms on both sides are bearing their children on a regular basis. And by 1994, the IRA declares a ceasefire. But as ceasefires tend to be, it was not present.

Permanent. Two years later, in 1996, there's an IRA bombing that goes off at London's Canary Wharf that kills two people. What day? It's that in 1996. I don't have the exact date here. It's just the year I was born. I wonder if I was born on a big bomb day. Could you pull up the Canary Wharf in London, the Canary Wharf bombing? I used to live near there. Really? February 9th. Three months before I was born. I, fuck, ceasefire, baby. You don't understand what we go through. And people are exhausted. So in 1997, the IRA announces another ceasefire,

and this eventually leads to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. And the agreement basically establishes a power-sharing government where Catholic nationalists, Protestant unionists, are sharing political control. And police are now, the policing was overhauled through patent report, which was a reform for new training, oversight, rules, and then the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The RUC became the PSNI and the police service, Northern Ireland.

Yes. Is that still the way that is today? Yeah. And this was funny in like 2020. There was a lot of people in the UK being like, God, like, imagine the police in the UK had guns. The police in Northern Ireland have guns. Ah. So, like, I've always had, like, police with guns.

Cop with a gun. Yeah, that's just like. And our police. Trucks look crazy. Really? The police fans? It's militarized. Yeah, they're all like mad bomb-proof.

To this day. Crazy-looking things. And then I always laugh at the police vans in like London because they truly look like a school bus. It's hilarious. Yeah, the British police are kind of. Dweaves. Cute. They always drive around Belfast all the time.

Wow. Kind of sick. I mean, yeah. Let me import one of them. Yeah, I want to get one of them and like, or like a decommissioned one and make it into like an ice cream van. Like, wouldn't that be fun? It would be awesome, dude. That's fascinating.

Now, there's something in the agreement that's interesting. Northern Ireland's future would be decided only by majority consent. So this meant that Catholics couldn't achieve Irish unification through violence. They would have to convince

most people in Northern Ireland to vote for it. And that meant the Protestants couldn't protect the union by keeping Catholics out of government. There would have to be a share. And it's not perfect, but it kind of gives both sides...

Something. Some people hated it. Some people still hate it. On both sides. I can imagine. I mean, that's a good negotiation is when both sides are angry. Yeah, I mean, generally, yeah. And then you have decommissioning, which is effectively getting rid of weapons.

Yeah. So General John de Chastelin, I'm not familiar with this guy, is part of one of the groups that the IRA, he's sort of leading the IRA to destroy its stockpiles. Or no, he's part of the outside group that is watching the IRA destroy stockpiles. And then loyalist groups are getting rid of their weapons. And basically, you know, even after the Good Friday Agreement, people are continuing to debate how deep British infiltration is, how was the IRA structured and there's still a lot of looming questions about does the IRA still, you know,

does that sort of rebellious force is still existing in the underbelly? In the words of Jerry Adams, they haven't gone away, you know? Yeah. Which I can imagine causes a lot of stress and tension. Yeah, they're still around. Like, they're still, actually less so now

they've been kind of bought out. They used to run a lot of taxi companies and there's quite a bit of like organized crime on both sides. So what used to be paramilitary organizations are now just sort of like the protection racket you know, they'll sort of, or like drug dealing and all that sort of stuff. Interesting. And they sort of, a lot of the IRAs thing for a while was that they were like policing

anti-social behavior. So it would be like kneecappings for people who were like joyriding or like stealing or graffiti or whatever. Or drug dealing. When you say kneecapping, you mean shot through the kneecap, right, which is pretty, which is why a kneecap the group are called that. Yes, I was telling David about this. This is a, it also is a Gaelic term.

So, Nkappam, have you heard of this? No. This is the thing I found on Wikipedia. That, okay, let me, let me pull them up here. Are you pulling it up? Okay, one second.

Let me grab this. Here. Sorry, my Gaelic is not perfect. Also, I've heard people pronounce it garlic. It's not garlic. Have you heard that before? Gweilga, some people call it. That's like there's, because there's dialects.

And Ulster dialect, you would call it the Gaelic language. But in the South, they would be much more call Gwalga. Gwalga. So there's an Irish phrase, N-I-C-H-E-A-P-A-M, N-H-H-E-A-P-A-M. I don't even know how you pronounce that. But it basically means, I don't think so. Oh, fun.

And so they take their name as a wordplay from kneecapping, obviously, which is getting shot on the knees. But then also this Irish phrase, which is like, I don't know. And they say it's intentionally ironic. that the group, you know, sings about things that could get us kneecapped. Yeah, they do. The IRA don't like kneecap.

But they'll never snitch. Which is funny because people think that, like, kneecap are like a pro-IRA band or whatever, but the IRA aren't fans. They talk about drugs too much. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And does that come from, like, a Catholic sentiment of, like...

Yeah, it's a movie slightly puritanical or whatever. But kneecap or like my age from Belfast, their ceasefire babies. Apart from JJ, who's the DJ Provee. Interesting. Interesting. The one who was like the music teacher. That's why he wears the balaclava, because he was a teacher and didn't want to get sacked. And then he got sacked.

They found him. That's interesting. I think he needed to leave teaching anyway. Probably, right? Going to go to get banned from Coachella. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be tough to do, you know, final semester exams when you're doing shows. I'm curious, what is the, and again, I understand people are not a monolith, but amongst you and the people you know, the American idea of the Irish car bomb, the drink.

Yeah, pretty crazy. to call, like, we don't have drinks called 9-11. What would it be? There's a couple shock classes stacked up. You knock them down, it all falls. But, like, I'm curious, like, we talk about... And they fall in a really, like... Perfectly into its footprint.

At free fall speeds. Seems strange, huh? Hmm. And there's a little drink on the side that falls over, even though no one touched it. Oh, that's so weird. And the guy has an insurance claim against terrorism. It's just a lot of stuff.

Anyway, this is a different podcast. But it's an interesting thing because, like, I went to college in Florida. There's an Irish bar near us that I would go to all the time. And they would do these car bombs. You put the shot on top of the Guinness. You bang the table. It falls in. And it's sort of, it was like a fun thing.

Is there a conference? Do you guys talk about that? Is that thing people are aware of? We hate Irish Americans. Irish people fucking hate Irish Americans. You guys, like, not you, but like Irish Americans are so racist. like so obsessed with being Irish in such a weird way but seemed to use

I think the main thing we hate is that Irish Americans use their Irishness to excuse their racism and there's interesting books about how like Irish people were sent over as like indentured servants and would like pick cotton in the fields with African slaves at the time and but they could like work their way to freedom they were never considered property

and they were never like owned in that same way but the way there's a book called how the Irish became white and the way that Irish people sort of gained their status in America was by being more racist to black people by being like well at least we're not

them which is why all Irish people are police officers or in Trump's cabinet but I would like to keep my visa yeah I mean that is an interesting that is sort of the nature of like class war

Is that if you can keep all the people of the lower class hating each other. Yeah, for sure, divide and conquer. It's like, you know, the poor Irish guy and the poor African-American dude is like they have way more in common. But as long as they hate each other. There's a woman called Bernadette Devlin, who's from Dary. And she was, at the time, I think she was the youngest elected member of parliament in the history of the UK. And she was part of that sort of civil rights movement in Derry. And I think she was on that first March.

and I think she was at the March of Bloody Sunday and one of the conservative politicians in the House of Commons was like speaking over her talking about what happened at Bloody Sunday but he wasn't there and she was there and she walked across the House of Commons and slapped him in the face.

No, when was this? Must have been the 70s. Wow. Or maybe the 80s. She got flown over she was like a big hero amongst the American Irish or Irish Americans

and she got given the key to the city of Chicago and she gave it to the Black Panthers. Wow. Which is so... It's just more like, you know, solidarity symbolically. Exactly. And her point was like... Like, she had a real problem with Irish Americans

who were being racist. She was like, black people are on our side. They are struggling with what we are struggling with. If you support our cause, you should also support the cause of the civil rights movement for black people in America. Oh, that's interesting. And that was a huge thing.

Wow. Was there anything, obviously, I mean, in an hour and a half, we're not going to cover the totality of the conflict of the troubles. But was there anything that we discussed or that we didn't discuss that would be worth mentioning in brief as we wrap up? Or maybe things people should explore on their own. I would say, like, book recommendations, like killing Thatcher is brilliant and then say nothing. Nice that there's a book option because it's quite a chunky book, but also like a TV series, which is really like, I think the TV series is really well done because the book is so well researched. and it's based on the book. I don't think they would ever make a TV show like in and of itself that was that well researched. It's because the book is really well researched and it sort of comes across really well.

I think like a big misconception is like the IRA were like the terrorist group or the paramilitary group, but like interesting to learn about like that on the unionist side, the Protestant side there were these other paramilitary groups, the UVF, the UDA, these types of things that were sort of utilized by the British Army

to do the dirty work that the British Army we kind of couldn't get away with. Right. And I mean, my show is a lot about this. Actually, the one I'm, like, doing at the minute that I'm about to, like, take on tour around the UK and Ireland and then bring back to America in May. I did it at Union Hall the other day.

Nice. And it's called You Can't Say Nothing anymore. And it's about growing up in the wake of the troubles and then, like, the idea of offensive comedy, and then there's loads of stuff about the Middle East. And how those sort of line up with each other. But, so come see me. would be my advice.

As an expert on the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you wanted a digestible way. Yeah, well, that's true. Well, it's so funny in the show, I'm like, I don't know anything about anything. I am dumb. And I could ask my parents,

but they're from like the say nothing generation. Of course. So they don't talk about it. You can't say nothing anymore. Exactly. That's great. Well, Vitorio, thank you so much. Thank you so much for you, man.

I really appreciate this. This was fantastic. And, yeah, check a Vitorio. I'll put the links in the description. You guys can check them out. Thank you guys so much for tuning to another episode of Camp. and let's do this again when you're back, brother. Sick.

Let's get you to Dublin. Look forward to it. Let's do it. What's up, guys? Today's episode is sponsored by a little podcast called Camp Gagnon. Yeah, you might have heard of it, okay? It's a brilliant new podcast that's been around for a few years. That's, you know, basically just a host, just a guy in his 20s trying to figure out life.

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