Originally posted by Jaco_Pastorious
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I am not going to knock anyone that thinks players doing it is worse or that thinks fans are worse for doing it. I do take your point (and I think it might be what Mr Pink meant also) that a potential role model doing it will let to cases of monkey see monkey do and kids growing up thinking it is ok to say as their heroes as saying it.
Is not like it is a good thing regardless of who is saying it and even worse in the cases of any of say it and mean it.
I think with the Ra stuff and a lot of the more nationalistic leaning stuff it obviously hits a nerve more for a lot of Irish folk when we hear idiots saying/chanting it.
It is that bit more disgusting and ignorant when we think about stuff relating to certain organisations decades and decades removed from the Civil War era or even some of the Troubles era (and that is not me condoning or condemning every single thing from those eras either, just me saying that the meaning of certain words carried different meanings in different eras and that history can be a complex mistress at times).
But when I think chants like UP the Ra in 2022, it reminds me of being back in Ireland in the mid 1990s visiting family in county Limerick and driving through Adare village on the day the IRA hit a cash in transit van and opened up on the gardai (Irish police) with AK 47s. No warning, no nothing, just spraying them with bullets as they sat in their cars. I drove through in the aftermath, blue lights flashing everywhere, armed response teams everywhere and so on.
There was no "cause", no heroic standing for Ireland, just terrorists committing murder on the streets of Ireland. That's the type of scium chants like Up the Ra glorifies.
The same scum that when they were in prison that Gerry Adams, the then leader of the political party Sinn Fein, and Mary Lou McDonald, the current leader of the same party, were vocally calling for the release of.
The same scum that the Sinn Fein leadership were there to welcome when they did get released as part of the Good Friday agreement.
And one of those scum being a man who went on to continue a life of crime and terror after being released and then went postal on his own wife with a knidfe and still have the political elements trying to turn themselves into knots to avoid being overly critical.
Up the Ra glamourises the same organisation that shot and killed others in other counties from the 1990s onwards as they robbed from cash in transit vans and the like. The same organisation that developed ties with drug gangs in Ireland and abroad and that played/plays a part in gun running globally.
So for me, as an Irishman, I find that chant in 2022 disgusting, ignorant, embarrassing and if you believe in the words you are saying then you are someone I have no respect for and see no point in you at all.
Is not like it is a good thing regardless of who is saying it and even worse in the cases of any of say it and mean it.
I think with the Ra stuff and a lot of the more nationalistic leaning stuff it obviously hits a nerve more for a lot of Irish folk when we hear idiots saying/chanting it.
It is that bit more disgusting and ignorant when we think about stuff relating to certain organisations decades and decades removed from the Civil War era or even some of the Troubles era (and that is not me condoning or condemning every single thing from those eras either, just me saying that the meaning of certain words carried different meanings in different eras and that history can be a complex mistress at times).
But when I think chants like UP the Ra in 2022, it reminds me of being back in Ireland in the mid 1990s visiting family in county Limerick and driving through Adare village on the day the IRA hit a cash in transit van and opened up on the gardai (Irish police) with AK 47s. No warning, no nothing, just spraying them with bullets as they sat in their cars. I drove through in the aftermath, blue lights flashing everywhere, armed response teams everywhere and so on.
There was no "cause", no heroic standing for Ireland, just terrorists committing murder on the streets of Ireland. That's the type of scium chants like Up the Ra glorifies.
The same scum that when they were in prison that Gerry Adams, the then leader of the political party Sinn Fein, and Mary Lou McDonald, the current leader of the same party, were vocally calling for the release of.
The same scum that the Sinn Fein leadership were there to welcome when they did get released as part of the Good Friday agreement.
And one of those scum being a man who went on to continue a life of crime and terror after being released and then went postal on his own wife with a knidfe and still have the political elements trying to turn themselves into knots to avoid being overly critical.
Up the Ra glamourises the same organisation that shot and killed others in other counties from the 1990s onwards as they robbed from cash in transit vans and the like. The same organisation that developed ties with drug gangs in Ireland and abroad and that played/plays a part in gun running globally.
So for me, as an Irishman, I find that chant in 2022 disgusting, ignorant, embarrassing and if you believe in the words you are saying then you are someone I have no respect for and see no point in you at all.
couldn't agree more 
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