SpecialOlympian wrote:I'm just armcharing this as an American, but I'm going to say: Yes.
Ireland was occupied by England for hundreds of years.....
What always seem to get lost is that the Provisional IRA was actually formed at the behest of the Irish government, or at least elements of. The Irish government were deeply concerned that both the IRA and the Civil Rights movement were controlled by Marxists. The Provisional IRA were actually a right wing break away. The irony is that most British Marxist groups ended up supporting the Provisionals, some obsessively so. Amongst the far left groups there was much denouncing of each other for not being pro Provo enough, for making concessions to British racist chauvinism.
There is so much romantacising of National resistance insurgencies. Local militias / partisans can be a huge help to regular military forces. We saw this with the Allies after they landed in France in June 1944 and we saw it recently with the Ukrainian army's defense of Kiev in early 2022. However on their own insurgencies generally achieve little for huge sacrifice and loss. The Yugoslav partisans of WW2 were more of the exception than the rule. They operated in Hilly terrain which gave them advantage and did receive limited supplies from the Allies so they weren't completely on their own.
I get irritated with all these people giving moral lectures to insurgencies. Insurgencies generally face an endless battle against informers. This requires a brutal even "dehumanising" response. So many cards lie in the occupiers hand. The insurgent must wield more fear than the occupier. The more terror applied by the occupier, even greater must be the terror of the insurgent. Its almost impossible to avoid the use of torture both on your own members and the local population.
For these reasons and others I think insurgency is generally not the wise choice. However I will not sit in my safe comfortable environment making moralistic judgements about insurgencies. The pressures in these conflicts are immense. Before the Provos some people said "IRA I ran away". In some of these conflicts insurgency is pretty much inevitable. It only takes one man and a gun (Or even a knife) to start an insurgency and then the brutality of the response of the authority may bring in enough recruits to make it self sustaining.
@SpecialOlympian I'll perhaps go into this in more depth at another point. I do use the term "Liberal" in contradictory ways. Sometimes I use it as a pejorative similar to how a Trump supporter would use it. And sometimes I use it as a pejorative similar to how a Marxist would use it. And very occasionally I use it a self description.
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