Say Nothing

[MikoTython]

3dender wrote: ↑20 Apr 2025 02:16 am
Recently watched Say Nothing on Hulu, a historical dramatization of The Troubles in Ireland. It was pretty well done and very informative. Recommend.

The presentation seems rather stilted to me (the settlements of the 90s as simple betrayal), but I'm American, hardly invested/embedded/intimately knowledgeable about the situation.

But, like most folks, don't like feeling I'm being manipulated. This show left me feeling manipulated.

Iow, I do have the feeling that without IRA pressure/bombs/threats, the political reforms of the 90s would not have been forthcoming, but otoh, the IRA was never never going to achieve reunification by force of arms.

They thoroughly demonized Gerry Adams, but he did orchestrate the transformation of a terror campaign to a political reform campaign and did, in fact, close the deal.

The bottom line, I think they presented a very complex situation simplisitically/reductively. We were supposed to, in effect, sympathize with the IRA dead-enders. They killed people, and then asked - what was it all for ? Well, we can see at least some of what it was all for (true representation politically, anti-discrimation laws, full participation of Catholics in the economic life of Ulster), which was presented as a sell-out.

The fact of the matter is that quite recently Catholics overtook Protestants in population in Ulster. If there is a democratic will to re-unify, it can now take place electorally.

Wish I could talk to someone vastly more familiar with the history, particulars, possibilities than we get here on the other side. I do understand most Irish, north or south, view Americans as stuck in the 19th century, with little understanding of the situation. I like to think I'm not in that category, but to some extent must be.

[3dender]

A 9-episode miniseries spanning several decades of a major historical conflict is bound to be reductive.

My main takeaway is that the entire situation was intolerable, and that the violence of occupation begets violence of rebellion. It's hard for me to fault insurgents for not being sufficiently organized and disciplined, given the conditions under which they're fighting.

Adams definitely comes off the worst here, yet somehow it's a more favorable portrayal than he got in the actual book this is based on (which I also recommend). The author of the book characterizes him as remarkably self-serving and egoistic.

[MikoTython]

A 9-episode miniseries spanning several decades of a major historical conflict is bound to be reductive.

My main takeaway is that the entire situation was intolerable, and that the violence of occupation begets violence of rebellion. It's hard for me to fault insurgents for not being sufficiently organized and disciplined, given the conditions under which they're fighting.

Adams definitely comes off the worst here, yet somehow it's a more favorable portrayal than he got in the actual book this is based on (which I also recommend). The author of the book characterizes him as remarkably self-serving and egoistic.

I'm not nearly as inclined to give folks a pass for doing more than a bit of apparently myopic axe-grinding. The dead-enders spent a lot of time moaning, but you may have noticed they never presented what it was they felt they missed out on. It was a flawed vehicle, doesn't actually pass the smell test - to me, at least. As far as Gerry Adams, himself, I'm in no position to criticize their assessment of him personally, his motives, comprehensively.

But results matter. Compare him to, say, Arafat. Comes off rather well.

Bottom line, we're Yanks, only have a surface understanding of the conflict, its resolution. I'll see if I can find some inside analysis, if anyone is interested, and bring it back here.

[MikoTython]

OK, I trawled through a number of uniformly uncritical & fawning reviews, and found -gasp- another side to all this from another place, -gasp- Ireland itself. (I recommend you read the whole article) :

The Boston College Project was overseen by an Irish journalist named Ed Moloney, who hired Wilson McArthur to interview loyalists and former IRA member Anthony McIntyre to interview republicans, all on the understanding that nothing would be made public until after their deaths. Police, soldiers and British administrators were not approached.

McIntyre thought the peace process was a sell-out, was embittered by Gerry Adams’ participation in it, and chose for his interview subjects those with similar views, most notably Hughes and Price, both central characters in the television series. Theirs was a minority view within the [political party] movement. Sinn Féin could have no meaningful place in the peace negotiations if they couldn’t deliver the assent of the IRA, several members of which went on to run for office and take part in government, among them Gerry Kelly, who was arrested with the Price sisters and joined them on hunger strike.

In his book, Radden Keefe writes that “for one reason or another” McIntyre only sought out interviewees hostile to the Good Friday Agreement and to Adams in particular. Is he naïve, or feigning surprise? In any event, in the television series Price and Hughes are falsely shown to be speaking for all. In this way Moloney and McIntyre were able to filter their narratives through a seemingly unassailable academic institution and megaphone them out to the world through Radden Keefe’s book and TV show.
...
Had the [Boston College] project been allowed to stand it would have given future scholars the impression that the only combatants were republicans and loyalists, with the uninterviewed British trying to keep the peace, and that resistance mortally wounds the psyche because your sacrifice is all for nothing as you get sold out by your leaders. This is a condition psychologist Jonathan Shay, who treated Vietnam War veterans, identified as Achilles Syndrome, because what haunted Achilles was not his experience of war but Agamemnon’s betrayal of him.

Radden Keefe writes in his book about the fatal ambiguities and chaos of Moloney’s project, but “for one reason or another” he follows Moloney’s agenda and his series shows McIntyre as an honest and heroic seeker after the truth as he interviews Hughes and Price.

Radden Keefe’s book won the Orwell Prize, was named by Time as the “#1 Nonfiction Book of the Year”, was lauded by hundreds of influential people from Barack Obama to Dua Lipa and is presently miseducating millions of uninformed television viewers about the nature of the conflict in Ireland. It’s a spectacular feat of leveraging on the part of Moloney and McIntyre.
...
When it became clear that the peace process wasn’t going to deliver the free, independent, socialist republic they’d fought for, they [Brendan Hughes & Delours Price] remembered what they’d suffered and made others suffer, became bitter and came to believe it had all been for nothing. Their alcoholism made their suffering worse. Gerry Adams became the focus for their distress. They blamed him for not saying he was in the IRA and for negotiating a deal that left the British in Ireland.

The former charge seems a red herring. Gerry Adams has no extant convictions. Why would he inculpate himself? If Dolours Price had been stopped in the Falls Road in 1972 and asked by the police if she was in the IRA, would she have said Yes? In his Boston College tape Brendan Hughes can be heard saying, “I’ve never, ever admitted to being in the IRA. Until now.” He did so with the assurance that no one would hear it until he died and was beyond prosecution.
...
What is ‘Say Nothing’ for? It ‘entertains’. It allows audiences to share in the derring-do of IRA operations, sympathise with victims and even perpetrators and to feel they’ve understood something profound about the conflict known as the Troubles, all without their having to leave their sofas. It psycho-pathologises the North of Ireland. Where once there were ‘terrorists’, now there are broken and bitter shell-like creatures. A war zone has become a ward full of depressives. If you resist the state you will live with regret. It’s a convenient narrative for an imperialist. But while the war may have been futile, there should have been more of it because its end was a betrayal. A little thought and inquiry and a visit to West Belfast would quickly dispel the picture put forward by this book and series.

What does ‘Say Nothing’ say, then? It says nothing, beyond demonstrating what a writer will do in in order to create a ‘hit’.

https://www.irishecho.com/2025/1/say-no ... convincing

[MikoTython]

The publication above, IrishEcho (https://www.irishecho.com/), is actually an Irish-American newspaper, NY based, established in 1928. It seems to be a staunchly anti-imperialist publication, closely associated w/ Gerry Adams and presumably Sinn Fein. Rated center-left, 'somewhat liberal'.

https://www.biasly.com/sources/irish-echo-media-bias/

That said, the facts are what they are. I find it beyond interesting that occupation v resistance narratives are so carefully curated in favor of ... well.. you know. Had to look HARD to find any actually critical take on such a massive chapter in history, so narrowly told.

That's all I'll say on this tv series, the subject in general.