Is modern Ireland beginning to resemble the USSR?

[Executive Steve]

I would say that UCD is a perfect example of the concrete landscape created by socialism.

Only in a very indirect way of course; the modern belfield campus was designed from the bottom up to be as difficult as possible for a student revolt to occupy, after fears that a repeat of the Paris riots of 68 could happen here.

There's far more of a whiff of the architecture of social control there than anything else; of course the 60's and 70's weren't a great time for architecture full stop, nor was there really any money to be spent on making things look pretty...

[Executive Steve]

Some great points cleverly disguised as idiocy

Personally I'm more inclined to believe that the OP is a textbook example of a favourite theory of mine that postulates that on any given current affairs or politics discussion group the "sanity quotient" of any given posting has an inversely proportional relationship to the amount of writing it contains (copy-pasting for the purposes of reference or information - generally - excepted)

[scolairebocht]

Horace Horse: "At least the USSR didn't have Mass Immigration. So we're worse off than the USSR."

They certainly did have some policies like that, as described here on the website of the Latvian Foreign Ministry:

"# The USSR stationed a large military contingent in the Baltic states and directed the migration of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the Baltic states, especially Latvia and Estonia, from other Soviet republics. As a result of the migration policies, for example, the percentage of Latvians as the titular nation decreased from 77% in 1935 (the last census in independent Latvia) to 52% in 1989 (the last Soviet census). In several Latvian and Estonian cities and districts the titular nation assumed the status of a national minority in its own country.
# By encouraging colonization and russification, by exerting its power over the church and by establishing total ideological control over all intellectual and cultural life of the society, the occupation regime strived to destroy the identity of the Baltic nations."
( Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia: Summary of Conclusions of the International Conference "Soviet Occupation Regime in the Baltic States 1944 )

By colonization they meant this immigration inflow, as described in the Estonian wikipedia article:

"According to some Western scholars, relations between the Soviet Union and Estonian SSR were those of internal colonialism:
...[inter alia] the employment and migration policies were tailored towards assimilating the native population;
...
Immediately after the war, major immigration projects were undertaken, labeled "brotherly aid under Stalinist nationality policies". For postwar reconstruction, hundreds of thousands of Russophones were relocated into Estonia, mainly the cities. For example, during the years of 1945-1950, the total urban population count grew from 267,000 to 516,000; over 90% of the increase being fresh immigrants.[62]

A special care was taken to change the ethnic structure of population, especially in Ida-Viru County. For example, a policy of prioritising immigrants before returning war refugees in assigning dwelling quarters was adopted."
( Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

You see the way the Soviets looked at it if they could mash up the ethnic identity of the Baltic states, by this engineered immigration inflow, then they could destroy Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nationalism, and with it any possibility that they would break up the USSR. Obviously we now face an immigration inflow from the rest of the EU that might be intended to have much the same effect for that union? Anyway it just goes to show you that you should look at what happened in the former USSR to figure out what is happening now in Ireland?


cactusflower: "What is an "Eastern European dissident?""

Well obviously all the real opponents of the Soviet regime (remember they had plenty of sham, behind the scenes controlled, 'opponents' as well) were slandered in their media and in society as either a) fascists, or b) mad:
a) Any attempt to resist the regime led to accusations of being allied to the old order, when the church had influence etc, and from that fact you were labelled a fascist and in their terminology a reactionary or a counter revolutionary.
b) But in fact most of the time these genuine dissidents were simply labelled mad and in some cases of course housed in mental institutions. You see the point is that the dissidents were saying that the democratic institutions of the USSR were actually a complete sham, that the media was controlled behind the scenes, the same for the professional bodies, trade unions etc etc and the people just couldn't believe this. But particularly after they had lost the religious value thing, as described, they just couldn't accept that this was true, at that point you are tearing the stick off the koala bear - to coin a phrase! - and so they easily went along with this concept that the dissidents were 'mad'. So all the authorities had to do was label those types as loony bins and society happily ignored them.

I know most people don't see the importance of moral codes and value systems like that but the Soviets certainly knew what they were doing that way. Look at the change in atmosphere that you can see in modern Ireland over the last few years and maybe you can see my point here. I put it to you that 10 or 15 years ago you would never see a sign in a shop, or a friend wouldn't tell you, to do x or y because 'its the law', which is quite common now in Ireland. At that time people just didn't care as much what was or wasn't the law, and this was reflected also in things like tax compliance where a lot people couldn't care less what the details of the law actually said. Nowadays its not like that at all and what is it has changed in the meantime? Its not that people feel more of an affection for lawmakers or take much more of an interest in the creation of laws, obviously what's happening is that as people's sense of right and wrong has moved away somewhat from church teaching - which is a very obvious change over the last few years - they are leaning on the law as a crutch to take up that slack, they are supplanting the one moral code with the other. And then if you are the EU and you are creating 80% of Irish laws, as has been determined by good work on this site, then obviously you are in favour of this development and will be moving it along, it means that people are becoming more compliant with your wishes, brainwashed into becoming your slaves in fact!

Look at it another way, if you think about the big 'conspiracy theory' threads - for the want of a better description! - on this site its obvious that the same people who are kind of religious are also those who are more open minded about the various 'conspiracies'. Why is that, why should that be so? Also you can see the same kind of development in Ireland as a whole. Even your average left wing anti establishment figure in Ireland shies away from really knocking the EU, it seems to me anyway, whereas Cóir with their posters and 'Alive!', in some of its articles, have no trouble really putting in the boot and even entertaining some of the above mentioned 'conspiracy theories'. They seem less afraid of being classified as loons etc and are just more open minded about all that 'conspiracy' literature? I think you will find that this question of the value systems is behind that, once you have that old religious one in your head as your established value system it means you can pick and choose what you like or dislike in wider society in the way that does not come as easy for those who lack that value system. It actually makes you more open minded, I think anyways.