George Galloway was on Newsnight last night as part of John Harris’s feature on ‘left alternatives’ to Labour.
Although Harris is anti-war and sympathetic to RESPECT he did ask Galloway about his support for the Iraqi resistance. Here is what he said:
John Harris: [to camera] I asked him his views on what
he calls the ‘Iraqi resistance’.
George Galloway: Actually, the Iraqi resistance does not target its own civilians. But the people that are being fought by the resistance in Iraq are the people that are working for the occupation.
JH: I can imagine someone who had no job, who lives in Baghdad and is trying to feed their family and they’vehad a lot of dark nights of the soul about this, but to provide themselves with an income they join the burgeoning Iraqi police force.
GG: Our country in 1941 stood alone when the Americans were watching the war on newsreel. Hitler was at the Channel Ports and might have crossed. If he had crossed he might have occupied our country. If he had occupied our country there would have been a British resistance. And no matter how hard up a family in Buxton was, the idea that they should join Hitler’s occupying police force and not become a target of ‘us’, the British resistance, is preposterous. You and me would have been in the British resistance.
JH: Do you think there is a moral equivalence between Hitler’s occupation …
GG: Absolutely.
JH: … the Nazi occupation of France for example?
GG: What’s the difference? For the inhabitants of Abu Ghraib prison there is no difference at all. For those whose houses have been flattened by the invader, there is no difference at all. For those who are being rounded-up in the night and taken off with bags over their head, there is no difference at all.
So for Galloway murdered Iraqi election workers, trade unionists, democrats, schoolkids getting sweets in the street are the equivalent of those who collaborated with the Nazi occupation in Europe.
And as one emailer has pointed out to me – what does Galloway mean by ‘fought’ when he refers to the resistance? He says “the people that are being fought by the resistance” – Hadi Saleh was ‘fought’ by his murderers, unarmed election workers are being ‘fought’ in the street, Nepalese migrants are having their heads ‘fought’ off?
The Galloway clip is here five minutes into the feature. It sounds even creepier when you hear the bastard say it.