George Galloway in the Guardian hits out at what he tells us Jack Straw said about Niqabs:
Imagine if a minister in the US dared to instruct the Amish how to live their lives, railed against their unwillingness to act, think, live, dress like the majority around them?
Imagine indeed. But that’s what we’d have to do since Straw’s comments could only be described as ‘instructions’ if you twisted the ex-Foreign Secretary’s words so much they bore no relation to the actual truth.
But there’s method in Galloway’s unsubtle ellision. He needs to build a case for the central point of his argument – and if the truth is a casualty of this: well so be it.
Galloway informs us – without pausing to consider how ridiculous he sounds doing so – that a minister of the crown daring to observe that certain religiously inspired face-covering garments might impede effective communication is something that is so beyond the pale in polite society that it’s practically a precursor of organised and systematic violence against minority ethnic groups:
Almost a pre-pogrom atmosphere is being created in Britain and too few progressives are standing up against it.
You read that word correctly the first time – pogroms.
As Respect’s membership dwindles Comrade George has clearly had to up the rhetorical ante so much to get the media coverage he’s become used to that he’s actually become a parody of his former self.
Anyway, if the Bethnal Green MP is ranting on about ‘pogroms’ in a place like Britain, what level of apoplexy do you think he would rise to if pictures of veiled girls and passages from the Koran were being removed from books by Government fiat?
Denouncing the garment-rending stormtroopers from his constituency? Calling for an international boycott in the House of Commons?
Er no.
Getting on a plane and providing support for the same country’s unelected ruler in his attempts to crush regional autonomy actually.
Is there a bigger hypocrite than George Galloway anywhere in British politics?