On the occasion of George Galloway’s current Canadian tour, Terry Glavin writes:
“Liar” is a very serious word. So is “fascist,” and to allow that word to be reduced to an epithet is to allow the meaning of words to be so diminished as to utterly occlude our understanding of political phenomena and to render analysis to the level of name-calling. This is exactly how the same elements of the self-professed “Left” in Canada that serve as Galloway’s bag-carriers have reduced the perfectly respectable word “Zionist” to a mere pejorative, a term of abuse. I won’t be resorting to that sort of thing here. To situate the politics of George Galloway and his sundry Canadian public-relations handlers and campus venue-arrangers in the fascist category, one should have evidence, and mean what one says. I mean it. Here’s the evidence.
There’s nothing we haven’t reported at Harry’s Place over the years, but it’s always useful to see it gathered in one place. You can read it here. Although I wouldn’t go quite as far as Terry in his categorization of Galloway, it’s incontestable that he is willing and eager to lend his support to modern-day fascists for what he considers the greater good– i.e., the defeat of Western “imperialism” and its alleged Middle Eastern outpost Israel. (In much the same way, some conservatives in the West looked favorably on Nazi Germany for awhile as a “bulwark against Bolshevism.”) But however you choose to characterize Galloway, his words and actions lend aid and comfort to some of the world’s most despicable regimes and political movements.
Terry concludes, in his wonderful cut-through-the-crap style:
If you don’t get it by now and you still fancy yourself to be all progressive and leftish when you go and give Galloway the standing ovations he craves, there’s no hope for you. If you read this and get it and continue to have truck or trade with Galloway and the cult he’s built around himself in this country, then you are my enemy, and all I will say to you for now is: Hey, nice boots.
You can read an account of Galloway’s extremely predictable Vancouver appearance here.
