Galloway defended
Dear Editors
Pik Smeet’s article (July Socialist Standard) is yet another criticism of George Galloway which to my mind, although there are perhaps some valid points made, is not really very helpful in the immediate struggle that we of the Left need to advance against the creeping neo-fascism excreting from Number 10 and Washington D.C.
Galloway, regardless of his personal motives, is a voice in Parliament roundly criticizing the murderous policies of this mutant ‘ersatz’ Labour Government and its Washington cohorts. Where are the other voices?
Galloway is able to speak to the masses via the media. Maybe he’s not a one hundred percent ‘kosher’ socialist but ordinary people are hearing him and know about him and are thinking about what he is saying. ‘It’s no damn good refining our socialist ideas, concepts and understandings amongst ourselves. Socialists need to be out in the community at large offering the light of reason to the people. Galloway, for all his faults , is doing that.
Leo Aliferis (by email)
Reply:
The message Galloway projects is hardly an advance for the working class. We refrained from retelling his ghastly support for Saddam Hussein: he went so far when he appeared on Big Brother as to claim that the Iraqis supported and were happy with that vile old-style fascist dictator; he even saluted Hussein to his face for his “strength [his] courage, [his] indefatigability”.
Far from being a voice for the oppressed in the mass media he is the voice of wealth and power in the Middle East, and his role in the workers’ movement is to poison it. Ordinary people hear this poison and think it has something to do with socialism.
He and his ilk are just as great an enemy to the spread of socialist understanding as George Bush, and the Socialist Party must oppose them.
– Editors.
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