General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Remember George Galloway? Badly beaten in street assault in London [View all]Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)I believe that he feels that the West in general and America in general are the source of all evil, and that anyone opposing them should be given the benefit of the doubt; I don't think he consciously thinks that, but I think he adopts positions based on that and then finds - often paper-thin - rationalisations for them. Yes, he was right on Iraq and Afganistant, but for the wrong reasons - blanket hatred of American/Western intervention and insufficient distaste for dictatorships, not a specific analysis of the issue in question.
Some specific examples:
*His assertion that the executed boyfriend of homosexual Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes rather than for being homosexual, and that the case of gay rights in Iran was being used by supporters of a war with Iran.
*His defence of Julian Assange against accusations of rape - he appears not to get that having sex with someone without their consent is not OK.
*His willingness to share a platform with Hamas. To Western audiences he's condemned them; it may be he meant it, but actions speak louder than words, and I guess it was probably just for political expediency.
*His description of the IRA's murder campaign as a war.
*His denial that Hamas was "a terrorist organisation" (in context, this wasn't quite as bad as it sounds, but it was still bad).
*I don't think his attitude to Israel is antisemitic per se - as a non-Israeli Jew, I don't imagine he'd have a problem with me - but I do think it crosses quite a long way across the line into bigotry on national grounds.