Why George Galloway is a Demogogue.

There is a tendency due to his publicity stunts and hyperbole to regard George Galloway, Repect MP for Bradford as a "character" and some sort of "working class hero " or voicebox for the oppressed Muslims of Britain ( never , of course,  those Muslims in less fortunate lands murdering one another in scores for reasons entirely unrelated to any actions of "the West" )

Now, as opposed to taking Galloway not-so-seriously, and as a mere joke, his various "positions" need to be explained for the entire notion of what he term the "Bradford Spring" of 2012 is important in it's feeble attempt to yoke together the disaffected in "the Muslim World" with Britain. This makes it no less farcical, of course, but his erstwhile followers tend to take themselves seriouslywhen they listen to and amplify  Galloway's propaganda riffs uncritically.

Galloway's  Respect, the very name being designed to appeal to the right on streetwise nature of disaffected British ' yoofs', shows that the entire political platform he stands on is a sort of shitty rehash of certain themes of 1960s anti-Vietnam counter-cultural rebellion. This is shown by the contrived nature of Galloway's politcal-cum-autobiographical book "I'm Not the Only One", a line taken from John Lennon's dire and dreary dirge "Imagine".

Bizarrely, for someone lauding a pacifist peace song one moment, he tends to extol violence. As when he commented on Sky News that the Israeli IDF were getting a "bloody good hiding" from Hizbollah during the conflict of 2006. Whatever the conflict's causes there, such language of lip smacking  aggression is both vulgar and unbecoming of honourable people. But it appeals to the brutal instincts of certain working class Muslims in gritty de-industrialised nothern mill towns and students.

Galloway is not much more than a rapacious political entrepreneur who saw a gap in the market for ideals vacated by the bland nonentities in Parliament as politicians became reduced to PR middlemen acting between Britain's dysfunctional casino economy, the "markets" and the people. By posing as being an extra-parlimentary activists yet within Parliament he can pose as an outsider to the new "politician-as-celebrity" trend so common in Britain today.

Unfortunately for his mesmerised fans, they seemed to have been largely unaware that Galloway is simply fiddling them as well no less. Only he has  carved out a career as a left-wing show jock demagogue that's hardly relevant to either being an MP nor a serious democratic reformer. But that's not important. In boring Britain, student SWP activists and deracinated Muslims are itching for outrage, the latter usually due to the low level of their education ( as is obvious too with their BNP rivals ).

After all, as already mentioned, politics itself has been downgraded to part of Britain's pathetic "entertainment economy" where MPs are little better, very often, than celebrities. Galloway has nothing radical to offer other than as selling political "passion" and "conviction", rolled around with the Scots accent to give an image of Red Clydeside radicalism. That radicalism used to be transfered to anti-imperial nationalists as the IRA ( as with the slimy newt loving ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone ).

George Galloway is a colossal demagogue. His position is essentially a crude populist version of old hard left Bolshevist propaganda tropes about "imperialism" wrapped up in Islamist draping and boomed out to those whose background and stunted semi-educated worldview absorb it as it appeals to their emotional resentments. In that way he has much in common with a number of journalists who harbour a colossal vanity to be lauded by "yoof" such as journalists John Pilger.

With the decline of universities and the expansion of mediocre institutions under the disastrous government of Tony Blair, mediocre students, often members od Islamic radical associations, simply do not engage in public life or discussion but amongst one another where anti-Western hatred is standard and the propaganda culled from the relevant cult gurus and passed around uncritically. Such individuals, simply by the fact they oppose bad foreign policies does not axiomatically make them right.

On the contrary it leads to those organisations controlled only a coterie of cretinous would be jihadists from places like Bradford and Birmingham whose fantasies of hate and outrage tie in with those of immature student activists simarly lacking in knowledge and ego security.As well as a dire education system that swelled the numbers of dimwits into the "polyversities who would have been better off sweating out their energies in grubby fast food chicken outlets.

The evident absurdity of Galloway's grandstanding on international politics to gain domestic Muslim votes is shown in the failure to take any sort of coherent position on Syria. The double standards of Britain's shoddy realpolitik in the Middle East is evident. But pointing out obvious double standards is not enough.

Not least, as George Galloway's double standards are often as flagrantly as bad , if not worse, than those he criticises and he has no position of moral superiority upon which to harangue the nation. True, he doesn't make decisions in foreign policy that can cause the sort of catastrophe Blair unleashed in Iraq. Yet propaganda, if it becomes commonplaces, can become very important. And blanket anti-Westernism is what Galloway has been instrumental in spreading

The facts are :not only that he has shown a demonstrated sympathy to the Soviet Union, a lethal ideological empire that crushed out the lives of millions, but his approach to the Middle East is a sham. For Galloway has been favourable to President Assad and his regime. Yet it is Allawite and against the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood has been anti-imperialist elsewhere and looked on sympathetically by the Muslim Association of Britain and elements of the Muslim Council of Britain. And these have provided key allies in Respect.

Now, the Respect Party has essentially aligned in solidarity with Hizbollah's struggle against Israel. Unfortunately for the Party Line, it gets complicated as Hizbollah is an ally of Iran which is supported by Assad's Syria. After the Arab Spring, the Muslim brotherhood is now powerful in Egypt and for the rebels. So anti-Western hatred can fuel any number of jihadists from jetting off to Syria to fight as "warriors".

So it's clear that though the entire Galloway Line is pure tripe, it is central in becoming a popular part of an uncritical and blind hatred of 'the West'. For the Leader of the "Bradford Spring" , one who laps up "Allah Akhbar " from his deranged mob like followers, is an erstwhile great admirer of Colonel Nasser of Egypt, a secular Arab nationalist whose position on Islamists was to have their leaders executed in the 1960s. Including Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual forebear of both the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida.

If British foreign policy is going to be criticised ( as it must for the follies, errors and bungling idiocy of it as regards Afghanistan, the "War on Terror" and Iraq ) it should come, at least, from organised groups of intelligent critics as opposed to a coterie of self-aggrandising cranks, pinheads, fanatic and zealots who want to profit from credulity and stupidity. The inability of public intellectuals and politicians to demolish with precise logic these inchaote positions of hatred is a form of ignorance.