OPINION: Wicked and malicious Galloway may be, but I never had him down as nuts
...Until last weekend when he appeared to have gone full-tonto into looney 9/11 'troofer' land
He seems to like to press buttons, does George Galloway. Like the school bully with a rapt audience of sycophants, he gets a kick out of prodding and poking.
Condemning antisemitism within the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t just a “disgraceful campaign”, Galloway wrote in 2019. It was a “disgraceful campaign of Goebbelsian fiction.”
October 7 wasn’t just a “break out” by Hamas, he said last January, but a “concentration camp break out and ugly things happen in prison break outs, concentration camp break outs even more so”.
And again, last July: “The only surprising thing about October 7 and the breakout from the Gaza concentration camp is that it doesn’t happen every October 7, or ever six weeks.”
Geddit?
Is this Galloway’s way of getting some kind of visceral kick out of rubbing the noses of Jews, sorry Zionists, in the Shoah which targeted… er… Jews?
As the novelist and journalist Howard Jacobson observed, Israel haters who compare the country by reference to the Holocaust do so to “wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow.”
In other words, they know the analogy hurts.
Galloway is a nasty piece of work. I recall how in 1998 he sided with the Saudi regime after it gave the death sentence to a British nurse. I showed on BBC Panorama how Debbie Parry was completely innocent and she was eventually released.
Whether Galloway was just baiting or really believes this muck, who knows?
However, even though Debbie had endured 17 months in jail under the shadow of the Saudi executioner’s sword, on her return Galloway viciously supported a campaign to get her struck off the nursing register which also mercifully failed.
Last weekend poison again suppurated from Galloway’s pen.
As we all know, he’s been a fan of despots like the late Saddam Hussain (“Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability”), a comment he later said he regretted, and the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh (“as gracious and gentle and wise and reasonable a person ..as you could ever meet”), which he does not appear to have regretted.
Last weekend saw the end of another Middle East despot he occasionally revered, Syria’s Bashar Assad (a “breath of fresh air” and “Watching President Assad towering in the Arab League in Jeddah has made me happy today”).
Wicked and malicious Galloway may be, but I never had him down as nuts, or even irrational.
Until this weekend when he seems to have gone full-tonto into looney 9/11 “troofer” land.
“October 7 looks like a very bad idea” he posted on X. “Makes you wonder whose idea it really was… “
Some idiot from Northern Ireland with the X handle “Steri” replied: “Wtf did you want Palestinians to do instead? Die out and lose their land slowly?”
To which Galloway responded: “I see the point went over your head.”
Is the point that went over “Steri’s” dense head Galloway’s suggestion that the Israeli state at some stage, and in some shape or form, deliberately planted the idea in the minds of Hamas that killing large numbers of kibbutzniks would help to destabilise the Middle East to Israel’s advantage, a goal realised with the overthrow of the Assad regime at the weekend?
I asked Galloway if I’d understood his post right. He replied: “Actually: you could not be more wrong and if you were not John Ware I might even care to explain
That is certainly how a slew of nut jobs interpreted the post among the 400,000 who read it.
• “I think we all know whose idea it was, and it’s all playing out exactly how they wanted.”
• “Netanyahu’s and Co.”
• “We all know they knew about it for a year before it happened. This was all part of the plan.”
• “It feels so good to read the thought of a European who finally understands the Middle East.”
• “Great idea for Israel.”
• “Zionist scums don’t want to admit the Oct. 7th was allowed to happen, even orchestrated by Mossad.”
And so on.
I asked Galloway if I’d understood his post right. He replied: “Actually: you could not be more wrong and if you were not John Ware I might even care to explain.”
To which I replied: “Give it a go George… happy to listen (and learn)… always…”
But he didn’t. All quiet on the Galloway front on this one.
Feeding an appetite for conspiracy theories is one of the factors identified earlier this week by the government’s former counter-extremism tsar, Dame Sara Khan, that’s eroding democratic resilience in Britain today.
Whether Galloway was just baiting or really believes this muck, who knows? It is, though, a perfect illustration of how social media, as the single most effective facilitator of the world’s most malign and moronic influencers, is also making the world a more dangerous place.
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