The Looney Left

What do we know about the British politician George Galloway?

In this picture, George is the fellow with the dark glasses...

Max Dunbar says:

Galloway has said that "the disappearance of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of my life". To Saddam Hussein, he said, "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem!" We know that Galloway signed a petition demanding the release of Saddam's number-two Tariq Aziz, with whom Galloway once danced in a North African nightclub. The Iraqi "resistance" (jihadis who kill civilians, socialists and aid workers) is "defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony". When trade unionists broke down in tears at their recollections of torture under Iraqi Ba'athists, Galloway sneered that their visible emotion was "a party trick".

Galloway said of the Syrian dictator that "Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President".

Galloway fascinates as a symbol, a freakshow, a grotesque parody of leftwing politics. And one of the qualities I admire about Galloway is his resilience, and his ability to make a comeback; he walks away from the smoking ruins, whistling, cigar in hand, already thinking of the next opportunity, and planning his next big score.

Christopher Hitchens says:

"Galloway looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class wideboy and proud of it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels - all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey. He has managed to fuse being a Baathist with being a Muslim sectarian and a carpet bagger in the East End. He's got the venomous riff-raff at one end and your one-God fanatics on the other. Wonderful. Just what we need..."