They haven't been paying much attention. He has been outspoken in his admiration of Stalinism and Fidel Castro, is on record as praising Saddam Hussein's courage, and now has jettisoned pesky issues like women's rights and gay rights from his version of socialism to attract the Islamist demographic.
Galloway is one of those radical leftists who hates liberalism/capitalism so much that he is willing to join forces with anything, up to and including Taliban-style islamofascism, that opposes it. Bob Brown he ain't.
xymphora's column 5-7-05 deals w/ your mindless and untrue remarks about Galloway.
Ah, we've every right to be suspicious of Galloway -it's not just the Tories who trade on fear.....
Would that we had more Galloways in the US-sounds like you prefer "ColdWar liberals"
He seems like a left-wing Pauline Hanson to me.
If "Cold War liberals" are those who don't openly favour repression as long as their particular ideological ends justify it, then I'm all for that.
Mind you, Galloway is not a liberal, except in the FoxNews-neocon-pejorative sense that Stalin and Mao are as well. Given the stories about his thugs intimidating the opposition in Bethnal Green, his commitment to democracy and pluralism is about on a par with Robert Mugabe's.
To acb: You say Galloway 'has jettisoned pesky issues like women's rights and gay rights from his version of socialism to attract the Islamist demographic.'
A shame that you haven't actually read Respect's manifesto quoted below. You obviously don't do a great deal of research before bandying accusations around...
"Our overall aim is to help create a socially just and ecologically sustainable society. A society in which social justice is defined as incorporating:
<snip>
the fight against, and ultimate abolition of, racism, sexism and all forms of discrimination on grounds of religion, disability, age or sexual identity."
http://www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?ite=418
While this is a fair criticism that I would like to see acb respond to, i've always been suspect of people that claim to be agents of change et al yet refuse to dispense with democracy or voting - two concepts that are getting more flawed by the day/election....
As far as Galloway's liberal credentials go, actions speak louder than policy statements, and there's a lot on Galoway's deeds and other statements at http://www.livejournal.com/community/swp_watch/
And as far as dispensing with democracy/voting goes, what would you replace them with? Wise and benevolent philosopher-kings? A Supreme People's Soviet making all the decisions for them? Central planning by supercomputer a la Iain M. Banks' Culture novels?
More on Galloway's anti-liberal stances from the Communist Party of Great Britain, of all places:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/576/respect.htm
If their stand against women's reproductive choice (a standard part of most socialist platforms since the time of Lenin at least) doesn't count as them selling out their progressive principles to woo the conservative Islamist vote, then what does it count as? And talking fluffily about abstract "equality" whilst drafting concrete anti-feminist policies doesn't cut it.
wow, so the bethnal green guy is a loser - I've only been following the fringes of this election, but the Sat Age and Sat Mercury (the excuse for pay-as-you-go-toilet-paper here in taswegia) both painted him as some sort of mildly radical leftist - more bob brown than islamofascist.