George Galloway

[domineastronomy]

Looks likely to win the Rochdale by-election.
Does anyone know his position on gender ideology?

Is that the best you've got? Perhaps you could read the rape apologist article and get back to us?

But he also opposes Israel like a lot of the 'progressive' left (LOJ, etc al) so they also align with him and with us by default.

Thems the rules 🤷🏼‍♀️

I didn't hear about his treatment of Naz Shah at the time, but I've googled it now.

I retract my claim that GG is an arsehole, because he is far worse than that. He is ambulatory scum. First, he tried to prove that Naz Shah wasn't a victim of forced marriage because he claimed he had a certificate showing it had happened at 16 and a half, not 15. Naz Shah has supplied a certificate showing she was 15.

The UN defines all marriage under 18 as child marriage, by the way.

Then Galloway's spokesman told the Guardian it couldn't have been a forced marriage because Naz Shah's mother was at the ceremony. What the actual fuck? The parents of forced marriage victims are usually there, because they're doing the forcing! This is how it works; under-eighteens are forced into marriage by emotional and financial coercion from their parents. Galloway is denying the very concept of forced marriage!

Asked whether Galloway disputed Shah’s claim to have been forced into a violent marriage as a teenager – be that at 15 or 16 and a half – and was repeatedly raped in that marriage, McKay said: “In what sense was it a forced marriage? Her mother attended the marriage in 1990 as well as other family members and many witnesses did also, signing and giving fingerprints, so if it was forced presumably her mother and the others were part of that coercion?”

Then his spokeman said that he didn't believe Shah had been subjected to violence because she hadn't reported it while still married to the man.

McKay said that if Shah’s first husband had been violent to her, “then as a British citizen in Pakistan she could have jumped on a plane and left him behind, although I do appreciate that is often extremely difficult. If he was violent to her here – I’m not aware when they came back to Britain – then she could have gone to the police, social services, an imam or whatever. I am not aware, are you, of any such report by her to anyone, here or there?”

But he said Respect was in contact with Shah’s first husband, who has “strongly denied any earlier nikah” or doing her “absolutely any harm”.

link about Galloway being a bastard

There are specifics all over the thread.

GG is an arsehole but if he wins it’s going to be interesting to watch the young political activists realise that their contemporary ‘intersectional’ leftism hasn’t reached everyone.

GG is super pro Palestine/Anti Israel but is an old school sexist AND a transphobe.
Plus he’s a white man who seeks to represent British Muslim men in an era when British Muslim men are more than capable of being elected themselves (Scots First Minister and London Mayor are far more successful than GG has ever been!) which really doesn’t look good through a 2024 lens.

This.

GG is living proof that you can be opposed to gender ideology but actively and publicly work against the rights of women. There are many of them out there, including in the Conservative Party, so one needs to be very careful who one chooses to align oneself with based on this one issue. If your motivation is to preserve and advance the rights of women, I fear you won’t get much from electing such people.

Rochdale does have a history of electing awful men, both Cyril Smith (posthumously accused of abusing multiple boys) and Simon Danzcuk (suspended by Labour for sexting a 17 year old girl) were MPs for Rochdale so perhaps GG is going to fit right in?

At least they’ve had some respite with Tony Lloyd (a safe candidate who was shunted to Rochdale after his previous role, Police and Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester, was absorbed by Andy Burnham’s Metro Mayor office).

Why is GG opposed to gender ideology, anyway? Is it because he doesn't want women identifying out of the Support Human Class, and into the class of Proper People Who Matter?

Or is it because he assumes all male transitioners are gay?

I am really sorry, I pity any area landed with GG as it’s MP.

I can think of no combination of words that would persuade the AI to produce a suitable image, given that anything George related covers cats and arseholes - remember the cat with tits???

I'd think it's more likely GG is being elected on his anti-israel pro- muslim stance rather than his views on GI.

Funny how the progressive left aren't getting lectures about who they choose to align themselves with.

I’m not lecturing, I’m in a similar place about choosing what to do at the election. But I know that going even further down the ‘filling Parliament with arseholes’ route really isn’t going to help anyone. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not this.

George Galloway, speaking to P*nk News in 2006.

As someone who claims to be inherently connected to the struggle for gay equality, does Galloway insist that candidates for his Respect party adhere to the same views? “No, because we’re a coalition, and we don’t bind a Muslim candidate in Yorkshire to the explicitly socialist parts of our programme.”

“Many of them are small business people and wouldn’t describe themselves as socialists and are not bound to accept it. And the same goes for other issues including tax and these issues. But the leading figures in Respect, you know who they are, their views are well known. Mine are well known.”

So if you voted for Respect, you didn't necessarily get a socialist representative? I didn't know that Muslim Respect candidates didn't have to be socialists.

Paragraph from the same piece.

In a passionate defence of the Saddam regime’s position of gay rights he said: "We took a prominent Canadian politician, Sven Robinson [to Iraq], who made a speech which opposed sanctions, opposed the upcoming war, and then launched an attack on Iraq for a perceived witch-hunt against gays and many people said to us afterwards, if you had only have spoken to us about that you would have found out in practice that’s not true at all.”

https://archive.is/SL6pv

It's not what though? It's not GC women choosing to fill parliament with arseholes.

Here’s the candidate list:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-68250468.amp

Both the Labour candidate and the Green candidate are now running as independents, due to suspensions for Anti Semitism and Islamophobia respectively.

No women on the ballot at all (shame there wasn’t time to get a local woman running under Posie’s POW umbrella!)

The final chap on the list mentions reinstating local Maternity services (as does the not-Labour candidate) but that’s it for specific women’s issues.

If you lived in Rochdale (or indeed if you DO live in Rochdale) who would you vote for?

Personally, I think I’d want to vet the independents more closely because there is no way I’d vote for Simon Danczuk or a Lib Dem.
Never voted Tory in my life (but I do like plants 🌱)

Thanks. Just loudly snorted my coffee out of nose in a most un ladylike fashion in a coffee shop

GG is an arsehole but if he wins it’s going to be interesting to watch the young political activists realise that their contemporary ‘intersectional’ leftism hasn’t reached everyone.

Yep, and we can prepare ourselves for a slew of thinly veiled comments from the London-based left, young and old, implying that the voters of Rochdale are basically thick working-class Northerners who don't know what they're voting for*.
Instead of addressing the obvious point that Labour offers them NOTHING, thus allowing characters like GG to step into the void.

(*see also: Brexit)

I mean, just look at the list of candidates. That's the choice.

I think you’d be more likely to get the thick working-class criticism if Danzscuk (sp?) was elected. The metropolitan left - particularly the young and the painfully middle-class- are more likely to go with ‘this is why we should be more radical’.

George Galloway is utterly vile. He may be right on some issues, but that doesn't make him a decent person overall. The way he gets into power is he courts Muslim leaders (men) in areas with a large Muslim community, makes them feel listened to, gets their votes, then enjoys the power that comes with being their MP for a bit until he gets bored and moves on.

He's also frequently said things that could very easily be perceived as being anti-Semitic.

'He’s good on gender and I think he’s good on most issues'

I agree 100% he is very anti imperialist which I agree with. He does come across as a bit of a dick though, and has been ruthlessly smeared for decades now.

Ah, the old ‘smeared’ bullshit.

Dontblameitonsunshine · Today 07:27

He’s good on gender and I think he’s good on most issues. Typical that everyone is slagging him off without offering specific issues. I predict they’ll now go on and on about Big Brother 🙄”

Are you unwell? “Good on most issues”? Bloody hell.

Smeared by people reporting the things he's said & done

Well, here’s the endorsement that all the Galloway fans have been waiting for. Birds of a feather and all that.