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I was trying to think of some answers to that question as well but I found it hard to come up with much that would make sense to an outsider.
Firstly, there is a big slice of the UK left who disapprove of Galloway on purely factional grounds; he's associated with the SWP and that is a huge no-no for many. Personally I find the whole "ideological purity" thing particularly petty, immature and self-defeating, politics as masturbation rather than a method of trying to make things better. I've seen people reject No2ID purely because some of the apparatchiks have SWP links and there are some right-wing groups on the supporters list - even though it's the largest and most influential anti-ID group; similarly with the STWC. I'm no swappie but even the fact that, at a stewards' meet for STWC we were greeted with "good evening comrades", and Chris Nineham was chairing, didn't put me off - it's something that needs doing.
I don't think the above is that relevant on Barbelith though - unless I'm wrong there aren't many factional members here (unlike on U75, don't get me started).
It should also be said though that Galloway is not the best advert for himself at all times. Imagine somebody who behaves as he did with the Senate all the time. He's not a great diplomat; his skill is in being a rhetorical brawler, something he does very well (making Chris Hitchens cry in the Indie I count as a definite achievement). He has a debating style which combines stereotypical Glaswegian hardman and overblown Middle Eastern spokesman. He's surrounded by smears, none of which seem to have actually stuck, but there often seems to be a slight patina of smear which is not adequately cleaned at the end of the process. He hangs around with some definitely dubious characters. His moustache is crap and he looks greasy. He gives off an aura of arrogance.
He is, in total, not a hard person to cast doubt on, and while he doesn't knuckle under and do the "damage control" PR thing, conceding, pacifying and so on, instead challenging any accuser head-on, that doesn't necessarily make him seem innocent.
There is, as well, a significant element that at best could be described as secular and at worst as Islamophobic and racist in some of the criticism levelled at him (again, I'm not accusing anyone of Barbelith of this as I see no evidence of it, but I've seen it elsewhere). Galloway and RESPECT were explicitly appealing to Muslim communities. Firstly, there's quite a bit of "ugh Muslims" that's involved, which I'm not going to sympathise with at all. Of the more rational objections, from the left I've seen him accused of, uh, I think it's called communalism - appealing to individual communities rather than conducting things on a proper class basis - as well as pandering to unpleasant conservative Muslim groups and downplaying RESPECT's commitment to, say, equal rights for women and gay people.
The former isn't that meaningful to me on a short-term basis (surely even if you were convinced that any worthwhile party should approach issues on a class basis, appealing to communities might reasonably come first) and the latter... well, I'm not sure. RESPECT's manifesto doesn't include anything about discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation but their resolutions do, it's fairly prominent on their website and given the leftie element in their supporters it's very unlikely that they'd do anything at all to discriminate. Galloway has stated that he is personally pro-life but that RESPECT is pro-choice and he has no intention of going against that.
I hope some of that is helpful. I can't give a very good account of exactly why people hate him because I don't - to me he's just this guy, you know? |
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