How to Build a Successful Progressive Alliance (George Galloway)

[not systems]

http://www.counterpunch.org/nagy05232005.html

May 23, 2005
An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway
How to Build a Successful Progressive Alliance

By ESTHER SASSAMAN
and THOMAS NAGY

...

ES: I'm going to ask the epistemology question - epistemology, for the people who may not know that fifty cent word that are reading this, is the science of knowing - what kind of theory of knowledge is out there. And it's my personal belief that the Republican Party and to a larger and larger extent, the Democratic Party - is inventing its own epistemology. Basically, instead of having a rigorous investigation of facts, for example at your hearing today, they just make an assertion. And because they say it in this vertically integrated media machine, it's true! And the problem is, if that epistemology spreads across the United States, then we have a huge disadvantage because even the facts won't save us if they can invent their own facts, How do we fight that?

GG: Well that's a brilliantly formed question.

ES: Thank you.

GG: I have no easy answer to it. Beyond - nobody ever said it would be easy. We are, in our two countries, fighting against an imperialist monster...that thinks nothing of massacring large numbers of people. And this is Jack Londons Iron Heel. And it may be that in my lifetime, Tom's lifetime, I hope not in yours - that we do not break through. We may move forward. We may merely stop them from pushing us back as far as they might have done if we weren't here. But we have a duty to try. What else are we here for, but to fight for the truth and fight for justice? In the end, if we're talking about epistemology, all we're asking for is justice! Justice - We believe in a society of justice in the world. Justice for the Palestinians and justice for everybody. That's all we're asking for. Now, there are a number of constituencies who are predisposed, if stripped of anything that gets in the way, predisposed to the idea of justice. And religious people, many religious people, are amongst those. I think of the Cardinal Archbishop of Detroit. who came to Baghdad a couple of times.... The Roman Catholic Church - I speak as a Catholic - the Roman Catholic Church, even in right wing countries like this, is seeded closely with ideals of justice. Black churches, black Christians, must be open to the ideals of justice.

...

ES: And that's something that we on the left really need to catch up on. The right is really dominating the field.

GG: I think - talking as a leftist, to leftists - let me say, the first hang up we have to get over is that somehow religion is a reactionary thing.

ES: Hear, hear.

GG: Whether you believe in God or not, it can hardly be a bad thing that people want to live their lives by a value system of peace, which is what in the end religion is. Religions say, don't harm other people. Treat people as you would wish to be treated. Don't steal. Don't kill people. And so on and so on. Well there's nothing wrong with that. Even if you don't believe in God there's nothing wrong with that. And a person who sincerely believes that sort of thing is the kind of person that can be won to a broader progressive agenda.





Interesting read, more there particularly about Muslims in Europe
and how he has build a successful alliance with them.

[knowbody0]

1. thanks for this

mayhaps we should bridge up with the pissed off half of GB

[TyeDye75]

5. The pissed off in GB

is more than half

most of them would be happy to learn (as I have on this site) that at least half of America shares our view.

[knowbody0]

2. thanks for this

mayhaps we should bridge up with the pissed off half of GB

[jayctravis]

3. kicked and recommended

[paineinthearse]

4. Excellent primer

thank you.

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. Thank you for this! Recommended. And here are some of the links

from Galloway's historic Senate speech:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1793291&mesg_id=1793291
Thread title: “Absolutely WONDERFUL George Galloway entry at Wikipedia - fave quotes”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3672646
Thread title: “MSNBC: UK's Galloway blisters US policy on Iraq - (VIDEO and AUDIO)”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1789359#1789452
Thread title: “Looks like entire Galloway testimony is posted (Video)”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3674986
Thread title: “GALLOWAY TRANSCRIPT HERE”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3697411
Thread title: “He likes us, he really, really likes us! (Galloway)”
(Here is a delightful discusson of Galloway citeing emails from Democratic Underground to show that not all Americans support Bush)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3698459
Thread title: “Galloway Testimony scrubbed!!!!!”

(And - from Monday's update at BradBlog, the record of the Galloway testimony at the Senate is STILL gone - with increasingly stupid-sounding excuses being given:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001413.htm)

[ananda]

7. wrong about Black churches

Galloway doesn't know what's going on with Black churches and their leaders these days. They're going conservative because of the gay-marriage issue, and they're being bought off by Bush's faith-based initiative money.

Blacks have, basically, sold out. I see it here in Houston every day, before my own eyes, and it's so painful to watch.

Sue

[bejammin075]

8. Maybe not

TV hugely oversamples black conservative religious leaders, according to what I heard (below).

I was listening the the local, Philly AM station (that carries Randi Rhodes, but has local programming early and late in the day). The host of yesterday's evening show was interviewing someone who wrote a book on the history of the rise of the neo-cons from the 1970's to today.

The book author talked a lot about the close association of neo-cons and churches. According to this guy, the neo-cons very very much want to portray the image of black religious leaders joining with them, but he said it was mostly a fiction of TV, because these few black leaders who get duped by James Dobson types are promoted on TV by the neo-cons, but in reality, the vast majority of the black community is not buying it, and there really isn't a shift of black leaders to the dark side. This might be one of the few cases where neo-cons are in favor of affirmative action. And think about this: a large number of black religious leaders are not affiliated with conservatives. When's the last time you saw one of them on TV? Excluding Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson? (who are put on TV as a punching bag for conservatives).

Maybe in Texas it's different, but here in Philly, I think the above is likely the case. Black people here are very distrustful of Republicans. Now if Howard Dean can get the ball rolling, and show that we care about black people more than just the 4 weeks before an election, we might reverse the flow. We need a more progressive Dem party that actually vociferously stands up for universal healthcare, etc. The large corporate-bought Republican-lite wing of the Dem party is keeping the whole party's hands tied, and reduces the party to giving lip service to blacks every 4 years. For me, I feel like the black caucus is the only caucus with a high percentage of members that is fighting for my right to vote (re: e-voting), so I say we need to totally embrace black liberals who are literally dying for Dem leadership.

[goodhue]

9. great interview

thanks for posting this

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. I'm sure you're right.

Someone on one of these threads, who seems to me a dyed-in-the-wool neocon operative - well a couple actually, since he had a supporter - has been peddling the nonsense that the Dems lost heavily in the South in the last election; the reverse being manifestly the case.

He then contended, at least by implication, that the average Southerner is a "redneck" who is so stupid that, even in a time of economic hardship (with mass unemployment, low wages, etc), he will swallow the Republican propaganda with the same nonchalance as, indeed, some truly did, in times of affluence - when worldly concerns didn't obtrude too much into the lives of people who are not basically materialistic.

However, it is one thing to criticise unwordly folk for their lack of worldly political nous, but it is all together something else to impugn them for their lack of common sense; the very quality so signally lacking in the worldlings of the far right. We heard the same thing about the soldiers in Iraq - though their votes are apparently evanescent by their very nature; virtually impossible to count...

Indeed, I ridiculed such an operative on a Guardian thread. They love to publicly claim on a Democratic/progressive forum that they are "Good old boys", themselves, indeed proud to call themselves "rednecks". However, he showed his true colours in a post a little later, when he described a mythical exchange between him and his wife in a caricature of a rustic dialect, in fact distancing himself from them, since, realising his bad faith, I had endorsed his description of himself as a hick. And he took the bait.

The truth of course is that almost all of non academically-educated folk, whether in the South or anywhere else, have more common sense in their little finger, than he and his kind will ever have, if they live to be 100. A strange hypocrisy, whereby they affect the closest kinship with the very people they will most severely oppress, should they be unwise enough to vote for them; which, fortunately, at least in times of economic hardship, they are not.

The bozo, in question, on the Guardian forum actually tried to besmirch George Galloway as a rapist... because he'd seen a lot of them in his work (apparently, associated with law enforcement), and thought he looked like them. Phrenolgy is making a comeback, it seems.
Another example of those Victorian values La Thatcher used to laud, I suppose. But how dense can you get?

[goodhue]

11. kick