Hitchens vs Galloway

20 Comments Alex Massie 30 March 2012 15:35

Since he has previously been elected in Glasgow and London, I don’t know if it is so astonishing that George Galloway won a by-election in Bradford. Anyway, if you have a couple of hours to spare ou might enjoy this debate between Galloway and Christopher Hitchens. As Christopher put it: "The man’s hunt for a tyrannical fatherland never ends. The Soviet Union let him down, Albania’s gone. Saddam’s been overthrown. But on to the next, in Damascus." Quite.

Tags: Afghanistan, Christopher Hitchens, Debating, George Galloway, Iraq, War on terror

The newspapers’ detective agency

Rod Liddle

29 March 2012 23:28

Happy Easter

Alex Massie

3 April 2012 19:23

Red Baron

Hitchnes Pawned Galloway to no contest
Fergus Pickering

Why thank you, Baron. I’ll buy you a virtual pint. Robert Conquest wrote a limerick about the comrades. It went something like:

There was an old marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
That grand marxist, Stalin, did ten in.
Gary

Hithens made much more sense when he was a member of IS, the forerunner to the SWP. An intellect wasted in the cause of imperialism. Yuk.
Baron

Fergus, on this occasion, my blogging friend, you spot on, Baron’s choice would have been exactly the same.
Fergus Pickering

Why should you suppose Hitchens was insincere when he supported the American invasion of Iraq. He may have been wrong – I think he was – but why should you suppose him insincere? You accept Galloway’s ridiculous worship of the Soviet Union – a most evil place – as sincere, don’t you? I think I’d pick Reagan and Bush ahead of Lenin and Stalin any time.
Old Slaughter

I think those who believe Galloway had the best of this are more suckers for the cut and thrust without seeking to dismiss sophistry and poor logic.

But has for previous statements, Hitchens said he was ‘content for the Red Army to water its horses in Hendon’. I guess the only real difference there was CEH was a whole lot younger when he said it.
Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley

Thanks very much for this video. I noticed with interest the way Mr.Hitchens swept away the sound of frustrations coming from the hall that threatened to spoil his part of dialogue; ” That’s not coming out of my time” he said in response to the noise.
ed h

@Reb

Absolutely correct. Anyone who thinks “Christopher” won that debate has simply never watched it.
- AndyM82
  
  I watched the entire thing and it was a whitewash. Hitchens schooled Galloway with ease. You must have been wearing your red tinted lenses whilst watching.
Reb

I got to say, as somebody who dislikes Gslloway and admires Hitchens, Galloway was more than a match in this debate. He called Hitchens out on being a mercenary, preening blusterer and i can’t look at him in quite the same way any more. I think Hitchens backed himself into a corner over his support for the invasion of Iraq, it definitely had the whiff of insincerity and contrariness about it.
AB

Galloway: “If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/16/iraq.interviews
Baron

More than a pity the gifted giant is no longer with us, the inane fake is.
sarah

Yes Hitchens is spot on. I never understood shy Hitchens wasted his considerable intellect on Galloway, i think Galloway had everything to learn from that interaction and he appears to get stronger with each defeat. However we should pay his “victory” the respect it deserves and learn every lesson from it. It will be a tough job not to react to him in parliament, and unfortunately very distracting from the real job of governing the country which the majority of decent politicians are interested in. I hope people learn that “protest” votes always have undesirable consequences and Boris learns from this. He and his team should triple their efforts to persuade every voter to cast their votes for him and not rest until the last vote is cast.
Ray Machine

Galloway handed the ex-Trotskyite popinjay his ass in this debate. Who was let down by the Soviet Union? Only one man in this argument and it wasn’t GG.
- Art
  
  Keep dreaming. Hitch did what he did best and Hitchslapped Galloway all over the shop. Beautiful to see.
Fergus Pickering

Baron, I know the Amis stuff. Dial up Jeff Chaucer on the internet for a book of most of Conquest’s limericks. A master of the form.
Baron

Fergus, the blue veined barbarian hasn’t heard this one, amusing stuff for his collection, Kinglsey Amis has a chapter on him in his memoirs, the whole’s worth reading.

and CW, one of the best descriptions of a Scottish politician, colorfully put, too, on par with Simn Heffer’s take on Prescott: “a blundering, incompetent, spud-thick, obtuse and thuggish oaf.”
Don McCarron

@ ed h.
Or has an opposing view to yours.
Old Slaughter

@Gary,

It takes some strange sort of masochism to describe the fight against restoring the caliphate as ‘imperialist’.
CW

Anyone who is familiar with Scottish politics will see in the demagogic Galloway the sort of swaggering, short-arsed, stuffed-pockets bully that has tainted our urban politics for decades. His incessant gurning and shouting is a longstanding Scottish Labour tradition. He may be eloquent, he might look appealing on a platform next to some characterless, ‘media-friendly’ machine politician, but watching him rant and rave his way through this debate left me with not much more than a headache.

The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

Hitchens vs Galloway

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