The Fauxcialist Revolution
Over at Jewcy, Michael Weiss compiles a list "of the worst poseur Marxists—faux-cialists, if you like—plus three world leaders who are actually literate in radical politics and willing to put their knowledge to good use." A funny piece—and one that allows me to post my favorite photo of George Galloway and Dead or Alive singer Pete Burns.
How many British MPs can you name who've spent Christmas disco dancing with Tariq Aziz and joked about male pattern baldness with Uday Hussein? With his promiscuous attraction to all types of murderous dictator, the Scottish politician George Galloway manages to be both a textbook reactionary and sui generis at the same time
…
It took a stint on the reality series Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 to alienate even some of his diehard loyalists. Before being ejected from the house by his co-residents, Galloway dressed in a leotard and imitated a cat drinking milk out of a saucer provided by a transvestite.
Horrifying video of Galloway's cat imitation here.
And Weiss on the ridiculous Tariq Ali:
Ali's work is never done until he's stuffed as many leftist platitudes and clichés as possible into a single sentence. In his New Left Review essay "Mid-Point in the Middle East?" he extolled Muqtada al-Sadr, Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as glorious upstarts in the "unfolding drama" of the modern Middle East and writes: "A radical wind is blowing from the alleys and shacks of the latter-day wretched of the earth, surrounded by the fabulous wealth of petroleum." It's like an Onion parody of the Socialist Workers' Party meeting minutes, which might not be far cry from Ali's rather matey intent: he loves to work in schlocky pop cultural references in his pamphleteering, titling, for instance, his pro-chavismo book Pirates of the Caribbean.
Whole article here.
reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie and former reasonoid Tim Cavanaugh recently guested at Jewcy's "Movable Snipe" feature.
