Stalinist being watched by Big Brother, oh the irony.

I saw George Galloway go into the Big Brother house last night. I think I've gone slightly hysterical, as I can't seem to think about it without breaking into laughter. This is clearly, quite simply, car crash TV of the highest order.

My optimism, however, appears once again to have gotten the better of me. After first glimpsing Galloway on screen, and after I’d just about got over my initial shock, I had a short conversation with Dan Randall about it. It transpires Dan is actually a fan of Big Brother (the second surprise of the evening) which meant he was not exactly happy that an otherwise enjoyable programme now had a deranged Stalinist ego monster obscuring its better qualities. But what depressed him more were his predictions for the reactions from Galloway’s usual cheerleaders. I was slightly more hopeful.

I thought that this amazingly public credibility suicide would presumably start alarm bells ringing. After all, I may disagree with people who support Galloway, or who think its worthwhile getting him elected, but most of them remain on some level committed to some kind of socialism. They, one would hope, would start thinking a bit about whether propping up the career of this man was helping or hindering the cause. Dan was much more pessimistic, and predicted spine-bending contortions of theory from the usual suspects, designed to show that Galloway was not just taking any opportunity to get his face on the telly, but was in fact bringing the message to the masses. Dan may be an NUS bureaucrat, but early indications are that he’s spot on with this one.

The SWP blogger “Lenin” of Lenin’s Tomb thinks that Galloway’s appearance is “Populism in action”. See here. I was always under the impression that populism was a bourgeois ideology, or at least a cross-class one. Apparently the working class isn’t all that important any more, at least not half as important as getting out a good message of being against stuff. What stuff? You know… bad stuff…

Meaders at Dead Men Left has gone even further. It’s audacious, but Galloway is the only MP “who could come close to pulling this one off”. Apparently: “His political judgement is, in general, superb”. See here. Meaders does note that Galloway isn’t perfect, after all he said some nice things about Saddam Hussein, and even the SWP have had to recognise that Hussein wasn’t really all that nice, when all’s said and done. But Meaders concludes that this is “the occasional dropped bollock” in an otherwise worthy career of being against stuff. I’d like to point out that if we put together all of Galloway’s “dropped bollocks” over the years then we’d have a hell of a lot of them. In fact I’d be tempted to say his entire political career consisted of nothing but bollocks, dropped or otherwise. And anyway, if saluting a murderous dictator amounts to nothing more than a momentary error of judgement what can Galloway possibly say that Meaders would consider unnacceptable. Perhaps George could goosestep his way into his next Respect rally before beginning his speech with the line: “I’m sorry I’m late, I was busy at home beating my wife, and then I had to stop off on the way here to drown some kittens.”. Would that constitute more than a “dropped bollock” one wonders?

I can’t possibly imagine that the SWP/Respect leadership are happy about Galloway’s appearance on Big Brother. I have enough faith in their collective experience to think they know this can’t possibly be used as a particularly effective platform for their views. Germain Greer left last year after concluding that Big Brother was manipulative and evil, presumably having forgotten the origins of the name before she went in. What makes Galloway think that it will treat him any better? I’m most shocked by this simply because I don’t think it will possibly protray him in a good light. I imagine that it will instead be rather embarassing for him in years to come. But even if Galloway’s friends in the SWP realise this what will they say publicly about it? I retain the hope that this will start some people thinking. The SWP has become, almost explicitly, an organisation devoted to pushing Respect, and Respect, in turn, seemingly measures its success by the advance of Galloway. For months running up to last May the SWP became a Galloway promotion machine, and this is the result of that. This has got to start some members thinking about the current orientation of their organisation.

Of course, my optimism was misplaced with regards to the Blogosphere. Here’s hoping the real world is going to be different.