Occasional anti-hero of these pages Lazarus Galloway has been in the news this week for suing, or threatening to sue, the NUS for libel. Apparently some spotty would-be Labour MP from the NUS has described Galloway as a "rape denier".
Strictly speaking, the person doing the denying would be Julian Assange, who has consistently claimed to be innocent of the charges made against him by two women by Sweden. Galloway managed to get himself in trouble by claiming that these charges themselves, if proven, did not amount to rape. (Leave aside for a moment the considerable issue of whether they could be proven to a reasonable legal standard of certainty.)
Whatever Assange's likelihood of successful prosecution, however, Galloway clearly fancies his chances of suing the NUS. His record on legal actions is, of course, enviable, having relieved The Daily Telegraph of a considerable sum and agreed out-of-court settlements with The Christian Science Monitor (libel) and The News of the World (phone hacking). Libelling Galloway is like putting Brer Rabbit in the briar patch.
In any case, the "rape denier" charge is a bizarre one. Galloway wasn't denying that rape takes place, or that rapists should be prosecuted & punished. If the model for this form of deplorable behaviour is - as seems likely - Holocaust denial, then the pattern fits very poorly. Holocaust deniers - in the face (it needs hardly be laboured) of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - assert that the systematic execution of Jews by Nazis never happened. Galloway was claiming that if it happened as reported, it wasn't a crime.
(The rape, that is.)
One thing is nevertheless clear from all this. If Assange did rape two women in Sweden, then his crime was very felicitous indeed to his opponents, since it is a crime which very few people (and not even someone as outspoken as George Galloway) will defend.
Maybe the U. S. government is just that lucky.
It's a strange wind, though, that brings windfalls to both the U..S. administration and George Galloway.
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