Although you wouldn’t know it from the tut-tutting of outraged conservatives, it seems most of France liked the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics. This was even with the presence of drag queens and what was perceived as a parody of da Vinci’s The Last Supper. A poll conducted shortly after the ceremony aired found that 86 percent of French viewers judged it a success, five percent disagreed, and the rest were indifferent.

The highest profile French politician opposed was neo-fascist Marine La Pen who accused organizers of being part of “a left wing minority ready for any provocation.” In the U.S., those opposed were of a similar political bent, people like former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis and dimbulb kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs Harrison Butker. Why these two conservative Christians are so deferential towards a piece of art created by a man who was almost certainly gay, is an unanswered question.

Joining this group is ex-British MP “Gorgeous” George Galloway, fresh from losing his Rochdale seat. The same George Galloway who voted in favor of equalizing the age of consent for gay and straight sex, and who voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, had issues with the ceremony. In the opening monologue for his Mother of All Talk Shows, Galloway howled that “the very acme of Western degeneracy and decline was surely the opening ceremony of the French Olympics.” Galloway described the ceremony as “sacrilegious, blasphemous, and utterly obscene,” referring to the alleged parody of The Last Supper, even though artistic director David Jolly and numerous art critics have said it was actually a reference to Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert.

Those in the U.S. probably know Galloway for his 2005 demolition job on Christopher Hitchens, his long-standing activism around Palestine, or his leadership of the anti-war Respect Party. They might be surprised at these remarks. Yet for roughly the past five years, Galloway has shifted sharply to the right on a variety of social issues to the point that he was quoted in the Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph identifying himself as a “social conservative.” To be sure, Galloway had been a longtime opponent of abortion, but he never made social conservatism a defining part of his politics until recently.

Part of the reason for Galloway’s changing attitude could be his collaboration with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), henceforth CPGBML. The party was an early cheerleader for Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain. Joti Brar, vice-chair of the CPGBML, was elected as co-chair of WPB. Brar’s party exhibits all the classic homophobia and transphobia that animated earlier “anti-revisionist” communist parties. In 1975, the U.S.-based Workers Voice Organization called homosexuality “a form of social sickness, a form of social perversion.” The CPGBML proves that attitude survived for decades on some sections of the Marxist left despite social advances for LGBTQ people.

The CPGBML passed a resolution at their eighth congress opposing “LGBT ideology” as “being reactionary and anti-working class and a harmful distraction and diversion from the class struggle of the proletariat for its social emancipation, is incompatible with membership of the party, rendering those involved in its promotion liable to expulsion.” A summary of a speech given at that congress was published by the party headlined “The reactionary nightmare of ‘gender fluidity.’”

In a 2021 interview with right-wing rag Spiked! Galloway accused Labour of having been stricken with “transmania.” an absurd charge given that Labour, including new health secretary Wes Streeting, have cuddled up to transphobes and banned puberty blockers for minors. In his ongoing attacks on the “woke left,” Galloway sounds like his old bete noir Tony Blair, a man whom Galloway proclaimed could be assassinated via suicide bomber as a “morally justifiable” act. While talking with Novara Media Galloway said he didn’t want his children to go to a trans-friendly school, saying “if my children are taught that there’s…76 or 97 or whatever the number of purported genders that exist, I don’t want my children taught that.”

Galloway has not become one of those trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFS) who claim to still support the rights of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. In that same Novara discussion, he continued on the topic of his children’s education saying schools shouldn’t teach “that gay relationships are exactly the same and as normal as a mum, a dad and kids.” (How normal is it for a man who has been married four times, and who admitted to cheating repeatedly on his first wife, to lecture us on “family values”?) Quite the change for a man who once received an award from the LGBTQ charity Stonewall. Now he sounds like one of those old Tories who wants to bring back Thatcher’s Section 28.

In his founding of a new self-proclaimed workers’ party, Galloway surely thinks of himself as following the footsteps of Keir Hardie. The figure he more closely resembles, to my eyes, is Oswald Moseley, another Labour defector who set up the British Union of Fascists. If marking Galloway as a wannabe fascist is a low blow, so be it. In his 2021 race, Galloway opposed trans rights saying “God creates everything in pairs,” implying to transgress those gender roles would call down the wrath of the Almighty. Compare with this from the National Front’s Spearhead:

“What conceivable point could there be in eradicating the obvious truth…that male and female have biologically based inclinations, the latter to childbirth and motherhood? What advantage is there in obscuring sexual differences and dehumanising the distinct qualities of manhood and womanhood?”

See if you can spot the difference.

Hank Kennedy