Johann Hari Denies Reality. posted by Richard Seymour

Ironically, in a post about George Galloway being caught out in a lie, Johann Hari sinks to a bit of fibbing himself. I am quite surprised, in fact, since he knows full well that he has not merely made false accusations against Galloway, but repeated them once they were pointed out. I even reminded him recently.

He now says that my debunking of his article was 'unsuccessful' despite him never having confronted the charges. Bad move. Very bad move.

Here is a concise list of the most obvious fabrications and distortions:

1) Hari claims Galloway defended Hussein's right to invade Kuwait. He did not. He specifically rejected it. Hari's claim was made with the use of a carefully edited (blatantly distorted) quote.

2) Hari claimed Galloway was rendering a moral equivalence between Saddam's regime and Western liberal democracies. Galloway was not. Again, Hari makes his claim with the use of a carefully edited quote.

3) Hari claims that Galloway, in comparing Hussein to Stalin, is not wielding a criticism. Passages contiguous to those cited by Hari show that he was.

4) Hari claims that Galloway fails to mention the ideal of two-states, but he does.

5) Hari claims that Galloway 'evades' the reasons for Israel's creation: he does not.

6) Hari claims that 800,000 Jews were 'ethnically cleansed' from Arab countries after 1948. They were not.

Those are padded out with a farrago of insinuation and unfounded claims that he can produce no evidence for. Now, is it lying when one mangles quotes to produce meanings other than their original intention? Is it libel when one does so to impute sinister motives to their author? Should Galloway sue? I think we should be told.