Thread by @_Ungagged

Sam Hamad: "George Galloway's 'All for Unity' now using the iconography of ethnic cleansing. The below is a painting of Scottish patriots being defeated by British redcoats at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, bringing an end to the Jacobite rising of 1745 and bringing about

British rule over the Highlands of Scotland. The Highlands were *never* British until they were conquered by the at that time still nascent British Union.

That conquest, like most British conquests, was carried out by force and by a long period of mass ethnic cleansing,

comprising massacres, the banning of our native language, culture and traditions and cleansing people from their lands and from their country - the reason why the population of much of the Highlands is so sparse is because it was cleansed. You can see it on censuses of towns,

villages and parishes before and after. Many places had populations reduced to 0.

The ancient cinnidhean (Scottish clan system) was killed off in its genuine native form, while the traditional clothes, songs and of course language were

banned through acts of the British parliament. Even pipes were effectively banned. This period also birthed one of, if not the first, instances of 'race science', with the British depicting Gaels as inherently backwards, savage and subhuman - they created a racist

pseudohistory that depicted the lowland ruling classes who had embraced Britishness as Germanic 'Goths' compared to the unruly barbarous and 'foreign' Celtic populations, who were incapable of the industriousness required to be a subject of the new British Union.

It's

remarkable how little this acknowledged - the reason so much of the land is owned by British and foreign cartels is due to this period. The British crown possessions in Scotland were all taken from cleansed lands - the castles stripped from dead or exiled patriots.

This

collection of injustices and atrocities is known among Scottish Gàidhlig-speakers, the main victims in this, as 'Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal', or the 'expulsion of the Gaels'.

So while Galloway is glorying, as any good Stalinist would, in the shadow of ethnic

cleansing by using this imagery, as a means to wind up nationalists, he's almost certainly going to enrage even Unionist people who live in the Gàidhealtachd. It's not a joke."

EDIT: Galloway has repudiated any connection with the account that created the meme. The account's reaction has been added here, as Galloway has blocked us and we can't see what he has said.