Quasi-markets to Suppress Dissent

Department of Homeland Security 6th July 2016

Arun Kundnani described in his book, The Muslims Are Coming, how the logic of counterterrorism had been developed in collaboration between the UK and the US after 9/11. As I have talked about in previous blogs, this led to the development of the narratives of extremism and radicalisation that have resulted in the suppression of voices in opposition to the state. This shared logic appears to persist since both the Department of Homeland Security in the US and the Home Office recently announced that they were offering grants of $10Million to 'counter violent extremism' and £1.5Million to 'prevent vulnerable people from becoming radicalised'.

Home Office 31st August 2016

Over the last few years, I have had contact with the Prevent Counterterrorism Strategy as a teacher who was expected to report my students to the security services, as an academic carrying out socio-linguistic research into Prevent, as a contributor to numerous reports for NGOs and media outlets as well as for a local government scrutiny committee into Prevent. This represents a lot of time talking about counterterrorism and the most hard to detect aspect of all of these conversations has had the most profound effect on all participants; by engaging in a conversation that refers to 'radicalisation' or 'extremism' we find ourselves caught in a circular logic that justifies the need for a policy to prevent opposition to the state. To avoid this, one has to constantly and consciously take a step back to remind oneself that views that radically diverge from our own or which might be perceived as extreme do not necessarily pose a violent threat and therefore do not require suppression; for democracy to function they must be allowed.

When someone engages in the competition to win the grant money being offered, they have to engage in the circular logic that radical and extreme views lead to violence (I explored how the justification of this view was only supported by the terms' association with violence in the definitions that counterterrorism policies provide in my last post). To think about applying for these grants reinforces the logic that political views should be suppressed and provides a financial incentive to buy into this idea, making it yet harder to extricate oneself from the repressive logic. I suspect that we'll never know if the decision to launch these grants was devised in a transatlantic meeting straight out of In The Loop or if the timing is coincidental but we can be sure that, rather than promoting innovation, they reinforce a circular logic that is undermining our right to hold and express views in opposition to the state.

I'm generally the last person to argue for market solutions but the quasi-market of these innovation funds is unlikely to offer any kind of real innovation to society.