“Extremism” is a word that the Home Office is unable to define in law and means something different to what it did it did 8 years ago.
In 2008 the Government published many documents on “extremism” and, at this time, “extremism” tended to be written as “violent extremism”. Each point on the graph above is a government document and the point at 100% represents the CONTEST Counter-Terrorism Strategy where “extremism” is only written as “violent extremism”. Over time, the word “violent” has been lost so that all recent documents are clustered around 0%. Our Prime Minister’s recent speech fits into this cluster and, in doing so, presumes that we must address “extremism” as a pathology in its own right. Whether this is because “extremism” is now synonymous with violence or because we don’t tolerate challenges to the status quo is a question that will remain unanswered due to the lack of any legal definition for “extremism”, as is mentioned above.
Whether a Muslim seeing her sisters oppressed abroad or a Welshman wanting political change at home, the new “extremism” stops us speaking out and tells us that we are violent if we oppose the status quo. To promote a strategy to address “extremism” shuts down political debate, leaving violence as the only option for those seeking radical change. This dangerous situation is catalysed by the new rhetoric and policy of "countering extremism" telling those who are silenced that violence is to be expected from them.
Violence does not have to be the vehicle for change but any strategy that focuses on and pathologises political belief is likely to promote violence.
Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park, let us see them for the crimes that they are and address them as such rather than allowing them to be used to justify a failing policy that is based on dangerous pseudoscience. This will allow our security services to be fully resourced and to act in the exemplary and heroic way that they have in the last few months.
