islamophobia – Because It Doesn't Affect You

prevent

Prevent is one of the four elements that form CONTEST – the counter-terrorism strategy implemented by the British government. Its aims are to prevent people from turning to terrorism – by encouraging others to look for tell signs of extremism. It was introduced in 2003, and had its scope expanded in 2011. Curiously, the programs definition of what exactly is considered ‘extremist’ is fairly nebulous, and smacks of authoritarian overreach. More importantly, it serves to drive a wedge between marginalised groups – in this instance, Muslims – within their communities, pressuring them to turn over people within the community suspected to being radicalised to an extremist ideology. The Prevent strategy is also implemented in public institutions such as schools and universities, prisons, hospitals and charities. Local authorities are tasked with using ‘multi-agency groups’ in the coordination of Prevent activity, such as Community Safety Partnerships, Local Safeguarding Children Boards, and Youth Offending Teams. Local authorities are also instructed to use the existing counter-terrorism local profiles (CTLP) as a risk assessment to individuals drawn to terrorism, and to appropriate – or in this case, outsource – staff familiar with Prevent to look for signs of someone drawn to terrorism and the tools used to resolve the issue.

The stated goal of Prevent is:

“…to deal with all forms of terrorism and with non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists then exploit.”

In practice, what this amounts to is anything from listing climate activists such as Extinction Rebellion on a list of organisations that have “extremist ideologies”, to a pair of children been put on the Prevent program for telling a teacher they were given toy guns (the children werent even raised under a religion). NHS trusts have reported that mental illness was a “significant factor” in referring people to the Prevent program – one trust had as high as 98% not going past the channel process.

In spite of all the controversies that have accompanied it, opposition from civil liberties groups, charities, and unions; Prevent is not likely to be scrapped. Quite the opposite: It is much more likely to be expanded. It continues to exist because of Islamic terrorism, which continues to exist because Western nations can’t stop invading Middle Eastern ones for oil. It continues to exist because the people who pushed for it only found fault with it when groups that they didn’t like applied for Prevent-related funding and argued not for it to be scrapped, but for tighter controls and greater scutiny towards ‘terrorist-supporting’ groups who are taking the money. It’s because Islamophobes in Parliament, including Labour MPs who pearl-clutch about predatory Pakistani men – think it’s good.

It is because Britain – rather than accept a multiplural society with different peoples and customs – the British state has to install its hegemony – which means learning and accepting a code known as “British values”, and then demanding that “the Other” (again, in this case – Muslims) accept and then ‘integrate’ it into their daily lives.

See also:

Counter-terrorism and repression
Maajid Nawaz
‘War on terror’
New Labour and civil liberties
New Labour and the neoconservative agenda

On the 8th March 2020, Trevor Philips was suspended from the Labour Party. Trevor Phillips has – for a very long time now – used his platform as the former EHRC head to voice his dismay at the current generation of activists from multiple marginalised communities, and indeed those in support of those activists – on the basis that they’re trying to undermine freedom of speech. Indeed, in his last documentary Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?, Philips attempts to make the case that social justice activists are now more concerned with condemnation of regular people and policing behaviours than making British society more equal. At one point, he likens them to Stalinists and Maoists. What powers these activists and groups have to “silence” or “police” people beyond a reaction from the intransigent prone to complain about political correctness he hadn’t clarified. But as a consistent appeaser to reactionaries, aggreived Little Englanders, “Very Serious People” and the wider “freeze peach” crowd, it was as much as anything he’s done recently.

Naturally, you will not find an ally in Trevor Philips in me. That the first president of the National Union of Students had reduced himself to the proverbial man ranting at cloud is regrettable but not entirely unexpected. He was always a simpering liberal. For him, the road to racial equality at the end is engaging in respectability politics and victim-blaming as its means – viewing material gains through his elitist lens. I recall in the documentary Things We Can’t Say About Race That Are True his framing of the interview he conducted with Les Ferdinand on racism in football to make a point about the “real taboo”: black bosses. Not Ferdinand’s brother Anton being called a “black cunt” by John Terry. Apparently the lack of black coaches in English football is the real problem and not the underlying culture that allows for this problem. He did this again fairly recently, regarding the the lack of representation of BAME people in executive positions in business. This is the fight that Philips was really interested in: Whether our corporate overlords are black or brown, than whether or not they can feel comfortable in the streets or a workplace without having dehumanizing jibes thrown at them. Black faces in high places.

It is from this respectability politics that Philips is motivated to oppose multiculturalism – and went to head with Ken Livingstone during his tenure as Mayor during the early years of the Greater London Authority, and invoked the ire of Operation Black Vote. It is also where his apparent issue with Muslims – which is the basis for his expulsion from Labour – seems to come from. For him, Muslims seem to represent a faction within British society that is impervious to ‘integration’. Consistent with the patrician faction of liberals such as Anthony Flew, Richard Dawkins and Anthony Giddens – Philips identifies multiculturalism as a threat to Britain, following a curiously crude interpretation of it existing as British state being the manager of different identity groups – all apparently monolithic, steadily encroahing on the British core in exchange for their culutral values remaining untouched.

His anti-Muslim animus motivated him in writing and on TV, to continuously refer to the Rochdale sex trafficking scandal, arguing that authorities ‘not wanting to look racist’ addressing the problem of Pakistani men grooming young girls – who were white. No mention of the lack of trust the authorities had within Asian communities, or indeed that ‘white’ (non-Muslim) grooming gangs are greater in number. No, just blame the victim – the Pakistani and Muslim community as a whole. It’s ‘cultural relavitism’ that have them a chance to exploit those girls, and the Left making excuses for them. They are a ‘nation within a nation’. Giving the amount of times he blames the Left for teachers not supporting black students, for protecting the feelings of Muslims who were “segregating”, and other grievances – I can’t help but womder whether his issue is really with the Left, or whether it is a convenient all-encompassing shorthand for identity politics and marginalised groups as a whole, but he feels he can’t outright say every individual group he charges with victimhood. If anything, other than Simon Danusck, I’ve never seen a more right-wing Labour Party member, or a former equalities campainer and leader work so hard to undermine the gains in British society.

Philips now charges the Labour Party of having become a “totalitarian cult”. Perhaps he should have spent more time musing and speaking on whatever draconian policies the party has, instead of suggesting that the Labour Party has a uniquely anti-Semitic culture that needed to be addressed.

Tag: islamophobia

What is the “Prevent strategy”?