Reblogged with permission from BobFromBrockley.
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This post is prompted by David Cameron’s recent speech
setting out a new agenda on addressing the threat of Islamist violent
extremism, and also by the recent launch of a whole series of “counter-jihadi”
initiatives on the British right, including the planning of a Mohammed cartoon
exhibition in London in September. The latter has been the subject of a report
by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate (HnH). My friend Sarah made some sympathetic
criticisms of that report at Harry’s Place, for which she got some sharp
criticism on Twitter. This whole topic is one which frequently inflames
irrational passions and generates more heat than light. This post, therefore,
is an attempt to set out a series of propositions on these issues as an attempt
to cut through some of the hysteria. I
didn’t mean for it to get so long!
“Extremism” is not a
helpful framing of the problem
Cameron frames his approach to Islamism in terms of the
wider generic problem of “extremism”, noting that Islamism is just one of many
forms of “extremism”, along with that of the far right. Cameron is right to
note that other ideologies constitute a threat, and there are certain
similarities between the Islamist far right and the British nationalist far
right. However, the term “extremism” creates more confusion than it solves,
especially when the border between extremism and terrorism is blurred, as it
was in Cameron’s speech, and in fact can do damage.
The idea of “extremism” implicitly contrasts these
ideologies to the “normal”, acceptable politics of the centre ground, of the
mainstream status quo. The concept of “extremism” criminalises the desire for
change. It stops us from looking carefully and critically at the ideologies
caught in its remit – which closes down debate, imagination and criticism, and
stops us from engaging “extremist” ideologies and challenging them politically.
The concept of “extremism” can make minor, marginal ideologies seem more
dangerous than they often are – and therefore can sometimes make them seem
glamourous and exciting.
We know from history that the rubric of “extremism” is most
often used against the left. In recent decades, for example, we have seen huge
amount of resources put into the
policing and surveillance of left-wing politics, with undercover police
officers inserted into ecological, anti-fascist
and anti-racist movements, sowing havoc and ruining
lives. Anti-capitalist groups like Occupy are lumped
together with al-Qaeda and the IRA in the category of “domestic
extremism”. The language of the guidance
on extremism given to universities effectively means that not just jihadism but
also anarchism should be excluded from such institutions. We have seen the
infiltration and disruption of the campaigns led by the families of victims of
racist violence, such as Stephen
Lawrence’s; collusion in the blacklisting
of union activists; and acts of provocation
to push non-violent activists into criminal activity.
Cameron is wrong to
think that extremism in general is a conveyer belt to violent extremism and
terror
Cameron claims that “many [terrorists] were first influenced
by what some would call non-violent extremists”; Islamism, he says, “has often
sucked people in from non-violence to violence”. This is true, as far is at
goes, but it is also true that most followers
of “non-violent” extremism do not get
“sucked” to jihadist violence, just as most
anti-immigrant racists and casual antisemites do not get “sucked” to violent fascism. Not making that clear is
problematic.
The evidence-based blogger Anonymous Mugwump has collated
all of the research showing very conclusively that there is no necessary or
straightforward step from extremism to violent extremism, no single pathway
from Islamism to terrorism; his case is pretty conclusive.
(Cameron’s mistaken emphasis on this connection is probably
due to the emphasis on the government’s thinking of the thinktank Quilliam, who
have long argued, with little evidential basis, that extremism in general leads
to violent extremism in particular – although their position, as Amjad Khan argues here,
is more subtle than Cameron’s: non-violent extremism, they say, provides the “mood
music” for terrorism.)
As Anonymous Mugwump notes, there may well be good reasons
to oppose some forms of non-violent extremism – but its connection to terrorism
is not one of them. The category of non-violent extremism is basically a form
of “pre-crime” or thought crime; making it into a security issue is dangerous
because it criminalises beliefs that are not in fact criminally dangerous; it
is a licence for authoritarian over-policing, for policing without the consent
of communities. As I will argue more fully below, while terrorism is a policing
issue, non-violent Islamism is a political
issue, which should be challenged politically, by all of us – citizens,
communities – and not from above by the state.
Cameron is broadly right
to highlight ideology over “root causes”
