That it couldn’t get worse.
Some of Britain’s most popular sitcoms and greatest works of literature were flagged as potential signs of far-Right extremism by a counter-terror programme.
The flagship Prevent scheme, recently the subject of a scathing audit, singled out comedies Yes Minister and The Thick Of It, the 1955 epic war film The Dam Busters, and even The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare as possible red flags of extremism.
It said the works of fiction were ‘key texts’ for ‘white nationalists/supremacists’.
This tells us something very simple. So simple and obvious that most reasonable people were already there. Prevent is not fit for purpose.
A report by Prevent’s Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) described how far-Right extremists promoted ‘reading lists’ on online bulletin boards. And it reproduced an image being shared on far-Right corners of the internet that listed ‘important texts’, under pictures of Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, and Oswald Mosley, who led the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
This is so bizarre that again, any reasonable person with a modicum of intelligence would reject it. Farage and Mosely are on opposite sides of the political divide. Farage is not ‘far right’ nor is he a fascist. While he was originally a Conservative MP, Mosely was subsequently a Labour MP, serving in the Labour government of 1929 – 31 before he formed the British Union of Fascists. Farage is nothing of the sort. Not even close. If anything he’s an old school Tory. So what we have here is Prevent behaving like adolescent teenagers using a cartoonish view of the world to decide that the ‘far right’ are a problem – including one presumes Jim Hacker and Humphrey Appleby – rather than dealing with the real threat that faces us – Islamism. Indeed, one begins to wonder if they are going out of their way to avoid the spectre of Islamism, preferring the easier target of normal people and mainstream opinion along with popular comedy programmes, throwing in a dubious link to Mosely so that they can brand it ‘far right.’
The taxpayer-funded document included references to The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, 1984 by George Orwell and the poems of GK Chesterton. It also referenced films including The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Great Escape and Zulu.
See what I mean? This is insane. And, worse, we are paying for this codswallop.
They even include Douglas Murray. Yes, Douglas Murray who can destroy wokery with a lifted eyebrow.
Author Douglas Murray obtained the full list and discovered that one of his books had been given a red flag by Prevent.
Mr Murray wrote in The Spectator magazine: ‘A number of books are singled out, the possession or reading of which could point to severe wrongthink and therefore potential radicalisation… It seems that RICU is so far off-track that it believes that books identifying the problem that it was itself set up to tackle are in fact a part of the problem.’ He concluded that RICU’s work was ‘pathetic’ and called for ‘accountability’ for its errors and ‘sackings by the score’. The list has emerged following a major review into the Prevent scheme by William Shawcross.
Michael Portillo is also under fire from these numbskulls.
Inexplicably, it said the BBC’s Great British Railway Journeys, presented by former Conservative minister Michael Portillo, was of interest to the far-Right.
This, surely, is the shark jumping moment. Roderick Spode lives, it seems. Presumably the followers of Spode are risen and marching about in footer bags and watching Great Railway journeys.
Disband Prevent. Destroy the place where it stands and salt the earth. Sack everyone involved and flog them through the streets. Then hang them. And if necessary, hang them again. Bring back the gibbet.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The Home Secretary made clear that Prevent will now ensure it focuses on the key threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as remaining vigilant on emerging threats. We’ve accepted all 34 recommendations and are committed to protecting our country from the threat posed by terrorism.’
And you trust these jokers to get it right this time? Because I don’t.
With all the tech that we now have connected to our telly we can stream old episodes of The Muppet Show. These come with warnings that this episode contains insensitive references to other cultures. It does of course and they are mostly hilarious.
Perhaps we should start using the ‘hate speech’ laws against government organisations that have gone so far off piste?
They don’t like it up ’em – unless that is ‘evidence’ of far right extremism of course.
Not sure the hate speech laws are applicable here. I rather think MI5 should be taking an interest though.
I think that people who hate their own country this much should be politely asked to leave. If they respond by saying that they don’t want to leave ask them to explain why not. If they really hate it here, why would they not jump at the opportunity to go somewhere else? The answers would be interesting if nothing else.
They would prefer that we left, I suspect.
This concept is usefully abbreviated to IYDLIFO.
Islamismist terror is a threat of course but hardly existential. And is actually used by tptb as a convenient distractio. The real threat is digital id/CBDC/net zero fundamentalism. These are real existential threats to everything that makes life worth living.
’So what we have here is Prevent behaving like adolescent teenagers…’
Maybe that’s exactly who staffed Prevent..?
This thread is probably a good place to relate my own personal run in with Prevent. Back shortly after the Manchester Islamic terror atrocity in 2017 I heard that there was going to be a massive anti Islamic terrorism demonstration in Manchester. I wanted to go in order to cover it for my blog. Unfortunately my wife was away working and I could not get a babysitter at such short notice for my child. Therefore I had no alternative if I wanted to be present at the demo but to take my son with me.
As I was, in an earlier part of my life, a public disorder photographer covering things like the Wapping Dispute, the London Poll Tax Riot and other similar outbreaks of disorder such as that caused by the anarchist hangers on who infested groups like the CND. I knew enough about crowds, crowd violence and how crowds are policed to be able to keep myself and my son safe. For the record there is no way on earth would I have taken my child to an event that was dangerous and based on my extensive experience of covering public disorder incidents I judged this event as a ‘1.5’ on a one to 10 scale of disorder possibilities with ‘10’ being a full on riot with offensive weapons. I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve documented aggro in various situations such as outside the Old Bailey after high profile trials to the BNP rampaging through south east London with very little in the way of serious personal injury ( I got this sort of work as being a freelance I was to some extent expendable as being freelance the paper would not be liable for any injury compensation should I have got battered)
As it turned out the anti terror demonstrators were incredibly welcoming and safe, so safe in fact that I noticed an obviously Orthodox Jew complete with Peyos, kippah and tzitzit (four knotted cords that hang down below the waist area that reminds the person to follow all the Mitzvot or commandments), watching the demo as an interested member of the public, completely unmolested or hassled by any of the anti terror demonstrators (remember this demo was mis-sold to the public by the MSM as a ‘far right’ thing which it was not). If this really was a ‘far right’ demo then I wouldn’t have rated this Jewish guy’s survival prospects. The only trouble came from the violent leftists at the opposite side of the square, a long long way away physically from where we were, who were letting off military grade flashbang pryotechnics to try to intimidate the attendees.
My son was fascinated by the various flags such as Union flags, Gadsden flags and Israeli flags that were being flown by the anti terror demonstrators and once back home and at nursery he was excitedly saying ‘flag flag’ repeatedly. I was asked about this ‘flag flag’ thing by the nursery staff and told them that I had no alternative but to take my son to work with me because of babysitter issues and told them that work in this case was documenting an anti terror demo in Manchester.
I thought nothing of it until two years later when I was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for a speech crime, specifically taking the piss out of a bunch of ‘Islamophobia’ grievance mongers. Following my arrest the police decided to set social services onto us possibly in large part because the police assumed that I was a dangerous ‘far right extremist’. I can only assume that they made this assessment without looking at the A2 sized Jewish wedding certificate (Ketuba) that hangs on our living room wall. A social worker came around, looked around, criticised us for some DIY stuff that was present in the house and asked a few questions, including ‘did you move here to get away from Islam’ (hundreds of people from the area I grew up in have indeed moved for that reason and out of the fear that Muslims would bully their kids in school) and went away again. It was at this point that I decided that it would be a damned good idea to put in subject access data records requests to the Met, my local force (who assisted the Met with the arrest) and social services to find out what was going on.
What I found was that I had been referred to Prevent by the nursery unbeknown to me following the visit to the anti terror demonstration. The information from the social services was extremely revealing as one of the things that they were concerned about was that we had ‘too many books’ and that these books were ‘old’ and ‘antiquarian’. There is of course nothing illegal about our book collection but it does contain books by many of the authors that have been castigated by Prevent such as Tolkien, CS Lewis, Orwell, Huxley, Shakespeare and books on politics and society that come from positions that are of the Left and the Right (there’s no echo chamber on my bookshelves LOL). Books about Victor Grayson the socialist activist who was connected to Maundy Gregory and who disappeared in mysterious circumstances, sit alongside books written by libertarians in the fifties about the future problems facing Britain’s welfare state.
Having absorbed the recent Shawcross report into the problems with Prevent and its classification of works of great literature as being indicative of ‘far right’ thinking, it makes me wonder whether the reason the SS believed that the book collection was inappropriate and ‘too old’ was down to guidance supplied by Prevent? It seems to me, following the Shawcross revelations that this misguided guidance about books from Prevent might have played a part in the social worker’s assessment and in particular the issue of the books. It should be a matter of great concern, not just to political anoraks like myself, but to everyone that Prevent have been influencing other government agencies and causing them to classify those who have a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare for example as ‘far right extremists’. I can’t help but wonder whether there are others out there who’ve been hassled by police, employers, local council workers, not just social services, but any entity in authority where the Left have either gained control or influence over? As I used to be somewhat to the left of centre in politics, before I grew up a bit mentally, I have had extensive contact with Leftists and had never ever encountered any Leftist who had had the same level of negative interest or intrusion by the State for taking kids on demonstrations even when they were not, merely observers as I was, but who were instead active participants in the demonstration.
What has happened at Prevent is a damned disgrace. Of course there are dangerous far rightists out there, the existence of Tony Lecomber, the neo-Nazi bomb lunatic from the 1980’s shows that and these are people which need to be interdicted. But Prevent have quite possibly gone after wholly innocent people who are not connected to far right extremism but who merely possess books or videos, such as Great British Railway Journeys by Michael Portillo, that the Left take a dislike to. My brush with Prevent and those influenced by it turned out OK, the social services recognised that I’m not some sort of weird neo-Nazi Jew, just a bog standard conservative and the police found no evidence that my mocking of Islamic grievance mongers was motivated by ‘racism’ and dropped all charges, but others might not have been so lucky. If my experience of Prevent is anything to go by then there might be a hundreds if not thousands of people who might been denied jobs or promotion or lost their families or been refused things like chemical handling licences that are now required for some drain cleaners, merely because they possess or enjoy books that just a decade ago were considered both normal and in some cases as great works of literature.
I really don’t trust Prevent to put its house in order, it appears to have been too heavily penetrated and influenced by the far Left. It needs tearing down and rebuilding from the ground up and to focus on the real threat that of Islamic religious extremism.
I had not heard of this Prevent organization before but I absolutely agree that it is not worth trying to save. Going forward would require constant close supervision in order to ensure that they toe the line. Too much trouble and expense.
Disband, destroy, expose the perps and move on.
Dang, guess I will hide my Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister DVDs.
And the darned Henry V with rabid Fascist Kenneth Branaugh. And all the books.
Or, as an American, use my Second Amendment right to keep antifa out of my house.
FYI. Heres the Konstantin Kisin video with the difference between the figures in speech crime arrests between the UK and Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r7GRx8Sl-s
If you an American then you don’t need to hide your DVD’s of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister as you have a First Amendment.
Sadly as Britons not only do we not have either a First Amendment nor a Second Amendment but we also have a pretend conservative government that has policies that are in many ways indistinguishable from the ones preferred by Antifa, policies such as movement restrictions, men in women’s toilets and outrageous censorship of viewpoints that run counter to those held by the Left. I believe that it was Konstantin Kisin of the Triggernomtery podcast that highlighted that there are more people being arrested or prosecuted in Britain for ‘speech crimes’ than there are people in Russia getting arrested for criticising Putin’s government.