Government proposals to combat the ‘radicalisation’ of young men at the hands of online influencers like Andrew Tate by categorising the vague and potentially capacious term “misogyny” as a form of extremism risk becoming a form of thought policing, critics have warned (Mail on Sunday).
Following Yvette Cooper’s announcement last month of a new approach to fighting extremism that will crack down on people pushing what she describes as “harmful and hateful beliefs”, including “extreme misogyny”, the Home Office has commissioned a rapid review of evidence, which will complete later this Autumn.
The Home Secretary’s announcement that “extreme misogyny” may soon be added to the rapidly expanding list of “extremist” beliefs of “concern” to the government comes after warnings from feminist campaigners that online influencers like Andrew Tate – the brash former kickboxer and self-proclaimed “misogynist”, who rose to global fame after appearing on Big Brother in 2016 – are ‘radicalising’ teenage boys online.
“For too long,” Ms Cooper said, “governments have failed to address the rise in extremism, both online and on our streets, and we’ve seen the number of young people radicalised online grow. Hateful incitement of all kinds fractures and frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy.”
Critics have long warned that the legal duty imposed on teaching staff by Prevent – the counter-terror programme adopted by successive governments – to report ‘suspicions’ about students is incompatible with international freedom of expression law. Relatedly, staff on the ground have expressed confusion about whether there is a minimum threshold warranting a Prevent referral, and how significant the expression of extreme views is in meeting this threshold.
Despite these problems, however, Ms Cooper’s proposals will effectively expand the Prevent duty, requiring teachers to be on the lookout for any pupils exhibiting behaviour that falls under the vague and potentially capacious heading of “extreme misogyny”.
One obvious risk is that woke teachers will interpret “extreme misogyny” in a highly subjective way, with boys and young men who engage in distasteful but laddism classroom banter at risk of being referred to Prevent for assessment as potential terrorists. Even comments about a ‘woman’s place being in the kitchen’ could be enough to spark a referral to the unit, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Civil servants are also now warning that the plans, which have been discussed in high-level meetings between Home Office and Prevent experts in recent weeks, risk reducing the anti-radicalisation unit to “a wing of social services”.
One Prevent source said: “Lots of young boys hold extreme sexist views about girls, which teachers will hear and make referrals. This will then overload the system, and Prevent will not be able to concentrate on Islamist or far-Right extremism.”
Last year, the government-commissioned Independent Review of Prevent by Sir William Shawcross accused Prevent of a “loss of focus” and warned the public were increasingly at risk because the body had become distracted by far-Right and mental health cases rather than concentrating on Islamists.
According to Sir William’s report: “Prevent takes an expansive approach to the Extreme Right-Wing, capturing a variety of influences that, at times, has been so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation.”
Security officials have also previously expressed fears that Prevent’s mission has become confused, sometimes under political pressure, and moved towards trying to capture those with unpopular extremist views who are not committing a crime.
Prevent has been subject to ‘mission creep’ of this kind for many years, regularly capturing in its dragnet people who happen to hold and express perfectly lawful views that some people in society find ‘triggering’.
In total, there were 6,817 Prevent referrals in 2022-23, with the highest proportion of referrals classified under the broad category of “vulnerability present but no ideology of counter-terrorism risk”, at 37 per cent, followed by extreme Right-wing at 19 per cent and Islamist extremism at 11 per cent.
At the Free Speech Union (FSU), we know of Christians who have been referred to Prevent simply because they don’t believe in gay marriage – a minority view, to be sure, but it remains the right of people for religious or other reasons to say that marriage is between a man or a woman.
Earlier this year, a 12 year-old schoolboy from Northumbria was investigated by counter-extremism officers after he declared there “are only two genders” and produced a YouTube video in which he stated: “There’s no such thing as non-binary.”
In a recent report, Amnesty International accused Prevent of encouraging a culture of “thought policing”, noting that: “The breadth of discretion permitted in Prevent decision-making has resulted in a significant risk of discrimination,” and “[a] disproportionate number of neurodiverse people and children also feature in Prevent referrals.”
One case cited by Amnesty is that of Connor, a 24-year-old autistic man who was referred to Prevent in 2021, after his social worker noted a number of concerns, including that he was looking at “offensive and anti-trans” websites and “focusing on lots of right-wing darker comedy”.
What’s clear is that the Prevent strategy rests on an assumption that no-one has ever convincingly been able to demonstrate, namely, that a causal relationship exists between undefined ‘extremist’ views and ideas, which may be espoused by lawful non-violent groups, and acts of ‘terrorism’.
Inevitably, this leaves the strategy wide-open to politicisation, depending on which views and ideas a particular government or government minister – in this case, Yvette Cooper – happens to find distasteful.