How benevolent! Now Labour is attacking extremism it helped promote with a revamped strategy to counter it.
As recently as August 15, This Site was demonstrating how Keir Starmer and his party have been stoking extremism in the UK.
Now Home Secretary Yvette Cooper reckons she is going to work on ways to tackle threats posed by harmful ideologies. Perhaps she should start with her own?
According to the BBC, her review of the UK’s counter-extremism strategy will examine “the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK”. Doesn’t that assume that Islamist extremism has risen, when it should be asking whether that has happened at all?
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
It will also examine wider ideological trends including extreme misogyny or beliefs which fit into broader categories, such as violence.
And she said it will “identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence”.
This Writer is not opposed to any of those actions. I just wish they were accompanied with a certain degree of self-awareness.
We all know that politicians have been setting the agenda regarding racism and extremist beliefs that support it, for more than a decade – and that the right-wing mass media have supported that agenda.
It was a very useful policy for the Conservatives because it distracted the general public away from thinking about what Tory policies were doing to them and gave them a fake enemy to fear instead.
If Cooper does not accept her own party’s complicity in that agenda – that her leader wholeheartedly joined in with the demonisation of ethnic minorities because he thought it was a vote-winner, for example – then her counter-extremism review will be nothing more than a paper exercise, achieving nothing in the real world.
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Now Labour is attacking extremism it helped promote
How benevolent! Now Labour is attacking extremism it helped promote with a revamped strategy to counter it.
As recently as August 15, This Site was demonstrating how Keir Starmer and his party have been stoking extremism in the UK.
Now Home Secretary Yvette Cooper reckons she is going to work on ways to tackle threats posed by harmful ideologies. Perhaps she should start with her own?
According to the BBC, her review of the UK’s counter-extremism strategy will examine “the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK”. Doesn’t that assume that Islamist extremism has risen, when it should be asking whether that has happened at all?
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
It will also examine wider ideological trends including extreme misogyny or beliefs which fit into broader categories, such as violence.
And she said it will “identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence”.
This Writer is not opposed to any of those actions. I just wish they were accompanied with a certain degree of self-awareness.
We all know that politicians have been setting the agenda regarding racism and extremist beliefs that support it, for more than a decade – and that the right-wing mass media have supported that agenda.
It was a very useful policy for the Conservatives because it distracted the general public away from thinking about what Tory policies were doing to them and gave them a fake enemy to fear instead.
If Cooper does not accept her own party’s complicity in that agenda – that her leader wholeheartedly joined in with the demonisation of ethnic minorities because he thought it was a vote-winner, for example – then her counter-extremism review will be nothing more than a paper exercise, achieving nothing in the real world.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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