The Prevent anti-extremism project was created by the government of Tony Blair in 2003 to tackle one of Britain’s sadly now perennial problems, that of violent Islamic extremism. We still, unfortunately, have violent extremism of an Islamic nature but Prevent has morphed into a mess that according to a recent report into its effectiveness, is stuffed full of ineptitude and wrong headed thinking.

Douglas Murray has tackled how Prevent has lost its way in a recent article in the Spectator magazine. In this piece Mr Murray talks of how Prevent, possibly due to the influence of a group that many would consider as extremist, Hope Not Hate, ‘took a sojourn’ into tackling alleged ‘far right’ activity. Mr Murray said that this change of focus, brought about in part due to the influence of far left groups like Hope Not Hate has created a catalogue of absurdities with people being classified as ‘far right’ for liking JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis books or Lord Clark’s classic television series ‘Civilisation’. The Prevent scheme, because of the influence of extremist left wing government advisors such as those in Hope Not Hate ended up chasing not just the sort of neo-Nazis of the National Front or the British National Party, groups that I myself marched against back in the day, but people who voted for or supported relatively mainstream patriotic parties such as UKIP. In other words the Prevent scheme was targeting those who were not extreme but instead held views that much of the population supported, things such as effective border control and promoting assimilationism rather than multiculturalism.

Mr Murray said:

Last weekend the press reported on an analysis done by Prevent’s ‘Research Information and Communications Unit’ (RICU) in 2019. This analysis looked into social media users described as ‘actively patriotic and proud’. Oh no – anything but actively patriotic and proud! Anyhow, according to RICU there were warning signs if people absorbed information or opinions from ‘pro-Brexit and centre-right commentators’. These included Jacob Rees-Mogg, Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle and yours truly. So everybody reading this column is at as much risk of being ‘radicalised’ as some young Muslim settling down with a tape recording of Ayman al-Zawahiri or Osama bin Laden, and Rees-Mogg becomes the equivalent of a finger–waving imam sending the young off to become martyrs in the cause of Allah.

Mr Murray then went on to have a deeper dive into what Prevent workers considered to be ‘far right’ and about which were produced reports at enormous public expense. It makes for enraging reading as there’s no way that any reasonable person would consider books, like Mr Murray’s best seller ‘The Strange Death of Europe’, as today’s analogue of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ or in any way, shape or form, ‘extremist’.

Mr Murray added:

I have since been able to look over some of this pathetic material provided at public expense and can confirm that it gets worse. In one RICU document a number of books are singled out, the possession or reading of which could point to severe wrong-think and therefore potential radicalisation. These include a book on the Rotherham rape gangs, books by Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips and – once again – me. Without wanting to beat my own drum, the book of mine that is singled out for this sinister treatment is my 2017 work The Strange Death of Europe.

Personally I find it particularly enraging that public money was spent on classifying those who are righteously and justifiably angry at the mass rapes and sexual exploitation that has gone on in places like Rotherham, as ‘far right extremists’. It’s also extremely concerning that Jewish writers of the Right such as Melanie Phillips are seen by the now Left wing dominated Prevent system as the moral equivalent of Nazis.

Mr Murray continued:

When I first saw these documents I felt a sort of white-hot anger. But then I read on and saw that these same taxpayer-funded fools provide lists of other books shared by people who have sympathies with the ‘far-right and Brexit’. Key signs that people have fallen into this abyss include watching the Kenneth Clark TV series Civilisation, The Thick of It and Great British Railway Journeys. I need to stress again that I am not making this up. This has all been done on your dime and mine in order to stop ‘extremism’ in these islands.

To heap ironic absurdity onto ironic absurdity, Prevent also classed as suspect those who read books such as the classics of political literature from Locke, Hobbes and Burke along with those who read George Orwell’s ‘1984’. This list is utterly ludicrous and represents an enormous waste of public money that could have been spent on tackling the primary extremist threat that of Islamic extremism. Are the Prevent-wallahs really suggesting that political satire such as ‘The Thick of It’ or travelogues like ‘Great British Railway Journeys’ are indicators of political extremism? Sadly the are and they are using taxpayers money in order to do so.

The diversion of resources and time by Prevent staff into nothingburgers like books by Orwell, Locke and Murray is disgraceful. It’s especially so when we now know and understand that although there are indeed some far rightists and neo-Nazis out there who are either violent or on the cusp of violence, the primary threat with regards terrorism comes from the more extreme followers of Islam. Like it or not but the truth is that the violent ‘far right’ is a very minor problem when compared to the one posed by Islamic extremism. This is not only wasteful but is dangerous to our security. Focusing on the relative non-issue of far right radicalism instead of the Islamic extremism issue means that money and personnel time that could have been used to find and interdict the next self-detonating Mohammed, is being wasted on following up spurious complaints by left leaning public sector workers such as teachers and NHS staff about individuals and families who have in their possession perfectly legal books by great writers that are definitely and provably not connected to extremism.

Prevent was supposed to keep us safe from a real and immediate danger that of Muslims who choose the path of violent radicalism. By choosing instead to put so much effort into chasing a phantom called ‘violent far rightism’, something that is less of a problem in the UK than it is elsewhere in the world, Prevent staff have not protected us from radical and violent Islam. Whilst Prevent staff were worried about UKIP voters or best selling centre right political writers or those who see Orwell’s ‘1984’ as a warning not a policy guidebook, dozens if not hundreds of radical and possibly violent followers of Islam, have probably been quitetly organising unhindered by the forces of law and order, including those working for Prevent. This is an absolutely shameful situation for Britain to be in and it’s long past time that the nation had a terrorism prevention system that doesn’t allow itself to be manipulated by the Left into being a cudgel to be deployed against the Left’s enemies.