Who are the hate preachers radicalising rightwing extremists? As the head of MI5 warns that anti-migrant haters are increasingly considering terrorist attacks, it is surely a question we must ask. After all, the role of hate preachers in Islamist terrorism has long been debated.
After the London Bridge Islamist terrorist attack in 2017, Nigel Farage demanded that Sadiq Khan – “as the first Muslim mayor of London” – declare that he would do all he could “to work with the Muslim community to drive out the extremist preachers from our mosques” and to fight radicalisation in schools and prisons. More recently, he suggested that Muslim parents in the United Arab Emirates feared sending their children to study in British universities “given the risk of radicalisation here”. His colleague Suella Braverman agrees.
And what of Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s self-styled shadow chancellor, who warns of “terrorist influencers and radicalising inmates” in prisons and demands “complete zero tolerance on hate preachers”? Yet on the very day of MI5’s warning, Jenrick declared that Royal Marines would be deployed to turn back migrants in the Channel – and that “if they need to use lethal force, then they’ll be able to do so”. Here was one of Britain’s most prominent politicians injecting violence into our already deeply toxic debate about immigration.
Farage sought to backtrack on Jenrick’s behalf, claiming force “would be used only if soldiers were fired at” and insisting that Jenrick had been “utterly misconstrued”. This made little sense: the Home Office said last year that it had no record of firearms being brought in via small boats over the previous seven years. Not that long ago, there was supposed to be a strict demarcation between the mainstream right and extremists.
Consider the ITV investigation, screened last night, that exposed Reform councillors describing Asian families as “parasites” and Black children as “animals”. Another spoke of training young men to round up migrants “street by street, house by house”. One spoke of holding asylum seekers in “concentration camps”.
Another Reform figure spoke of criminals facing “Sunday morning rose garden executions”. Some of these individuals have since stood down. But while the leaders of Reform have not yet plunged to such extreme depths, what effect might their own words have on impressionable people?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
