The UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper issued an order last week to review the country’s counter-terrorism strategy to address violence against women, identify gaps in the current laws, and study emerging ideologies. According to the daily The Telegraph this move will put violence against women in the same bracket as far-right extremism.
Under the proposal, it would be compulsory for school teachers to refer students they suspect of extreme misogyny to the government’s counter-terror program. The local police will assess anyone who is referred to the program to see if they display signs of radicalisation and need to be de-radicalised.
Speaking with The Telegraph, Cooper criticising the policy adopted by the previous Conservative government’s on Prevent strategy stated, “For too long, 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.”
Cooper further added, “Action against extremism has been badly hollowed out in recent years, just when it should have been needed most. That’s why I have directed the Home Office to conduct a rapid analytical sprint on extremism, to map and monitor extremist trends, to understand the evidence about what works to disrupt and divert people away from extremist views, and to identify any gaps in existing policy that need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence.”
This comes after a senior police official warned last month that social media influencers like Andrew Tate could radicalise youth into extreme misogyny in the same way terrorists draw in their followers. Earlier last month, the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council released a report on violence against women and girls, calling it a “national emergency.”
The review could mean teachers will be legally required to refer pupils they suspect of being radicalised to Prevent, the government’s counter-terror programme, amid concerns that online influencers could radicalise teenage boys in extreme misogyny.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, misogynist refers to showing feelings of hating women or a belief that men are much better than women.
Prior to existing as a legal duty, Prevent was introduced in 2005 by the then Labour government as a policy targeting the Muslim community in the wake of 9/11 two years earlier. The strategy took on a more formal form in 2005, post-7/7.
Cooper has previously said the last government’s counter-extremism strategy was nine years out of date. She believes the review will lay the foundations for Labour to deliver on its manifesto promise of preventing people from being drawn towards hateful ideologies.
It comes after a decade of warnings from the police and former government advisers about the need to address the rise of hateful extremism and the proliferation of dangerous material online.
Last week Dame Sara Khan, who was Rishi Sunak’s independent adviser on social cohesion and resilience until May this year and acted as a counter-extremism commissioner under Theresa May and Boris Johnson, told the Guardian last week said that the Tory government had left the UK wide open to far-right violence by ignoring red flags and stoking fires with a culture war agenda.
Now here rises the question that whether the government is focussing on spread of misogyny or spread of terrorist ideologies or the increasing menace of social media, used to incite hate. All three issues require different approaches to tackle them, and by clubbing them together the Home Secretary might be adopting the same approach as was used by the Conservatives to strengthen the Prevent strategy. And further there are chances that instead of making the society more cohesive it may lead to further disintegration and spread of hate.
The Guardian reports that since riots broke out across England, last month, after disinformation circulated about the stabbings in Southport that left three girls dead, at least 72 people under the age of 18 are believed to have been charged with related offences. By the end of Thursday last, at least 460 people had appeared in magistrate’s courts in connection with the disorder.
Officials will assess “the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism” alongside “ideological trends” that have gained traction including extreme misogyny. The scheme also aims to assess the causes and conduct of radicalisation of young people online and offline.
BBC reported that it is not clear how long this “rapid review” will take. It is one of several policy reviews Labour has announced since coming to power in July, including the Strategic Defence Review, spending review and a review of the National Curriculum.
Critics argue that some reviews are a proxy for actual action, but Labour has pointed out that there has been no new Counter Extremism Strategy since 2015, and that an assessment of new and emerging threats is overdue.
For some years there has been concern around “Incel culture”, an online movement of mainly young men who describe themselves as “involuntarily celibate” and blame women and “alpha males” for their problems.
Though the Labour move is welcome, yet the approach adopted towards ‘misogyny’ does not look well thought out. Corelating misogyny to terrorism or radicalisation looks taking the matter, rather too far and the approach to handle it also becomes questionable.
Prevent critics have long been saying that the strategy focuses on just one community i.e. Muslims alone and further no tangible benefit seems to have accrued from adopting this approach, rather it has siloed the Muslim community much more.
Further, the spread of misogyny is a sociological problem and the main culprit for its spread is the online platforms. So, it would have been better if the government had taken a rather holistic view of the problem and instead of taking the reported cases to the police, they would have been dealt through counselling efforts at the school level itself.
Further the government needs to handle the rising menace of social media’s influence rather more seriously and make efforts to bring-in a law regulating it sooner and make it tougher for hate spreaders to use the medium for the spread of their nefarious ideologies.
(AsadMirza is a New Delhi-based senior commentator on international and strategic affairs, and a media consultant.)
