Perspective: ExtremismU.K. Government Drive to Tackle Extremism Is “Inadequate”

The drive to tackle extremism in the United Kingdom is failing because the government’s response is “inadequate” and “unfocused,” according to an official report published Monday.

Extremist activity is contributing to a climate of censorship and fear, limiting expression, religion and belief while those countering it receive little support.

Richard Ford writes in The Times that the report from the U.K. Commission for Countering Extremism, based on visits to twenty towns and cities and responses from organizations and individuals, warns that the country’s attempt to counter non-terror-related extremism has been hampered by a failure to agree on a definition.

The report says the government should focus on “hateful extremism” such as behavior that can incite and amplify hate or draw on hostile and supremacist beliefs directed at a group seen as a threat to another part of society.

The report warns that hateful, hostile and supremacist beliefs are increasingly visible in the U.K. today. “The Far Right’s narratives of a racial or cultural threat to “natives” from “aliens” have been making their way into the mainstream.

“As are Islamists’ ideas for defending a single politicized and communal Muslim identity against the West’s corrupting influence. And the Far Left’s conflation of anti-imperialist and antisemitism”, it said.

The report said that people have a “deep concern” about extremism, with 76 percent of those who responded to a consultation saying more needs to be done to tackle it and nearly 50 percent saying they have witnessed some form of this behavior.

It says there has to be a clearer distinction between work to tackle violent extremism and terrorism and that which challenges hateful extremism.

But it says the right to be “radical, protest and be offensive” should be protected.