EXTREMISMU.K. Parliamentary Report: “Threat from Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism on an Upward Trajectory”
“The threat from Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism is on an upward trajectory, populated by an increasing number of young people and driven by the internet,” said Julian Lewis, MP, the chairman of the U.K. Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. The committee has just released a detailed report on the threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom.
The Intelligence and Security Committee of the U.K. Parliament published its Report on Extreme
Right-Wing Terrorismthe other day. The Chairman of the ISC, the Rt Hon. Dr. Julian Lewis MP,
said:
MI5 assumed responsibility for tackling Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism in 2020, and it is now assessed alongside the Islamist terror threat, and forms part of the overall UK Threat Level assessment. We considered it important to review how the transition in responsibility from Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) to MI5 has worked, and what MI5 is now doing to tackle this increasingly complex threat.
The threat from Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism is on an upward trajectory, populated by an increasing number of young people and driven by the internet. There are reports that groups and individuals have sought to co-opt the Covid-19 pandemic, using conspiracy theories and exploiting grievances to radicalize and recruit. While the full impact of the global pandemic has yet to be seen, we are assured that the Intelligence Community and the police have recognized the impact that events such as the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests may have had on the extremist beliefs of individuals and the possibility that this will lead to an increase in the threat
However we were seriously concerned to find that MI5 have had to absorb responsibility for tackling Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism without any commensurate resources. They cannot be expected simply to absorb this new responsibility. MI5 must be given additional funding to enable it to tackle Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism without other areas of their work suffering as a consequence.
The Committee’s key findings
The Threat
● A small minority at the extremist end of the right-wing movement engage in
racially and politically motivated violence, which has increasingly morphed into
terrorism.
● The number of Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism (ERWT) investigations,
disruptions, and Self-Initiated Terrorist referrals all increased steadily since 2017.
● Of the 25 attacks prevented by the Intelligence Community and CTP between March 2017 and January 2020, eight (just under 30% of the total) were motivated by an ERWT ideology.
