Are you a socialist? What about your child? Or are you anti-abortion? Maybe anti-Monarchist? A communist? Do you know someone who is like that? Then the Government thinks you are showing signs of extremism and should be referred to Prevent

[cakeorwine]

And if you are a teacher, then you have a professional duty to report them

Socialism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion on Prevent list of terrorism warning signs | Prevent strategy | The Guardian

A document from Prevent, the official scheme to stop radicalisation, includes believing in socialism, communism, anti-fascism and anti-abortion in a list of potential signs of ideologies leading to terrorism.

It comes as the Conservative government considers widening what it will consider to be extremism.

The document is part of online Prevent awareness training for those covered by the duty to inform if they suspect radicalisation. That includes teachers and youth workers.

In a section on the left wing it states: “Two broad ideologies: socialism and communism. Each are united by a set of grievance narratives which underline their cause.”
In a section on single-issue ideologies, the document reads: “Narratives are likely to come from those who seek to change a specific policy or practice, as opposed to replacing the whole economic, political or social system. Examples include animal rights, anti-abortion or anti-fascism. Single-issue narratives can be politically agnostic, meaning they may be neither right nor left aligned.”

Neil Basu, a former police head of counter-terrorism, said: “That is far too nebulous, and there is no qualification. It might lead to unforeseen consequences such as overwhelming the system and bringing the system into disrepute.

The document:

You need to do the training to see the document

Awareness course | Prevent duty training (support-people-susceptible-to-radicalisation.service.gov.uk)

The police and secret services monitor far more individuals and groups than we think, from trade unions, Greenpeace to local community groups. The Pitchford Inquiry being just the tip of the iceberg.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/18/shocking-scale-of-uk-governments-secret-files-on-critics-revealed

This government even introduced the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill to enable its agents to break the law while doing it.

theres also the 5 eyes system, the monitoring by the Nsa etc

It's risible.

Says a proud socialist who will be voting Labour.

Arrest me.

it could be debated that part of the problem is some individuals have shown they cannot be trusted in society therefore for security of society all possibilities have to be considered

Yeah everyone’s a socialist until they can’t get an iPhone. Or worse, need to eat their pets because they’ve run out of other peoples money. As for communists, grow up, it’s not 60s anymore and you’re not a hippy.

Capitalism has given us a system where we produce more food than we can eat and yet almost a billion of us go hungry. It's also founded on the profits from other people's labour.

It's clearly not the 60s, we had free education for life then as well as affordable housing & functioning public services. Until we got seduced by market fundamentalism and stole public assets to gift to private companies.

I think you are kind of missing the point of the talk about the Prevent programme and the definition of extremism,

I think many people could be surprised that they could be defined as an extremist and potentially referred to Prevent (even though the referral might get rejected) based on the guidance.

The trouble is Rishi is so delicate he can only cope with talking to people who agree with him.

Coming on Thursday.

The ArchBishop of Canterbury is concerned

Archbishops of Canterbury and York criticise Gove's extremist definition plans - BBC News

Good article here

There is a far bigger threat to Britain than fringe extremists: Tory radicalisation | Rafael Behr | The Guardian

"In theory, the benefits of mutual tolerance are appreciated widely enough to generate a kind of herd immunity against the politics of division and hate.
For that mechanism to work, certain democratic norms have to be respected by those in power. Governments have to recognise legitimate dissent, not only in parliament but also sometimes on the street. Oppositions have to recognise government mandates. Parties that disagree on almost everything have to recognise a shared investment in the institutions and laws that keep the whole system honest.
A prime minister who deferred to the unwritten codes of British democracy would never have dissolved parliament on a whim, as Boris Johnson did when his Brexit plans were thwarted. Conservatives who cared about the rule of law would not support a bill to declare that certain facts about Rwanda, asserted by the supreme court, are no longer true if the government prefers its own facts.
MPs who recognise that democracy is the management of complex competing interests would not pretend it is a matter of simply fulfilling “the will of the people”. They would not cynically foment mistrust of the process that put them in office. They would not say “the whole democratic system is rigged”, as former Conservative deputy chair Lee Anderson did when defecting to Reform UK this week."

I think a lot of what is wrong with this country at the moment is people being utterly unable to mind their own business.

What occurs to me that if this definition becomes widely known, it becomes another opportunity to enact some form of revenge against someone. So a man who is to become a father and does not want to be can argue the child's mother is anti-abortion, to give an example.

Haven't RTFT but is there a link to an online form to report suspicious to ?

We all need to be turning ourselves in.

SerendipitySpartacus

We've seen during covid lockdown and rules how many people would be thrilled living in a police state and "help" to enforce the most pettiest rules.

Not RTFT but thought I would contribute some personal experience to the discussion.

I'm part of a residents organisation that opposes demolition of tower blocks and a community centre on our estate.

Our chair is a man of normal intelligence but he does express himself in a slightly unusual manner and possibly his processing speed isn't the best. Maybe he's on he spectrum.
He was visited at home by representative of the housing association (his landlord lets remember as well as our direct opponents in the campaign) who wanted to check the residents group wasn't "taking advantage of him" because he "seemed vulnerable". He was able to tell them that he was fine and they didn't raise it again. However, the experience worried him. He experienced it as harassment and perhaps it was intended as such. Many working class people are intimidated by the suggestion from someone in authority that they might be vulnerable or in some way unfit to make decisions for themselves. They will have been aware of this.

My son goes to academic support sessions at the at risk community centre. I emailed the charity that runs these sessions and asked for their support opposing the demolition. I included a little video my son had made about the community centre and the different services it provides, because I thought it was cute and persuasive.
The next session I was pulled aside and told that they had concerns about my son. That I might be exposing him to "things he shouldn't know about" which were causing him upset. My son has ASD. Politics and history are his special interests. They give him pleasure not upset. He DID seem upset at the academic support sessions sometimes but that was because the class had got larger and the noise was bothering him.

I reassured them that my son was fine but I haven't raised the demolition with them again. I care about the community centre but not enough to risk social services involvement.

Now, in both cases, the concern may have been completely genuine. The people concerned may have been on a course and be doing their best to put it into practice. However, in both cases, the result was a chilling effect on completely legitimate campaigning.