When riots broke out in the UK in late July, one of the most prominent voices spreading misinformation was the self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate. The riots came after a horrific knife attack in Southport – and Tate was among those tweeting, falsely, that the attacker was “an illegal immigrant arrived on a boat one month ago”. This is one example of how misogyny intersects with hard-right ideology, and of how the transmission of extremist ideas has changed, with connections forged between different online audiences. People like Tate may build big followings peddling one sort of outrage, misogyny, and then dabble in others to attract new audiences and cross-pollinate ideas – particularly around big events that offer lots of engagement.
The riots demonstrated that the way the hard right organises online is very different now to even seven years ago, when the government last looked at UK counter-extremism strategy. So, it is timely that the new government has commissioned a rapid policy review. Announcing the measure last week the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said it would not only assess the rise of Islamist and hard-right ideologies – the routine focus of counter-extremism strategy – but also other trends, including extreme misogyny.
While this grabbed headlines, it’s not actually clear what defining misogyny as extremism will mean in practice. Would expressing misogynist views in and of itself be grounds for a referral to Channel, the government’s secretive deradicalisation programme? Would it get these people on the radar of police? Or would the tipping point be the suggestion of some violent intent? (“Incel” ideology has been linked to violent attacks around the world, including in Plymouth in 2021, when 22-year-old Jake Davison killed five people and himself).
Misogyny itself is depressingly widespread, so how will the authorities define the point at which it is “extreme”? Would a police officer who shares photos of a dead woman’s body or uses disparaging language about female colleagues be classed an extremist? What about a judge who decides not to convict a man for sexual assault because of the effect it might have on the man’s life?
On LBC, home office minister Jess Phillips was asked about the potential risk to free speech and responded: “You just use the exact same test you would with far-right extremism and Islamism, wouldn’t you? The same test would have to apply.” But looking at the recent history of counter-extremism policy in the UK tells us there is no clear test: in fact, the question of what constitutes an extreme idea, and when it is appropriate for the state to intervene, is hotly contested.
When the Preventing Violent Extremism scheme was launched in 2007 in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings, the emphasis was, as the name suggests, on preventing acts of violence, by fighting “pernicious ideology”. Over the next couple of years, as the strategy was reviewed, the emphasis shifted away from violent extremism to all extremism. While some states view disengagement – whereby a person rejects violent action – as a sufficient goal for deradicalisation work, Britain wants the rejection of extremist ideas themselves. When the Prevent strategy was relaunched again in 2015, the focus on extreme ideas – rather than the risk of violence – was cemented. “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone,” David Cameron said in May 2015.
This raises an obvious question: should the government be targeting people who obey the law? The consensus then, and in the intervening nine years, has been that it should. In effect, the state has moved beyond prohibiting hate speech and incitement to violence, to trying to distinguish between ideas that can be freely expressed and ideas that cannot.
Most people probably agree we don’t want to live in a society where a large number of people hold anti-egalitarian or bigoted views. The problem comes in defining which views are unacceptable and to what degree. In one respect, extremism is defined by its distance from mainstream opinion, making it difficult to pin down. Even if you accept the premise that government should be fighting – or even criminalising – dangerous or extreme ideas, the central problem remains of how you define those ideas, and how exactly you fight views that are diffuse and widely held.
One key criticism of Prevent is that the bar for referral is too low. The 2015 strategy (which is still in place) made it a statutory requirement for teachers, doctors and other public sector employees to report extremism. Numerous human rights organisations have argued that this has led to a chilling effect whereby Muslim students in particular feel less able to express certain views, including criticism of British foreign policy. A 2023 Amnesty report on Prevent, titled This is the Thought Police, said the programme is “stripping people of their basic human rights and hampering their ability to live, work and speak freely”, with referrals often based on little more than a “gut feeling”.
It’s far easier for politicians to talk about “countering hateful beliefs” than to stem the underlying causes of these beliefs. In the years since Prevent was introduced, the economy has stagnated, living standards have dramatically dropped, public services have been hollowed out, meaning that many of the community support services that proved helpful in promoting cohesion have been lost. Announcing a new counter-extremism strategy is a cheaper and more immediate way of being seen to “do something”, rather than seeking to solve the structural problems that could be driving people towards these beliefs. Yet it is not a risk-free proposal. Responding to the announcement, charity Women’s Aid said: “If we are to overcome gender-based abuse, past approaches to deradicalisation by previous governments have left us cautious and concerned”, and warned against the issue being “buried within the highly politicised counter-extremism agenda”.
If we believe Cooper’s statement that extremism has flourished and grown in recent years, this indicates the current approach is not working. And if that’s the case, then simply adding other forms of ideology won’t do much to solve the problem.
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Samira Shackle is a journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian long read
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