July 7, 2022 - 4:34pm
Concern about the growing threat from the extreme Right-wing has been gaining ground in Britain. The commentariat has lined up to emphasise how it will define this century.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan wrote recently that the West’s battle against the far-Right is one that we cannot ignore. Khan argues that the threat is an evolving global danger and one which the world needs to wake up to. Meanwhile, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and head of counter-terrorism policing, Matt Jukes, warned that those involved in far-Right extremism were getting younger.
In the final stages of serious attacks, more than a quarter have been linked to neo-fascist and racist groups. Of the 27 terrorist plots that have been thwarted over the last three years, eight came from the far-Right.
While these figures may seem shocking, it is important to note that the threat is still second to Islamist extremism — something we would do well to remember on the anniversary of the July 7 London bombings.
Take for example, how many individuals have been convicted of terrorism connected offences in the United Kingdom.
The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) publishes data on terrorist and extremist prisoners on a quarterly basis. The Home Office then classifies these prisoners by ideology in relation to proscribed groups that are believed to be involved in terrorism. The categories of classification are: Islamist extremists, Extreme Right-wing and Other.
From the period between 31 March, 2013 to 31 March, 2021, there have been significantly more people in custody for Islamist extremist connected offences than any other form of extremism. The lowest number of people in custody for Islamist extremism was 79 in 2014 with an increase of over 100% (164) in 2017. The highest peak came a year later in 2018, with 186 individuals recorded as being in custody for the same connected offence.
In the same nine-year-period, there was a 1000% increase of extreme Right-wing connected offences. This may sound alarming, but the reality is different: the number of individuals in custody for extreme Right-wing connected offences rose from 4 to 44. There are therefore significantly fewer extreme Right-wing prisoners in custody than their Islamist counterparts despite the apparent increase in convictions.
In addition, there were 44 (20%) individuals sentenced for extreme Right-wing connected offences, whereas Islamist terrorist-connected sentences in the same year amounted to more than three times that number (157), making up just under three quarters (73%) of the total.
Islamist extremist connected offences continue to dominate statistics year on year. Over nine years, the lowest number for all terrorism-related offences was 87 (2013) whereas the highest was 238 (2020). In each year, except 2021, Islamist extremist connected offences amounted to over three quarters of all offences consistently.
For right-wing terrorism-connected offences to be anywhere near comparable to Islamist terrorism-connected offences, there would at least be sentencing of the former that matches the latter. But as each year passes on, that just isn’t happening.
The attention given to the growing threat from extreme Right-wing individuals appears to be attracting more attention than it deserves. It is simply a fact that more people are consistently sentenced to prison for Islamist extremism than any other form of terrorism connected offences. As concerning as the rise in Right-wing extremism may be, it pales in comparison to the Islamic threat — we must not turn away from it.
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SubscribeGood article. This needs to be pointed out repeatedly otherwise those that benefit from the exaggeration will continue to do it.
I would be interested to know the relative severity of the crimes they have been sentenced for. I can recall very few RW murderers. Maybe the one that killed the Lab MP and the Admiral Duncan bomber in the 90s. So that is 2. Possibly the 2 convicted of Steven Lawrence’s murder.
Islamist terrorist murders must be close to a hundred.
That’s right. Islamist: far right caused murders in UK over the past 20 years is something like 95/5 yet the Prevent spends more time investigating far right terror suspects than Islamism terror suspects.
Political correctness gone mad!
There’s a campaign to divert resources away from Islamist terrorists, which happens to suit the metropolitan elite in drumming up fear of the ‘right’ in general, including totally conventional and constitutional politicians.
Since when has actual data ever swayed the Left? On my side of the Pond, one is vilified for applying any standard social-scientific analytic techniques to police shootings of black suspects. The purported threat from the “Far-Right” has nothing to do with the actual likelihood of a random citizen in a Western democracy dying at their hands, and everything to do with who the enemies of the Left are.
Muslims are supposed to be part of the Woke-Left’s coalition because they, like the Woke (and the hard Left from the days when Left got that name from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly down to the present) hate Christianity and besides, they are supposedly oppressed. They therefore get a pass on violence and are lavished with attempts to understand their grievances (which attempts to understand grievance are never offered to, say, working class folks from Yorkshire who voted for Brexit and for the first time in their life voted Tory in 2019, or rednecks from Western Pennsylvania who voted for Donald Trump, twice).
But the Right is simply the enemy (stick “Far-” on as a modifier to deceive right-leaning moderates into thinking they aren’t really all part of the people the Left hates). Why? Because “Right” in politics has never meant anything other than opposed too the Left. If you doubt that, consider who was “right-wing” when the normative Left was defined by the Comintern: Tories, defenders of the American Constitutional order, monarchists, clericalists of any stripe, nationalists of any kind not aligned with Moscow, Randian anarcho-capitalists, classical liberals, fascist, Nazis,… nothing in common except being opposed to the normative Left.
Right now, you, yourself, might be “far-right” without even knowing it: have you noticed that every fiqh of Islamic sharia is deeply illiberal and concluded that mass immigration to the West from the Muslim world is not a good idea? You’re “far-right”. Do you think biological sex, rather than subjectively felt gender should be the basis for separating sporting competions, latrines or prisons? You’re “far-right”. On my side of the Pond if you wish every state in the Union had the same laws governing abortions as Denmark, guess, what: you’re “far-right”. Do you think that vilifying the British Empire that spent untold lives and treasure on suppressing the slave trade world-wide, spread the notions of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence for those accused of crimes and the norms of parliamentary democracy to the furthest reaches of the globe is daft? Well, you’re definitely “far-right”.
Agreed. Excellent post.
As good as an article, David. May truth prevail.
Putting on my tinfoil hat I think progressive activists and the global elite have – correctly – identified white men – as the most likely people to oppose their agenda. So they are laying the groundwork to be able to use the state’s security apparatus to shut them down. Trudeau’s effective strategy of labelling peaceful convoy protesters as racists was just a taste of what is to come. One of the organizers of the convoy – Tara Linch – had her bail revoked last week and is now incarcerated again. The Crown originally tried to deny her bail at all. She is literally to my mind a political prisoner.
I believe you are correct in your assertion. In the Netherlands for instance, the police allow all kinds of protests except those that are spearheaded by white men e.g. the anti-vaccine mandates a couple of years ago, and now the farmers’ protest.
This article pretty much proves what you said:
https://ips-dc.org/surplus-white-men/
Interesting article, that. A highly tiresome harping on sexism, racism, empire etc. to fit with the new woke. But coupled with a realistic analysis (young low-status males have been a problem for all cultures) and a proposal to recognise the needs of these people and do something for them that one can only applaud. The author may be a bit schizophrenic, but at least he is able to keep his analysis and his ideological genuflections separate.
I don’t see any evidence of that in the article I linked. I’m also suspicious of writers who are unfailingly polite when referring to in-groups, but feel perfectly comfortable in expressing bigotry toward an out-group, in this case ‘white men’.
There was a time when it was considered highly inappropriate to make pejorative statements based on race.
It’s presumably all part of the demonisation of all and anyone that doesn’t adhere to the progressive/corporate narrative.
As Paul Kingsnorth discussed in his excellent Unherd article this week, these two powerful forces now operate in lockstep.
The political left is creating as much hysteria about extreme right wing terrorism as they can because they think it hurts their political opponents. You might imagine based on these assessments that there’s simply no such thing as ‘extreme left wing terrorism’. This is total nonsense. Antifa protestors for example commit all sorts of acts that ought to qualify. In Canada earlier this year, around the same time as the truck protest dominated the news, workers at an LNG plant in British Columbia were assailed by a mob of masked attackers with axes. It was all but ignored by the mainstream, who focused on the threat posed by the bouncy castles and loud horns in the streets of Ottawa. Similarly there were dozens of churches burned to the ground after the alleged discovery of graves outside residential schools. By any objective measure, these are all hate crimes and terrorism. But the measures are far from objective.
Muslim terrorism will simply be reclassified as right wing terrorism. After all Muslim terrorism is in favour of an extreme form of conservative religion which must be ipso facto right wing. Problem solved.
Yes. That has already happened.
Muslim terrorists simply have to sit back and watch Americans shoot themselves constantly, daily.
They no longer need to bomb, attack, shoot or kill the infidels as Americans do a wonderful job for them.
However in other countries, Muslims are very upset and extremely agitated – – – such as in India, France, China, Pakistan, Turkey, many others that have very little gun killings like we do.
All those pointing out that the mythical “far right” are not really a danger are missing the point.
You can’t use facts to convince the powerful lobby of leftist, college indoctrinated, mostly white do gooder class, just like you can’t convince them with evidence that there is no systematic racism against blacks or gender pay gap, or that so many grooming gangs and terror attacks from a 3% minority is a huge problem.
You can’t convince them because they KNOW. They already know. It’s merely virtue signalling with zero cost to them, as they don’t get to deal with the problems. No diversity or enrichment for them, they stay in a safe cocoon surrounded by other upper middle class whites or some Jews / Asians (no coincidence the only groups they are happy to be bigoted against – apart from those horrible working class white males – are Israel and India)
The only way they will change their minds is if they had skin in the game. If they had to deal with low educated illegal immigrants or fatherless “gangstas” next door or their daughters had to walk past “diverse” young males, they would stop whining about the far right. Not before that.
I’m afraid the commentariat has been complicit over many years in the repeated misuse of the term “right wing”. Truly right wing “conservative” politics is about small government, low taxation and high levels of personal liberty. Progressives love to tarnish even moderate conservatism by labelling certain extremists as “right wing” but when you look at the beliefs of most of these violent individuals and groups, their political views are all about collectivism, centralised control and command economies i.e. left-wing “progressive” policies!
Indeed – when people say ‘right-wing’ they often mean ‘racist’. A pity they don’t simply say that in the first place.
Interesting as in the USA, white supremacism’ is touted by the Biden administration as the most violent but there is no evidence for that either. Urban violence is perpetrated primarily by blacks and then Hispanics or as they would say ‘Latinx’. Leftists are gaslighting us 24/7 led by Biden.
“Far-Right extremism will be the biggest fight we’ve faced.
Not biggest in the sense of most dangerous or lethal, or most numerous, no, not at all.
But it is the threat we’re most comfortable railing against as pure evil, unlike the poor misunderstood brown people our sociology profs taught us to sympathize with…”
Some incredibly harsh and draconian prison sentences have been passed on ostensible ” right wing” terrorists who actually harmed and damaged no-one: to compare these fantisists with members of a creed who, as well as having committed terrorist offences for decades around the globe, are actually waging war throughout Africa, is patently absurd.
another frightening reflection of Johnson’s government literally aiming at “appeasing “muslim immigrant communities, most of whom do not want to be patronised, and do not want their peaceful lives prejudiced against due to Islamic extremism and terrorism.
The hate crime legislation must be removed as a priority from the statute book, as it has created an appalling ability for the police, CPS, magistrates, judges to politically those who as ” jury” feel ” offended”.
And when those members of that creed feel that the laws of this country do not need to be obeyed because they are not above the laws of their creed, are prosecuted, woke judges let them off lightly if the woke police authorities even bother to put them before the court in the first place.
In articles I’ve found that any dictatorship is invariably described as “right-wing”. Any terrorism is invariably described as “right-wing”. Any antisemitism or other violence is invariably described as “right-wing” or “far-right”. Somehow, no one has ever seen that mythical creature, the “left-wing” dictator, the “left-wing” terrorist, the “left-wing” antisemite or “far-left” violent extremist.
The brainless drones who populate our international discourse tack the term “right-wing” or “far-right” to all of these things, truth and research both be damned. It is up to us, the readers, to do the research and seek the truth. May justice prevail.
I worked Islamist terrorism for Canadian intelligence for 15 years and have written about terrorism in 6 – so far – books. And yet my leader says Islamophobia – which is real – is the #1 threat along with RWE. Do these ‘experts’ not read what is happening around the world on a daily basis?? Jihadis still carry out 99% of all attacks. Yes, RWE is real, but they are nowhere near the jihadi threat. Great post Wasiq!
Right-wing extremism is rising as a reaction to Islamist extremism and Muslim grooming gangs. While it is correct that the number of right-wing extremists is currently small, it is wrong to assume that it will not continue to rise at what is an alarming rate. The antidote to both is a commitment to protect freedom of speech and other human rights and to prosecute acts of violence.
The ultimate threat to silence people protesting against the New Liberal World Order will not be imprisonment. It will be to be murdered or maimed while by prison by the Muslim gangs that are increasingly controlling our prisons.
1. Get the ECHR ruling that sharia is “incompatible with democracy and human rights” taught as a compulsory part of the curriculum in ALL schools. (Annual report 2003)
This follow-up report by theCouncil of Europe (ajdoc28-2016) adds considerable detail to the original judgement summary
<pre> http://www.assembly.coe.int/Committee/JUR/ajdoc282016.pdf </pre>
2. Ask the government to publish the data behind paragraph 6 of Council of Europe resolution 2253 that shows exactly which parts of sharia law contravene the human rights convention.
<pre>http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=25353</pre>
3. Get this statement of principle from the Council of Europe resolution(1804 – 2007) implemented via legislation with strong teeth:
“Nor may states allow the dissemination of religious principles which, if put into practice, would violate human rights. If doubts exist in this respect, states must require religious leaders to take an unambiguous stand in favour of the precedence of human rights, as set forth in the European Convention on Human Rights, over any religious principle.”
<pre>https://pace.coe.int/en/files/17568/html</pre>
4. Remove this group from within government: “Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group”
<pre>https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/anti-muslim-hatred-working-group</pre>
No similar group exists for any other faith despite the considerable anti-Semitism that is rife within the UK. A great deal of which appears to emanate from within the Muslim demographic.
Why should we differentiate between secular and Muslim Right Wing violence? The goals of the Taliban are nearly indistinguishable from the goals of the secular Right: government by religious authorities and the elimination of women from all education and public government and economic roles. The type of religious authority desired is not remotely a significant distinction.
You are correct in asserting this. Where I am in the US, the concept of ‘woman’ is being watered down to include men who identify as such. Where I disagree with you is that this is coming from the secular Right. It is most assuredly coming from the academic Left.