March 12, 2024 - 11:30am
This week, the Government is expected to unveil its new definition of extremism. Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Communities Secretary Michael Gove promised “more specificity on the ideologies, behaviour and groups of concern to support vital counter-radicalisation work”. He rejected suggestions that gender-critical feminists and devout Christians, Muslims, and Jews would fall foul of the new definition.
It is certainly time to replace the existing Prevent definition of extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”. As Conservative MP Miriam Cates tweeted, “What does it even mean to ‘undermine British values’ when there is no consensus – and certainly no legal definition – of what those values are?” But will the revised definition fare any better?
Definitions are like fishing nets. As with fishing nets, there is always the risk that they will catch what they were not intended to catch or not catch what they were intended to catch. To avoid definitional overreach, it is important to be clear who or what a definition of extremism is supposed to net. In a recent statement on extremism, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rightly highlighted the behavioural component of extremism. Extremists, he seemed to suggest, are people who rely on violence, threats, or intimidation to advance their political agenda.
One of the attractions of this approach is that it focuses on what people do, not on what they believe. Whatever one’s political agenda, an individual will count as an extremist if they use violence, threats, or intimidation to advance it. A person who uses such extreme methods to undermine democracy is an extremist, but so too is a person who uses the same methods to advance a more palatable political agenda.
In the Sunday Telegraph interview, Gove tries to make a distinction between a person’s religion and their political ideology. “It’s only extremism if you translate this into a political ideology that is anti-democratic,” he notes. But the belief that Sharia law should be introduced in the UK is both religious and ideological; so-called Islamists have this belief, but so do many mainstream Muslims who wouldn’t dream of resorting to violence to change British law.
It therefore won’t be sufficient to say that Muslims who believe that democracy is un-Islamic aren’t extremists because their belief is a question of religion rather than political ideology. And if private beliefs are to be “cherished”, as Gove claims, what about the private beliefs of sceptics about democracy? Such sceptics include academics who write books with titles such as Against Democracy and argue for alternative systems of government. Are they extremists too?
These potentially embarrassing questions for the new definition can be sidestepped by adopting a non-ideological definition of extremism. The point is not that extremism isn’t partly a matter of ideology, but that ideological extremism is not what governments should be trying to police. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has argued, the difference between a mainstream Muslim and an Islamist is not primarily ideological. It is their willingness to resort to violence to impose their political beliefs on others.
If behaviour rather than ideology is the key to extremism, then the challenge is to be more specific about the kinds of behaviour that are “extremist”. One example of intimidation might be protests at the home addresses of MPs. A recent Home Office policing protocol rules that such protests “should generally be considered intimidatory”, and it is hard to argue with this. In the climate of fear created by the relatively recent murder of two MPs, demonstrating outside a politician’s home is highly intimidatory and should be banned, despite protestations to the contrary from groups such as Amnesty International.
For practical purposes, groups that resort to political intimidation or threaten minorities are made up of extremists and should not be funded by the Government or other public bodies. The new definition of extremism should be applauded if it has this consequence, but care needs to be taken that the definitional fishing net doesn’t catch too many of the wrong fish, as well as the right ones.
Quassim Cassam is Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University. His latest book is Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis.
QCassam
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SubscribeAs I see it the big problem is trying to craft a law that fits the “fair to all” criteria.
With the definitions of extremism I have read this becomes really tricky, maybe impossible once the lawyers and various pressure groups get involved.
A threatening tweet is extreme as is abusive shouting at a protest whatever group/individual is the focus.
I don’t see how the Police can “police” individuals and groups who could fall under the extremist definition.
Something needs to change to safeguard individuals such as MP’s, Jews, normal people being harangued by the trans mob and others going about their days in legal ways that fall foul of abuse and threats of violence. I am, however, skeptical that the present discussions will help.
That’s the problem with liberty. The other side has to be free too. Oh but if only there were a system that allowed us to oppress the ones we don’t like while enjoying perfect freedom ourselves!
There is no such thing as ‘perfect freedom’ (unless you live alone on an uninhabited tropical island): but there is a system called The Law. This allows the law-abiding to ‘oppress’ the law-breaking and you are free to leave if you don’t agree.
The authoritarian’s charter.
Are you saying laws are oppressive? If so I largely agree with you.
That’ll be pretty much the Left with their toddler activism, who believe in the rule of law, except the laws they don’t like of course.
Isn’t it okay if they’re only specific and limited breaches?
Who is doing the oppressing and who is being oppressed?
Some of the most effective extremists are those who infiltrate the government and the institutions and weaponise them against the people. How will we define them?
Those most likely to defect to Reform.
I say we get them all – all 12 of them.
Sociopath fits the bill.
The difficulty for the tories lies in trying to catch muslims in the fishing net but not white working/lower-middle class men behaving in the exact same way.
Silly, unserious comment. Do you truly believe that police would do nothing if 100,000 white working class men were marching in the streets every weekend? If so, you slept through the entire Covid outbreak
If they were protesting peacefully they would. They just rarely do.
Covid was its own case. You say in another comment they didn’t need new definitions to crush the protests when they were enforcing new covid laws.
That’s the thing. If there is political will, the state will crush dissent. It doesn’t matter if I agree with the cause. There was political will to crush covid dissent so they crushed it. There is no political will to crush Palestinian protests, so nothing happens.
Snobbery isn’t an argument, I’m afraid.
Extremism: whatever the ruling authority does not like, or that which counters a prevailing narrative. Not that long ago, one would have thought laws aimed at criminalizing social media posts would have been considered extreme. It’s a meaningless term, right along with racist, colonizer, and sadly, woman.
Is that maybe because racist, coloniser and woman counter the prevailing narrative?
What exactly is the prevailing narrative?
Would somebody who burnt books be considered extremist, or is it simply the ‘reaction’ that other people might have that would make the book burner extreme ?
The UK has increasingly become a soft totalitarianism state.
It’s all an exercise in do nothingness. The police didn’t need new definitions to crush covid protests.
Bug? Feature? Does not seem like there is much difference these days does it? I know what I have my money on.
Ukraine is willing to employ violence to impose its political opinions on Russia, and vice versa.
I think the author says it all when he questions whether authors who write books entitled “Against Democracy” are extremists. The answer is yes.
Also he describes islamists as by definition violent. This is simply untrue. Lots of islamists (which in my book is wanting Sharia law, primarily for muslims) don’t want to engage in violence to bring this about, they just have a different idea of how society should be based and are happy to vote for it. They are still extremists.
Sounds like classic ‘anarcho-tyranny’, the preferred choice of cowards and calculators.
The law cannot police ideas both because to do so is a denial of freedom of thought and because it is practically impossible. Any attempt to do so would be a step further towards fascism. The threat to ‘society’ comes from actions. Extremists and fundamentalists have existed for millennia, what changes is the flavour – ordinary Christians used to enjoy burning the ‘wrong’ sort of Christian. We have plenty of laws to control anti-social behaviour already and really don’t need any more. This is all performative by a Government about to lose an election and need a new leader (Michael Gove anyone?)
Amnesty International should be first in the list of extremist organizations
It’s that little word “is” (or rather, all versions of the verb “to be”). When you find yourself getting entangled in a semantic net — is publishing a book against democracy “extremist”? — try rephrasing the question without using the “to be” verb.
So: what sort of behavior should be punishable by law? Should writing a book arguing against democracy be punishable by law? Should re-printing and circulating ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ be punishable by law? Should printing and distributing a leaflet calling for the extermination of Muslims be punishable by law? Should writing and distributing a leaflet calling for a halt in illegal immigration be punishable by law? Should writing a book or a web post saying that there are biological differences between the sexes, or the races, be punishable by law? Should physically attacking the authors of the previously-mentioned books be punishable by law? Should toppling a statue of someone you don’t like be punishable by law?
We can have a discussion about all of these questions without getting ourselves stuck in the tar baby of whether any of them “are” examples of “extremism” or not. [Alfred Korzybski, thou shouldst be living at this hour.]