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January 6, 2025 - 7:00am
Last month, Yvette Cooper, the UK Home Secretary, announced that the government would increase funding for counter-terrorism police by 14% to almost £1.2 billion. This, inevitably, has prompted a lot of interest on the part of the extremism subject-specialist-class who are vying for a piece of that sizeable pie.
According to The Observer yesterday, Neil Basu and Dame Sara Khan are concerned that the government’s plans, which centre on reforming Prevent, the counter-radicalisation programme, don’t go far enough. This, apparently, is because they fail to “address a toxic pool of hatred, conspiracy theories and ‘dangerous rhetoric’ from high-profile figures including Elon Musk.”
Basu, the former head of counter-terrorism policing, is particularly worried about what he calls “non-violent extremism” and the lack of a “coherent strategy” to tackle it. “Some people who are not terrorists are very good at creating terrorists, wittingly or unwittingly,” he told The Observer, elaborating: “When you’ve got people with very large online followings who are capable of generating extremism and the government isn’t doing anything, that is incredibly dangerous.” He was specifically referring to Elon Musk and his recent patter about Britain’s grooming gangs. “The people claiming there is a cover-up of mass rape may not be designing their language to create a race war or a riot, but it can – we know it can,” Basu said. “There are people out there who will take their message to commit violence… there will be another Darren Osborne out there.”
The bar for entry into becoming an extremism subject-specialist is pretty low these days, but the cretinous belief that Elon Musk is a “creator of terrorism” ought to be instantly disqualifying. Basu, for his part, provides no evidence to support his claim about the causal link between Musk’s rhetoric and what he calls “real-world effect”, by which he means violence. This is because there is none. Indeed, if Musk’s speech was dangerous, we would have seen a wave of Musk-inspired violence by now, given how prominent and far-reaching his speech is.
Of course speech that incites violence should be condemned and we have laws that indeed condemn and punish it. But Musk is not inciting violence; on the contrary, he is condemning one of the worst kinds of violence — the rape of children — and a wider religious-communal culture that excuses it.
It should be equally obvious that if some troglodyte decides to avenge such rapes by murdering innocent Muslims, the moral responsibility for such a despicable act lies solely with that individual and not with those who are doing the socially necessary job of condemning the rapes.
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SubscribeIt appears Basu and Khan want to introduce authoritarian measures to address a problem that barely exists to hide one that does exist.
The racists Basu and Khan defending their ‘in-group’ and demonising the natives? That sounds lot like good old fashioned colonial settlerism – which, in fact, is what leftist ‘multiculturalism’ actually is.
I wonder if Yvette Copper will be setting the upper limits for what is considered acceptable before you are allowed to criticise a particular religion/culture e.g. any comments will be considered hate-speech until that group has raped X children or murdered Y others. Possibly a colour chart could be used to illustrate the different allowances.
“Basu, the former head of counter-terrorism policing, is particularly worried about what he calls “non-violent extremism” and the lack of a “coherent strategy” to tackle it. “Some people who are not terrorists are very good at creating terrorists, wittingly or unwittingly,” he told The Observer”
Our woke overlords could really do with a good hard look in the mirror.
Personally, I think we should be prioritising violent extremism, but perhaps that’s just me.
Well, it might be worth a try.
Musk is only pointing out what has been known about by organs of the State for decades. Yes, some of language may be course, but do you know what? I really do not care if Jess Phillips or Kier Starmer are offended.
I care very much – this mess isn’t going to ever get cleared up unless people like Phillips and Starmer are offended. They are part of the problem and putting them straight is part of the solution.
It appears Mr. Starmer needs to be charged with a crime! This would be a huge scandal in the U.S., but for some reason only now coming to a head in Britain.
The Rape of Britain
Basu has warned that banning Gaza protests could lead to terrorism, so best let protestors express themselves freely.
On the other hand, he favours a crackdown on voices on the right side of politics because failure to do so could lead to terrorism.
Conclusion: things that annoy Basu will lead to terrorism.
Conclusion: Basu is a typical racist. A typical racist who has got away with his racism for all these years because of his skin tone.
double post…
If that’s the case then Basu is clearly partisan and believes in a two tier approach. That should disqualify him from further involvement in deciding policy on matters of such immense importance.
A two-tier approach? Hmm, that reminds me of someone, but who could it be?
Effing clowns. And they wonder why people have lost faith and trust in the institutions.
I assume that you are referring to Musk and Trump, in which case you are quite correct
Because Trump and Musk were in charge of preventing pedophile rapes? What total nonsensical trolling
No, because they persist in vile, hate-filled lies on social media.
Could you please provide a link to a Musk lie? Thank you.
He has accused (I assume that re-tweeting, or whatever it’s called, is the same as agreeing with, but I don’t ‘do’ X myself) Gordon Brown, as Prime Minster, of telling the police not to investigate alleged abuse because young girls had made a choice about their sexual behaviour. This is a lie – he did nothing of the sort.
Except what they’re saying is true.
Interesting – I replied to this and was asked to link to an actual lie promulgated by Musk. I did so (yes really he does lie!) and the comments have been deleted. Funny that eh!
To the likes of Basu drawing attention to the State’s failure to protect girls from sexual exploitation by a group of men protected and enabled by their ethnic/religious status is always going to be a greater danger than the the facts being advertised.
They are the extremist ideologues that have stoked the potential for violence by seeking to obfuscate the true situation. As a supporter of free speech I don’t advocate that such dangerous two tier ideologues be investigated by Prevent but it would make more sense than attempting to clamp down on those drawing attention to the State’s failure to protect girls.
“Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer” is, quite literally, carved in stone over the main entrance to the Old Bailey.
Excellent article Mr Cottee, justifiably demolishing the preposterous Basu.
“Counter extremism” is another front in the service of the dispossession and disinheritance of the white British majority. It aims to prevent the expression of justified indignation and any attempts to provide redress for the horrors committed by the client groups of the regime. They incriminate themselves with their hypocrisy. Hopefully more people are waking up. https://theheritagesite.substack.com/
Thank God for Elon Musk. Although I don’t think even his efforts are going ultimately to prevent people like Basu from sweeping the whole issue back under the rug. These are working class kids – and so long as the middle class is making money out of mass immigration nothing will be done to protect them. We just don’t care enough.
The middle class as a whole isn’t making money out of immigration but they pride themselves on their toleration and open mindedness so don’t want to make the sort of fuss that Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk are happy to kick up.
The middle class as a whole isn’t making money out of immigration
So where do you think all the unearned property wealth (another £1.6 trillion just since the pandemic) is coming from?
It’s not disposable wealth short of making yourself homeless. Most middle class would prefer a stable price for their home if they could earn more and be taxed less.
Yes, we call it “virtue signaling” over on this side of the pond. The lawn signs that read, “Hate has no home here.” or “This town is for everyone” are usually prominently displayed in front of homes that have zero chance of having these aliens living next to them. Nor are their daughters at risk of being raped if they stay on the school bus or in their 8- cylinder, 8 passenger, gas guzzling mini-truck that mom drives. You know….the one that has the “save the planet” bumper sticker.
Basu has to go, he is clearly a virulent racist. But unlike all these other squabbling ethnic and racial groups, the native Europeans have no organised ‘anti-hate’ defence mechanisms. That’s really the next step for the oppressed majority in Europe.
The lumpiness of that rug, with many, many, issues swept under it is perhaps one of the reasons why few people give unwavering support to the main political parties or the wider Establishment.
Musk is out of control and dangerous. He said that T Robinson should not go to jail because his offence was non-violent – so presumably he thinks that only violent offences should be subject to prison sanction. Fraudsters be happy, the leader of America thinks that you should be free!
In other words, anyone who disagrees with your worldview should be silenced and jailed? How liberal of you.
If this story below is true, how dare you silence those who are screaming from the rooftops over such an atrocity!
The Rape of Britain
How strange – I didn’t say any of that but was merely commenting on what Musk actually said about ‘Robinson’.
I’m sure that you will be relieved to know that I have read the article to which you link and it is so full of gross distortions and outright falsehoods as to lack credibility. Sadly it does have elements of veracity.
Striking how many violent offenders have been let out of prison recently, isn’t it? Yet there’s always space for someone who criticises the government.
That may be so, but has nothing to do with my comment!
If I read this piece correctly Basu’s position appears to be you should not publicly object to raping children in case it causes some people to riot against those raping children ? Did I understand that correctly ? .
Correct. This has been the lefts anti-white routine for decades now. The virulent anti-white racism isn’t the problem – the problem is the victims talking about, worrying about, wanting to do something about, the virulent anti-white racism.
For the non-white leftists, their motivation is simple, race hate. The white leftists are more difficult to unpack, but it’s a combo of class hate and political hate.
Yes I think you did.
Unherd has become part of the problem. It is biased and conforms to “right” speak, exemplified by the use of cosy inoffensive language such as grooming gangs instead of rape gangs.
Grooming is something you do to pets and loved ones.
I love this author.
It’s only extremist when the BNP gave the warning, and the establishment prosecuted its leader – and our ‘free press’ suppressed the story.
Basu and Khan and both non-white Muslims. They are mere human beings, their brains packed with all sorts of biases and fears designed to protect themselves and their ‘in group’. Clearly, they couldn’t care less about White people. In other words they are clearly motivated by racial prejudice, and possible outright race hate. If they were white people would be calling them ‘white supremacists’, ‘racists’, etc.
So how about it, how are these two not ‘brown supremacists’, Islamic supremacists’ or if thats too far, just ‘racist’?
Nothing will improve in Britain until white people start to organise and go after these type of people until they lose their jobs for their racism.
So much of the ‘inciting to riot’ is so subjective, it becomes dangerous. We have laws for this. Leave well alone.
That Basu could even peddle this nonsense and believe it has relevance is a worry.
Let’s get the terms of reference right – rape gangs, not grooming gangs. Thank you.
Because Neil Basu and Dame Sara Khan can only think reductively and therefore only in a partial system way, they are intellectually illequiped to analyse real life problems that naturally occur holistically or systemically.
For example in their vain attempt to separate ethnicity from ethnic culture, they refuse or are blind to the Old Testament values of misogyny, patriarchy, polygamy, paedophilia, retribution , honour killings and racial superiority that are infused in Islamic Hadiths and reproduced within traditional Muslim communities within Britain.
These same dehumanising Old Testament values are what provides the cultural basis of Islamism, yet Neil Basu and Dame Sara Khan in their reductionism wilfully ignore how these Old Testament values facilitates extremism.
Instead they reductively view free speech criticisms of these Old Testament values as Islamophobic extremism with Starmer in particular rejecting a call for a full national inquiry that explores how the State system collaborated with these values in order to facilitate Asian rape gangs because he doesn’t want to upset his core vote traditional Muslim constituencies.
Basu is a huge beneficiary of the diversity agenda and upholds that principle over fact and truth. For him the revelations of white working class men like Tommy and the cries of abused white girls must be subservient to the all- consuming, pernicious, deceiving, political principles of the DEI agenda which made him. But the truth will out BECAUSE Tommy helped unlock the door.
So Elon Musk is a terrorist for saying mean things on twitter and the government must take measures to stop him, but the millions of immigrants with unknown backgrounds are of no concern. Yep, that’s completely reasonable and all right thinking people should agree. Makes perfect sense if you stop and think about how much smarter the people making these claims are. Obviously we should all listen to them since they clearly understand the situation so much more clearly. *sarcasm off*
Brilliant article. Wastes no words, pops the balloon.
The despised and discredited progressive government now leaving office in the US spread the word that “white nationalism” was the nation’s greatest threat. You can gauge from that it will go down as the worst in the past century or more.
Shock horror!
Muslim and Leftist (For now) characterise rape gang scandal as a conspiracy theory.
I wonder why they would do that?
All of this demonization of white people is done to get rid of any resistance whites may have to their own liquidation. They are being liquidated by corporations who want unlimited immigration and cheap labor. People really will throw their own race under the bus for money and continued power. The left wants whites gone because they hate Western civilization and industrialization. Get rid of whites and you can have ignorant, malevolent Marxists take over and rule the low IQ population.
If we on the Left thought like Jess Phillips, then we would wish her the very worst, since the Workers Party would win the consequent byelection. Thankfully, we are better than her.
“I would stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front,” said the woman who is now “Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls”. She has accused British Pakistanis of importing wives for their disabled sons. She claims to have been rude and abusive towards Diane Abbott, although it is possible that she has built her reputation on lying about having used gutter language towards a woman who was old enough to be her mother. Phillips laughs at male suicides, at male cancers, at other men’s health issues, at violence against men, at problems in boys’ educational attainment, and at fathers denied access to their children. And she said on Question Time that attacks of the kind that were seen in Cologne on the New Year’s Eve of 2015-16, “happen every week in Birmingham.”
Phillips personifies the most abiding legacy of Thatcherism, that publicly funded caste of middle-class women who make life miserable for the working classes in general, for men in general, and especially for working-class men, “the Enemy Within”. Those women’s underage daughters are not at large at all hours in the company of grown men, and if they were, then those men’s feet would not touch the ground on the way to prison. That is as it should be. But those same women take a very different view of the subjects of their Raj. Another of their archetypes was Home Secretary when the Police were instructed that the victims had, “made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour.” Rejected by the electorate in 2010, she was last year raised to the peerage so that she could take up Ministerial office in the Department for Education, under a Prime Minster who was the Director of Public Prosecutions when the Police were so instructed.
The likes of Phillips and Jacqui Smith are Keir Starmer’s organisational and electoral base. As the Permanent State, their 40-year rule has created a rape gang problem that does not exist in the vast Pakistani diaspora in the Gulf, or in the considerable one in the United States. The great majority of child sexual abusers in Britain are white, and they routinely operate in gangs. This is not an imported practice. The punishment for raping a child in Pakistan is death. All sex outside marriage is illegal there, and the minimum age for marriage is 18 for boys and 16 for girls, rising to 18 in the highly populous provinces of Sindh and Punjab. This problem has arisen in the country where the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay could be completely ignored by the then Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch.
From the party that Badenoch now leads, the exodus of faded old Boris Johnson groupies such as Marco Longhi is coming to a head in the Reform UK to which they are seceding, along with the fact that Reform is a limited company of which Nigel Farage is the principal shareholder and to which all those people on that ticker are merely paying subscribers with no rights at all, and along with those subscribers’ and Reform’s wider electorate’s devotion to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, whom Errol Musk told GB News yesterday ought to be Prime Minister. Through a nominally British company, Elon Musk could set up from scratch what would then be the richest political party in Europe, with plenty of opportunities for grifters and worse to become full-time operatives on very good money indeed. Think on.
Total nonsense. ”The topic of sex is a taboo subject in Pakistan, therefore women often refrain from reporting their experiences with rape. According to a study carried out by Human Rights Watch there is a rape once every two hours and a gang rape every hour. Women’s Studies professor Shahla Haeri stated that rape in Pakistan is “often institutionalized and has the tacit and at times the explicit approval of the state”. According to lawyer Asma Jahangir, who was a co-founder of the women’s rights group Women’s Action Forum, up to seventy-two percent of women in custody in Pakistan are physically or sexually abused.”
Same as here on your last point, then, at least in the sense of having been. Pretty much the same as here on several of your points, in fact.
Having millions of followers and then calling someone a ‘rape genocide apologist’ who should be ‘locked up in prison’ may not be direct incitement, but interesting the Author didn’t actually quote the key phrases that Musk used. That of course is because he knows it’s wrong, hateful, would encourage nut-jobs and designed to intimidate. The Author was too embarrassed to even write it.
Of course Elon is a ‘rape apologist’ given he’s fine with working with Trump. He’s the archetypal playground bully appealing to those with that reflex too. Pathetic.
A good number on the Right in the UK have chosen to brazenly ignore they were in power for 14years and then sat on the Jay recommendations (which must now be progressed).
Jess Phillips got alot of abuse in her constituency during the General election from more extremist Muslim provocateurs and other misogynists. The fact she’s getting it from both extremes almost certainly means she’s the one we need to back. Two MPs have been murdered in recent years by extremists from either side. Language matters.
You could deal with the article in hand and find a way to defend Basu’s comments but that would be difficult, best deflect instead.
I read the Observer article yesterday in which Basu is quoted. The Author is implying Basu ignoring equivalence. He’d been asked about the Musk comments. The Author probably hoping to deflect away from Musk’s intervention with a quick bit of ‘what-aboutery’.
The problem is folks who never kicked off that Jay report wasn’t being implemented now want to weaponise the issue as Lab in power. Elon wants leverage for things he doesn’t want UK Govt to do. You’ll note he’s a little less vocal about Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs. Wonder why that is?
It doesn’t really matter what his motives are. We (well, not you obvs) needed him to do this. Have you ever wondered how you would feel if it were your kids or grandchildren that the police and government were sacrificing in this way with no-one ever being held to account? Because one day it will be.
But you have ignored it HB. Never seen you post anything about why the Jay recommendations not being progressed. Why’s that? I doubt you even read it.
The author is correct Basu is ignoring equivalence which I find very disturbing in a former public servant who has a lot more influence in leglislation than Musk has and seems to be advocating more authoritarian measures particularly when it comes to hurty words.
Multiculturalism has failed, a policy that has been supported by both Labour and Tory governments over the last 30 years.
Basu has been less vocal about Islamic terrorism, why is that? Did he think the Manchester b0mber was simply a disgruntled music fan?
The term, multiculturalism, has been perverted like so many other words. If you are referring to people of all backgrounds coming together to live as one within the host country’s culture and language, then yes, multiculturalism has worked well in many places.
If, however, you are referring to hostile immigrants, from one part of the planet, who don’t accept the host culture or language, have no intention of assimilation and adhere to a stated mission of removing the host population from the face of the earth, then yes, it should fail.
The problem is that our out of touch government elites have no clue as to the difference between the two definitions.
Because if you read the article he was asked a specific question about the Musk comments.
He could have said that Musk opinions are not worthy of his position in an incoming U.S. government. No, he took it as an opportunity to further his particular agenda which he did last week with his comments on NCHIs and stop and search.