The Security Minister, Damian Hinds, has said that social atomisation caused by previous lockdowns may have increased radicalisation and weakened the U.K.’s defence against terrorism. In turn, the U.N.’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) has concluded that extremists had tried “to exploit pandemic-related sociocultural restrictions that have led people around the world to spend increasing time online”. The Guardian has more.
The terrorism threat to the U.K. may have been made worse by Covid lockdowns, a security minister has suggested.
Damian Hinds, the MP for East Hampshire who became Security Minister in August, told the Telegraph that people spending long periods of time in their bedrooms during the restrictions could have pushed them towards radicalisation.
His remarks echo similar warnings from the police and the U.N.’s CTED.
“Clearly, logically, when you have more people who are spending more time in their bedrooms at their computer… you are going to get a growth in that tiny proportion of people for whom that is a dark journey,” Hinds told the Telegraph.
“And as you know, on the internet, if you start to make those kind of downward spirals, you can quickly accelerate with the material that you come across and the other people that you can come into contact with.”
Since Hinds took on the brief, there have been two alleged terrorist attacks, the killing of the MP Sir David Amess and the attack outside Liverpool Women’s hospital.
Counter Terrorism Policing said this month they had foiled seven “late-stage” terror attacks since the start of the Covid pandemic. It took the total number of foiled terrorism plots in the U.K. in the past four years to 32.
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