In an astonishing development, Prevent officials linked Jacob Rees-Mogg to extremists, the Mail on Sunday reports.
Mr. Rees-Mogg would certainly be the most polite terrorist we’ve ever seen, presumably dropping a pithy one-liner after despatching his victims, perhaps something like “sic transit gloria mundi“. You simply don’t see enough gentleman terrorists these days.
One has to laugh at the absurdity, but of course it is also incredibly disturbing. According to the Mail on Sunday:
The inquiry, by former Charity Commission boss William Shawcross, last week disclosed how Prevent officials had claimed that a leading Conservative politician was associated with “far-Right sympathetic audiences”.
Mr. Shawcross declined to name the individual but Prevent sources last night confirmed to the MoS that it was Mr Rees-Mogg, the former Business Secretary and leader of the House of Commons.
A stunned Mr. Rees-Mogg described our revelation as “dangerously serious” and said he believed he had been flagged because of his role as a leading Brexiteer.
“Wasting effort on elected politicians scandalously diverted resources from evil-doers,” he said.
“The officials on the Prevent programme were clearly so infected by wokery and metropolitan political correctness that Brexit was considered an extreme far-Right idea.
“According to this blinkered, misguided view, the 52% of U.K. voters backing Brexit weren’t exercising their democratic right to regain our national sovereignty – they were entering the path to Right-wing extremism. This is bonkers and those responsible hold democracy in contempt . . .
“Likewise, it is farcical to suggest the mainstream Conservative views I espouse, including Brexit, were somehow music to the ears of far-Right extremists.
“But what is not farcical is the scandalous waste of time and resources which Prevent officials committed on such rubbish when, as the Shawcross review concluded, they should spend far more time combating the Islamist terror threat.”
We already know from the Shawcross report that Prevent “tends to take a much narrower approach” when it comes to potential Islamist terror than it does to Right-wing extremism, which is defined far more broadly. But even I was shocked that it incorporates Jacob Rees-Mogg. This is like if the Ministry of Defence was, oh I don’t know, spying on Toby Young’s tweets.
We also know that Prevent was using taxpayers’ money to actively fund Islamist groups. The phrase ‘You had one job’ springs to mind.
But what was it about Mr. Rees-Mogg that Prevent found so terribly extreme? His dedication to the double-breasted suit? His excessive brood of Latin-themed children? No, but something equally absurd:
The MoS understands that Mr. Rees-Mogg was named in a 2019 report by Prevent’s Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) that analysed a group of social media users it described as “actively patriotic and proud”.
There you have it. Patriotism is the new terrorism.
Apparently, there was also a David Brent-esque training course, wherein people were “handed an essay by the Hope Not Hate campaign group which flagged up columns by Douglas Murray at the Spectator magazine, Rod Liddle at the Sunday Times and Melanie Phillips on the Times“.
Melanie Philips?! And there I was thinking Hope Not Hate was a serious organisation. Obviously, it is ridiculous to include Murray and Liddle too, but you have really jumped the shark when you’re targeting Melanie Philips as your new terror kingpin.
I would say more but I don’t want to add to the inevitable case they must now be compiling on me. After all, I now work for the same television channel as noted extremist Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I am also in constant communication with the MoD’s number one target, Toby Young (if that is even his real name). True, most of Toby’s messages are about whether the full stop should come inside or outside of the quotation marks, according to the Daily Sceptic’s near-impenetrable style guide, but perhaps that is all some kind of code? No one is that obsessed with punctuation.
I await the forthcoming report.
Stop Press: Peter Hitchens has written about Shawcross’s report in his Mail on Sunday column, claiming that a ‘British Stasi’ is growing in our midst.
Stop Press 2: Rod Liddle has had a good go Prevent in the Sunday Times. He says it should be called Encourage, given its attitude to Islamist extremism. Worth a read.
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Cracking post.
In the US, the FBI has labelled any Catholic group not supporting Vatican II a terrorist organisation….an open door to eventually persecute all Christians.
JRM is a Catholic. White. Male. He is of course the quintessential alt right-extremist-whack job-literally Hitler and I am shaking right now- archetype.
Stasis in our midst? Certainly. Gestapo along the outlines of the Rona fascism, coming into clearer view.
Love it. But I am sure the satire will be mistakenly submitted as evidence in your forthcoming trial for High Treason, Mr Dixon; these people don’t have a sense of humour.
Aren’t “right” and “left” very one-dimensional ? As far as I know, the terms come from the French Revolution, and vaguely mean “royalist” vs. “republican”, or “small-state” vs “”big-state”. There’s at least one other dimension: liberal vs authoritarian. Could be there are other dimensions. As for “terrorist”, doesn’t it actually mean you commit un-state-sponsored atrocities like blowing up random people? It’s worrying, and worryingly destructive that the language in which we might speak to each other has decayed into, almost literally, slime.
The terms go back to the revolutionary French national assembly and refer to the radicals, who wanted a democratic republic (left) and the more conservative deputies who wanted to keep a constitutional monarchy (right). Neither group entertained ‘neoliberal’ US tax-avoider fantasies of the 1980s.
I don’t know much about JRM’s political views, though he was certainly in a senior position during covid and IIRC did bugger all squared to oppose covid folly and evil. Does he represent “mainstream Conservative views”? Not sure. He has been a senior member of the umpteenth Tory government that has done bugger all squared to reverse the extreme leftward drift of this country. He’s supposedly on the political right of the party – perhaps this is true, but it’s not much of an achievement given how left wing it has been for so long.
There are various references to “far right” views and how JRM and his supporters are not “far right”. I’m not happy about that. The implication is that people who are really “far right” are a legitimate target for this kind of thing, but today’s definition of “far right” might well encompass a lot of people who post here and millions in the UK. “Far right” makes people think of Nazis, goon squads marching down the streets beating their opponents, locking people up without trial, totalitarian propaganda, control of information, politicisation of the police, sending people to camps etc – all common tactics of the left, and many of them used in the name of “keeping people safe” during covid by rich world governments.
In short, I don’t think this helps us as much as people might think, in fact I think it does the opposite – normalises the idea that there is a “far right” that needs keeping an eye on.
You make a good point particularly in your last sentence. Given that I was a senior local Tory politician in Scotland, I would say that my political views are 50% Margaret Thatcher and 50% Clement Attlee and I do wonder what that makes me. I have friends who think I have Socialist principles such as the provision of more social housing and other friends who think my views are to the right of Genghis Khan.
They are both wrong; my views are sensible, moral and treat Covid Lockdowns and Net Zero as the two greatest debacles of our time…. and I was born in the 1940s.
I suspect Clement Atlee was more conservative than most modern Tory politicians, especially on social issues.
If Rees-Mogg is right wing what does that make us lot?
Literally Hitler
One of my virtue signalling dimwit over educated colleagues compared me to Hitler during Covid
Bernard Lown experienced similar behaviour from his colleagues when he went against the “obvious” medical consensus of the day by daring to suggest that bed rest was the wrong treatment for heart attacks https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/a-chair-to-the-rescue/ It was his colleagues’ preferred treatment that was killing millions, not Lown’s.
Thanks
A fascinating story that shows the problems with the profession highlighted by the Covid folly run deep
This is the first time I’ve heard about Prevent.
I’ll have to go and look it up. But that says something about our “free society”. It seems that there is some sort.of publicly funded agency out there that spies and produces reports on us that a fairly well informed person was completely unaware of.
Our system is broken and out of control.
I knew about Prevent.
Probably thought it was a good idea at the time; now I am not so sure.
Ditto. Had Prevent training as I was working in Brum at the time, clinical patch covering areas like Sparkhill, Alum Rock. The installation of cameras in those areas didn’t go down very well for some reason….
The Wokerati appear to have infiltrated counter-terrorism. As far as I understand it, Prevent was initially set up post 9/11 and initially targeted Muslim extremists, managing to create all sorts of cultural fractures while doing so alongside plenty of calls for its abandonment (it was already described as a ‘busted flush’ back in 2016). As that’s now considered supremacist-inspired racism, clearly they need another target and who better than the privileged white cisgenders who won’t stick to the narrative, eh?
Old, but provides useful background:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/even-its-staunchest-advocates-can-see-prevent-busted-flush
‘A heavy focus on combatting non-violent extremism with an unhelpfully vague definition of how that actually manifests, has meant people are being superficially trained to subjectively spot signs of radicalisation.
There are no assurances given to stop this playing into existing and quite prolific biases and prejudices – any government policy should at the very minimum be aiming to dispel prejudice, but Prevent encourages it.’
Maybe they’re worried about him becoming a presenter on GBN; not that they would admit to that.
Yes, that would put the country on red alert: A “far-right extremist” presenting on “dangerous” broadcaster to us helpless victims of “misinformation”!
We live in an upside down world where moderate views a extremist and extremist views are moderate.
The IRA committed heinous crimes but are now just part of the Globalist Establishment. In other words the continue to commit heinous crimes.
****
Third Thirsty Thursday Freedom Drinks
For all freedom lovers to meet.
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Thursday 16th February 7pm
The Golden Ball,
Room to the left of bar / main entrance
2 Golden Ball Lane,
Pinkneys Green
Maidenhead SL6 6NW
***
Definitely outside of the quotation marks. Unless the full stop is an integral part of the quote, in which case there would be a case for a second full stop outside of the quotation marks. Don’t quote me on this though…
If you define “right wing” as anything the BBC does npot approve of there must be a loit of them about. But any rational definition leads to the inevitable conclusion there are very very few of them.
Furthermore, they are all-but pointless and harmless. Best kleft alone.
Those running these things know what they are doing and it amounts to a coup d’etat in open air.
In Germany, he would already have been deemed and arrested as a Reichsbuerger.
I felt a bit like one and being among them at the TCW event: almost everyone was well-groomed, polite and wearing suits or tweed jackets.
On top of that, everyone was sane and didn’t spout nonsense.
Very dangerous!
I am passively patriotic and proud so I suppose that makes me a Division Two terrorist. My father, from India, invented the Tebbit Test long before the eponymous Lord, so I cheered yesterday at every English try, along with the many thousands actually at Twickenham who along with all those who actively support England at cricket, and the UK at the Olympics, must also be terrorists.
Oh dear. Perhaps we might take comfort in the old saw that those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
The left are losing and they know it
As someone said a few years ago (it may have been Nancy Pelosi, but i am not certain) —————“We are all Socialists now”. In the Liberal Progressive western world where right wing politics is to be demonised and even criminalised, it is not entirely unexpected that the focus will be on terrorism that emanates from extreme right wing thinking and does all it can as far as it can get away with to sweep under the carpet Islamist terrorism which clearly is the major problem if we look at the numbers and the data. This is ofcourse because multicultural dogma is more important than applying “equal justice” to all. Somehow or other the liberal left and it’s welfare dependency, open borders and global government aspirations at the expense of Nation States by use of a phony climate crisis to “unite us all” gets the nod. Which is really surprising since socialism makes people’s lives worse not better. You see people in the UK still clamouring to be back in the EU despite us having voted on that 7 years ago and despite them mostly not even knowing who the Presidents are, because no one elected them. They were simply put in place by the Commission. Can you imagine the spitting fury if a Conservative had simply been made Prime Minister without an election in 2019. So an unaccountable and unelected EU government is where these people want to go back to. Instead of freedom they want their leaders to control everything they do except maybe how they cut their toenails. How absurd is that? ———So demonising and ad hominin attacks on people seen as to the perfectly legitimate political position as right of centre is one of the major tools of the Liberal Progressive, who would have everyone compared to Nazi’s at every opportunity.
I have not heard of Prevent until now – it seems Pervert may be a better name.
As for JRM despatching someone with a polite remark, he also would pay to have a Mass said for the repose of the soul of the departed.