A new Hope Not Hate report warns that Conservative MPs like Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith are part of a “Right-wing insurgency undermining minority rights” – showing what’s so dangerous about Michael Gove’s new definition of ‘extremism’, says Rakib Ehsan in Spiked. Here’s an excerpt.
The problem with [Gove’s] definition is that it is inescapably subjective and grants the Government far too much power. After all, who decides what is and is not an ideology based on “violence, hatred or intolerance”? So far, Gove has explicitly aimed his new definition at two far-Right groups and three Islamic organisations. But it’s all too conceivable that a future Government, in hock to identity politics, could define, say, gender-critical feminists or Christian conservatives as hateful ideologues intent on depriving people of their rights.
Indeed, an insight into how this new ‘extremism’ definition could be abused by the Left has just been provided by campaign group Hope Not Hate. Its new report, ‘State of Hate 2024: Pessimism, Decline and a Rising Radical Right‘, was published on the same day as Gove’s extremism definition. And it effectively classifies traditional values and conservative beliefs as part of, or as fuelling, ideologies of “hate”.
Hope Not Hate seeks to push all sorts of Right-wing people and groups beyond the pale. It names senior Tories Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith in its litany of perceived hate-mongers. It also takes aim at MPs Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, who chair the New Conservatives faction in the Tory Party. In fact, Hope Not Hate appears to condemn as hateful any politician concerned about the influence of gender ideology in schools and the contents of contemporary sex education.
It gets sillier still. The report talks of “a growing radical-Right infrastructure”, which is facilitating the “radicalisation” of the governing Conservative Party. Hope Not Hate fingers the Telegraph, TalkTV and some lesser-known think-tanks as supposedly being sources of hate and division. In a paragraph that echoes Gove’s definition of extremism, Hope Not Hate states that “this complex and varied scene” is united by its “opposition to ‘woke’ politics, particularly transgender rights and multiculturalism”, and is committed to “a certain conception of ‘free speech'”. Hope Not Hate concludes that “this radical-Right insurgency is a dangerous challenge to Britain’s liberal democracy and is undermining the rights of minority and vulnerable communities”.
Worth reading in full.
Yet in a leading article today, the Telegraph declares that “Mr. Gove’s work is welcome”. “The defence of a free society from those who want to destroy it will necessarily involve some degree of compromise with civil liberties,” the newspaper adds. Turns out Turkeys do sometimes vote for Christmas.
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