A former civil servant, Anna Stanley reports on a counter-terrorism course she attended which she found a deeply, existentially depressing experience. She argues that ‘prestigious’ educational institutions are delivering politically biased, anti-Government training, amounting to indoctrination and that extremism and terrorism are misunderstood by civil servants to the point of being a national security risk.
I recently attended a Kings College course called ‘Issues in Countering Terrorism’. Organised by the Centre for Defence Studies, it was designed for civil servants and professionals in counter-terrorism. Staff from the Foreign Office, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence and Home Office attended. Facilitating this relatively new three-day course were senior lecturers from the Security Studies Department.
The civil servants were given presentations by Kings College lecturers while Visiting Senior Research Fellows and Professors also spoke. These included those formerly holding positions such as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office and Director of GCHQ, Defence Minister and Foreign Office Director.
The course was a deeply, existentially depressing experience.
‘Prestigious’ educational institutions are delivering politically biased, anti-Government training, amounting to indoctrination. It confirmed my fears – that extremism and terrorism are misunderstood by civil servants to the point of being a national security risk.
Underpinning their presentations, some of the lecturers relayed typical post-modern identity politics.
The course began with the issue of definitions. What is terrorism? Without anyone providing an opposing standpoint, we were taught the adage, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”
I posed to the room: “Surely we can acknowledge subjectivity while being able to come up with a collective understanding of what terrorism is?” Some 40 civil servants looked at me blankly. No?
I wondered why we were there.
The danger of understanding terrorism with cultural relativism is that it breeds moral apathy; the kind that says, “Who are we, mere democratic, liberal Westerners to impose our morality onto others? Who are we to say our culture is superior to others?”
These are luxury attitudes. It is easy to be sat in Kings College London and feel that all cultures are equal, when you haven’t been anally raped at a peace festival by someone shouting “Allahu Akbar” and held hostage. In the introduction to the course, labelling an organisation as terrorist was described as a problem because it “implies a moral judgement”. Nothing was said about why a moral judgement might be appropriate.
All the civil servant participants were given a topic to research and present. One attendee said her brother had been radicalised and fought in Syria for Islamic State (ISIS). Phew, I thought. At least one person here will understand the problems of extremism. Her presentation was about the U.K.’s Counter Terrorism Strategy, Prevent. She argued Prevent is inherently racist because it focuses on Islamist extremism. The mere mention of Islamist extremism makes Muslims “feel uncomfortable”, she argued. Her brother would most certainly have agreed.
I raised the point that nearly 70% of terrorist attacks in the U.K. are Islamist. Similarly, 70% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. It would be absurd to avoid mentioning this in the study of cancer so smokers don’t feel uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, this comparison was not well received.
Later on, we were shown an ISIS propaganda recruitment video filmed in Syria. The same attendee’s face lit up. Laughing and pointing at the jihadi in the video, “He used to go to my school! I know him!” she exclaimed. Mouth agape, I looked around the room for responses to yet another disclosure involving personal links to ISIS terrorists. I appeared to be the only one to find this extraordinary.
There was an irony to being surrounded by civil servants who hate the concept of the state. As young professionals, they represented a microcosm of the views emanating from British universities: when it comes to extremism and counter terrorism, the state is not to be trusted.
The Head of Security Studies at Kings College read concernedly, “Problems of Definitions: Labelling a group terrorist can increase the state’s power”. The civil servants nodded in agreement.
The visiting speakers were political heavyweights. Possessing genuine expertise with interesting anecdotes, their past responses to crises like the Northern Ireland Troubles were referenced frequently. Yet I couldn’t help but feel many of their insights were lost by the audience.
One attendee provocatively asked a former head of GCHQ whether he “felt bad infringing on our civil liberties in the pursuit of terrorists”. Naïve and uninformed, the questioner had highlighted mainstream opinion that security services are routinely listening to innocent, random people’s phone calls or stalking their WhatsApps. Lacking was any appreciation the U.K. is exemplary. Protective legislation is laborious to the point of being near obstructive and investigations pursuing criminals and terrorists are rigorously audited.
Israel was referenced throughout the course. We were told some consider Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters whereas Israel was provided as a prime example when considering the question of whether a state can commit terrorism. In the introduction, one slide read “Condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak”, a dangerous conclusion breeding anti-Israel positions. In this perspective, Israel is seen as a powerful aggressor and the Palestinians militarily disadvantaged in asymmetric warfare. Thus, the Palestinians are inherently oppressed an axiom that fuels the view that Israel is a terrorist state and Hamas’s atrocities are justifiably ‘contextualised’. To call Hamas terrorist – as the BBC is so pointedly resistant to doing – would be to “endorse the power of the strong over the weak”.
Another slide read, “Terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are terrorist”, reflecting post-modern identity politics wrapped up as counter-terrorism education. Everything was viewed through the lens of power.
While the lecturer did not explicitly present the slides as reflecting his own beliefs, he said nothing to counter them.
I am grateful I attended the course before the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks. I have no doubt the pogrom would have been contextually justified as “merely the oppressed countering the oppressor”, with Israel’s response described as morally equivalent (or worse) to the atrocities.
None of the counter-terrorism lecturers (bar two) posted about the attacks on their otherwise informative social media platforms. Of these two, one Professor wrote a RUSI Think Tank commentary, saying Israeli “crisis meetings could be affected by a desire for revenge” and why “restraint in counter-terrorism is so important”.
During the span of the course, there was no mention of immigration being relevant to terrorism in the U.K., except as a view “given by the right wing”.
The course’s overriding emphasis was that Islamist extremism is exaggerated. Right-wing extremism was given more weight than is proportionate. This is in direct conflict with William Shawcross’s findings, in the latest Government commissioned review of its anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent.
One lecturer derogatorily described Shawcross as “the type of person who would say all current counter-terrorism professionals are woke… He is of that ilk”. This of course discredited Shawcross to the course attendees.
The lecturer further argued that Douglas Murray and Joe Rogan are both examples of the far Right. “To what extent should Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray be suppressed?” he asked. “They have millions of followers. To de-platform them would cause issues.”
Concluding his talk, the lecturer told a room full of Government professionals, “so, society needs to find other ways to suppress them”.
First published by Fathom.
Stop Press: Watch Douglas Murray react to the news that counter-terrorism experts want to ‘suppress’ him on Julia Hartley-Bewer’s show on TalkTV.
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Reality rears it’s lovely head. The puzzle is why it took so long.
Obviously BP have understood that at some point Nut Zero has to fail and no matter the timescale the company will find itself sitting on some very profitable assets. We can only hope that reality bites early.
I guess BP are operating in a global market and figure that there will be plenty of buyers for hydrocarbons long into the future, and whatever subsidies and incentives they get from Nut Zero governments are not for now enough for them to bother with windmills.
Look on the bright side concerning the Horse Hill ‘Supreme’ Court decision: The oil will still be there later and will probably become more valuable.
Who “owns” the coal under the UK? Under our feet there must be 1,000 years of assets, frozen since the decision to close deep mines around 2000. Is there some shrewd investor or some canny lawyer who during the fire-sale a few decades ago “bought” for a £1 asset (e.g. a mine, or the rights to extract coal) and simply passes it down the generation? If energy prices continue to soar, many mines previously unprofitable or closed down because of politics would suddenly be profitable if they could be re-opened by re-issuing licences. Doubtless a similar situation exists in the US where billionaires presumably bought up defunct mines or “useless” mineral rights and simply hang on, or bequeath them, till the coal becomes “transmuted” into gold when the next generation, immiserated, dark and shivering, repeals Global NetZero and introduces fifth generation clean furnaces.
The Coal Authority https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/the-coal-authority
So the Coal Authority have the right to grant (for a suitable fee) or refuse a licence to explore for or extract coal, but do not own or utilise the asset themselves. So it’s a modern-day rent seeking operation?
Yes all very sensible if we were living in the real world. But we are living in the NET ZERO world. A world where we have forced ourselves “In Law” to reduce emissions and as far as energy production is concerned coal has the highest CO2 emissions. So only under very remarkable circumstances would coal be considered, although it did happen in Germany after they had made the silly decision to close down all Nuclear. They had to open 14 new coal mines or face blackouts.
But if reducing CO2 emissions is really what this all about then we would be going all out for Nuclear Energy. The fact that many of those climate fundamentalist groups don’t want Nuclear indicates their motives are less to do with climate and more to do with control of wealth and resources and especially fossil fuels which power 85% of the world. Net Zero is simply just anti capitalism with climate as the plausible excuse that large portions of the public accept because they are indoctrinated nearly everyday about a climate crisis on Mainstream News Programs
Some good news!
So will they return to being called British Petroleum instead of Beyond Petroleum? We are soon going to have an extremely eco fascist Labour Government with the likes of Miliband in there seeking to suck up the arses of the UN and WEF and pretend to save the planet harder and faster then every other country, so you can imagine how Miliband and his crew of eco fundamentalists will react to what BP are supposedly doing now.
But what we should really all be scared off is a huge Labour majority which will make them virtual Emperors able to enact every absurdity in the Sustainable Devlopment book, and impoverish us all in line with this UN idea that western lifestyles are “unsustainable”, in other worlds our standard of living is too high. —-Think about that for a second. Your government agrees that your standard of living is too high. This is preposterous. But be in no doubt with this massive majority that Labour are seemingly going to get on the 4th July people are going to see this squirming bunch of eco fascists set about getting rid of everything that makes our lives comfortable all under false pretences of a climate emergency.
And all the while our idiot political class continues to demonise fossil fuels and making investment in this country impossible, leading to ever-increasing imports and the flight of profitable fossil fuel companies.
Bravo BP! Drill baby, drill.
Get your butts down to the Falklands and start building a new Sovereign Wealth Fund from the liquid gold and gas fields discovered there. Before the Argies nick it.
Norway’s wealth fund is approaching $1.5Trillion.
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The insanity of Net Zero.
blob:https://dailysceptic.org/9608cf8e-a841-4994-87f6-536d96ee0ba9