The British Government last week accepted all 34 recommendations of an
independent review of the U.K.’s Prevent strategy. The review, led by
Independent Reviewer William Shawcross, criticized the counter-extremism
program’s effectiveness thanks in large part to an inflated sense of threat
from extreme right-wing terror groups, which were too broadly defined, and a
failure to recognize Islamist ideologies and Islamist terrorism as the
principal threat to Britain, which were too narrowly defined.





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ICYMI: CEP Experts React To U.K. Prevent Strategy Review



(New York, N.Y.) — The British Government last week accepted
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all 34 recommendations of an independentreview
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of the U.K.’s Prevent strategy. The review, led by Independent Reviewer
William Shawcross, criticized the counter-extremism program’s effectiveness
thanks in large part to an inflated sense of threat from extreme right-wing
terror groups, which were too broadly defined, and a failure to recognize
Islamist ideologies and Islamist terrorism as the principal threat to Britain,
which were too narrowly defined.



Following publication of the review, Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Strategic
AdvisorLiam Duffy <[link removed]>—a
recognized expert on extremism and radicalization—observed in an op-ed
published byUnHerd <[link removed]>
that Prevent was fundamentally flawed given that its core objective is to
“prevent people from being drawn into terrorism,” thereby minimizing or
dismissing individual agency in political violence.



“In this model, the individual is a passive participant in their own descent
into terrorism, sometimes manipulated by mysterious online recruiters or pushed
by socioeconomic circumstances beyond their control … Such thinking has seeped
into broader counterterrorism discourse, but perhaps worst of all it has
allowed now-stranded jihadists in Syria to play back Western tropes for
domestic consumption. In their versions of events, they were groomed,
manipulated or brainwashed into joining Isis, just as they were only ever cooks
or engineers in the Caliphate.”



Separately, CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson
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that the Prevent review revealed the program’s inability to curtail “extreme
antisemitism” across the ideological spectrum of those among referred to the
program’s ‘Channel’, suggesting that Prevent is not equipped to address the
threat.



“Prevent … merely treats the symptoms of a well-entrenched pathology. Mission
creep has meant it is treating far too much and often not well enough. But
there does need to be a wider societal response – and a much more muscular one
– to the relative impunity and official indifference that people who hate Jews
prosper under.”



Acheson also wrote for The Daily Mail
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that Prevent’s mission creep and “misalignment of resources” was evident in
the program’s focus “on dealing with ‘mildly controversial or provocative forms
of mainstream, right-wing-leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection
to terrorism or radicalisation’ … while 80 percent of live terror-related
police investigations involved Islamists, only 22 percent of Prevent referrals
for the year 2020/21 concerned Islamist radicals.”



Shawcross’ review included several elements of CEP’s research, including its
profile,Hashem Abedi <[link removed]>
, as well as the CEP-European Policy Centrediscussion paper
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,Hiding in Plain Sight? Disguised Compliance by Terrorist Offenders.



Additional commentary and analysis from CEP experts on the Prevent program and
review appeared inAl Khaleej Today
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;Arab News <[link removed]>; Il Sussidiario
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;The Telegraph
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;The Times
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; andTimes Radio <[link removed]>.



To read CEP’s resource United Kingdom: Extremism and Terrorism, please click
here.
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