WITH the western powers losing their war in Syria, after the British and American workers refused to allow their governments to send troops or launch air strikes on the Libyan model, all of the chickens of British imperialism are now beginning to come home to roost.
For at least the last two years out of three, western intelligence agencies have been in love with the war to smash the Syrian Baathists, part of which was helping all and sundry, particularly young Muslims, to get out there and kill a Baathist.
With the West losing the war and the Syrian branches of Al Qaeda dominating the ‘Syrian resistance’, this love of the war has turned into an intense fear, that those who were allowed to go there will return as Al Qaeda militants to bomb London.
Last March 3 in the Daily Telegraph, the London Mayor spoke out loud, quite hysterically of this fear.
Johnson wrote that in the wake of the Rigby trial ‘the most important question now is how we prevent other young men, and women, from succumbing to that awful virus: the contagion of radical Islamic extremism’.
He added: ‘Every day in London and other big cities, there are thousands of counter-terrorism officers doing a fantastic job of keeping us safe.’ He continued: ‘They have to work out who are the most vulnerable young people, who are the most susceptible – and they have to stop the infection of radicalisation before it is too late. That will sometimes mean taking a view about what is happening to them in their homes and families – and I worry that their work is being hampered by what I am obliged to call political correctness.’
The problem is: ‘What has been less widely understood, is that some young people are now being radicalised at home, by their parents or by their step-parents. It is estimated that there could be hundreds of children – especially those who come within the orbit of the banned extremist group Al-Muhajiroun – who are being taught crazy stuff: the kind of mad yearning for murder and death that we heard from Lee Rigby’s killers.’
The solution: ‘The law should obviously treat radicalisation as a form of child abuse. It is the strong view of many of those involved in counter-terrorism that there should be a clearer legal position, so that those children who are being turned into potential killers or suicide bombers can be removed into care – for their own safety and for the safety of the public.’
The latest developments are to get over the problem of identification of those who should be put into a camp ‘for their own good’, that is ‘removed into care – for their own safety’, of course.
We were told yesterday that British counter-terrorism police chiefs are making an unprecedented appeal to Muslim women to persuade their relatives not to go to Syria to fight and to report those who are thinking of going to the police so that they could be helped.
Such a trend would get British imperialism over the problem of identifying the enemy. The crux of the campaign is for the mothers to be coaxed to becoming narks and report their own children for ‘their own good’, giving the state the opportunity to deal with them.
Next Thursday, events in London, Manchester and Birmingham are being held to bring together counter-terrorism police, officials who work on preventing extremism, and women from community groups in an effort to urge people to dissuade would-be jihadists.
Speaking at the launch of the project, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball, national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, said she wanted women to lead attempts ‘to challenge the lure of Syria’ and the risks that young men who go to the country will return radicalised.
The only way to put an end to ‘terrorism’ is to put an end to the imperialist powers’ attempts to rob the Arab states of their oil and their other resources through an endless series of oil wars. Overthrowing both capitalism and imperialism is the way to bring peace to the UK.
Unlike Johnson, we have no trouble in identifying the particulars of the enemy. It is the British ruling class and it is high time that it was overthrown by the working class to bring in socialism and a peaceful planet.
