TORY Prime Minister Cameron yesterday stepped up his war against ‘extremism in all its forms’ both ‘violent and non-violent’, announcing measures to shut down organisations, facilities and even entire TV stations that do not share his system of ‘British values’.
Speaking from a school in Birmingham he said: ‘Our values are so great that we should want to enforce them for all. ‘. . .We need everyone, government, local authorities, police, schools, all of us to enforce our values right across the spectrum. As we counter this ideology, the key part of our strategy must be to tackle both parts of the creed. The violent and the non-violent.
‘This means confronting groups and organisations that may not advocate violence, but which do promote other parts of the extremist narrative. We have to show that if you say “Yes I condemn terror but the Kafir are inferior”, or “violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter,” then you too are part of the problem.’
The Conservative manifesto contains pledges to introduce ‘banning orders’ for ‘extremist groups’. It also contains ‘extremism disruption orders’ designed for ‘extremists who spread hate but do not break existing laws’.
The detail of the policy, explains that it not only intended to catch those who ‘spread or incite hatred’ on the grounds of gender, race or religion, but also to catch those who undertake ‘harmful activities’ for the ‘purpose of overthrowing democracy’. This means that human rights groups, trade unions, socialists, protesters and demonstrators of all sorts will be targeted, and action taken against them.
Cameron continued: ‘We must demand that people also condemn the wild conspiracy theories, the anti-semitism, the sectarianism.’ He added: ‘Government does have a key role to play in this. This is why we ban hate preachers from our country. That is why we threw out Abu-Hamza and Abu-Qatada.’
Later in his speech, he said: ‘There is something else we need to do, we need to put out of action the key extremist influences, who are careful to operate just inside the law, but who clearly detest British society and everything we stand for. These people aren’t just extremists they are also despicable far-right groups too. What links them all is their aim to groom young people and brain-wash their minds.’
Outlining the measures the Tories want to bring in, he said: ‘As part of our Extremism Bill we are going to introduce new narrowly targeted powers, to enable us to deal with these facilitators, cult leaders and to stop them peddling their hatred.’
Turning his fire on foreign channels like Russia Today, Al-Jazeera and Press TV, he said: ‘We will also work to strengthen Ofcom’s role to enable us to take action against foreign channels that broadcast hate preachers and extremist content.’
He then launched a specific attack on the National Union of Students and human rights organisation Cage: ‘While I am at it I want to say something to the National Union of Students. When you choose to align yourself with an organisation like Cage, which called Jihadi John a beautiful young man and told people to support the jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan, it really does, in my opinion shame your organisation and your noble history of campaigning for justice.’
Earlier yesterday morning Home Secretary Theresa May said: ‘The Counter Extremism Strategy that we will be publishing later in the year will be about dealing with all forms of extremism. So that is not just Islamist extremism, but neo-nazi extremism as well, for example. . . . It is about all forms of extremism and that is what our Counter Extremism Strategy that we will publish as a government will show.’