The fatal stabbing on 29 July 2024 of three girls in Southport by a black teenager who was initially incorrectly said to be a Muslim immigrant has been used by far-right extremists in the UK as an excuse to launch a coordinated, indiscriminate and highly violent campaign of racist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant terrorist attacks in multiple cities across the country.

Shops, hotels, libraries, mosques, houses, and cars have been attacked and set on fire. Many police officers have been injured. Some police officers have suffered from panic attacks and nightmares due to the unprecedented level of brutality they had suffered at the hands of the terrorists. The attacks have caused widespread fear in ethnic minority communities. By 6 August 2024, more than 400 right-wing terrorists had been arrested.

Prevent: The UK’s Counter-Extremism Policy

“Prevent” has been the UK government’s flagship counter-extremism policy since 2007. It aims to identify people at risk of radicalisation, to prevent them from committing terrorist acts. It requires public bodies such as schools, nurseries, universities, social services and healthcare providers to monitor and report people they suspect are vulnerable to extremism.

In theory, Prevent addresses all types of extremism including right-wing extremism. In practice, however, it is well-known that Prevent has disproportionately devastated the UK Muslim community.

Due to its wide definition of extremism, Prevent has investigated thousands of Muslims. It has violated Muslims’ rights to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of association and peaceful assembly, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. It has created an atmosphere of self-censorship, mistrust, and discrimination. It has been used as a state tool for suppressing dissent in the Muslim community.

By the way, it’s not me saying this! ↑↑↑😊 Read more here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Institutional Racism in the UK Laid Bare

The UK has actively suppressed its Muslim population over the past 17–20 years with oppressive policies such as Prevent, under the pretext of preventing home-grown terrorism. However this week, thousands of white British right-wing extremists have committed terror attack rampages across major UK cities that have terrorised all the UK’s ethnic minorities.

A question that is hardly being asked is –

Where was Prevent while these thousands of white British people were radicalised?

No one becomes a terrorist overnight. A cornerstone of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy is the concept that a susceptible person becomes exposed to “radicalisers”, which leads to an extremist ideology and then terrorist actions. The aim is to intervene with a susceptible person before they are radicalised, or they develop an extremist ideology.

So what exactly went wrong in the UK last week? How did thousands of home-grown white British terrorists suddenly appear on the UK’s streets to commit terrorist atrocities? Why were none of these criminals under the surveillance of the UK’s security services?

The only rational conclusion is that the British establishment is not monitoring the radicalisation of white British people in the same way as it is monitoring foreigners and Muslims. The British establishment considers it normal for a white British person to be Islamophobic, and xenophobic, and to want to defend their country against foreigners by any possible means. It is a manifestation of institutional racism in the UK.

The very language of the Prime Minister in referring to these white supremacists as “rioters” rather than “terrorists” is hugely revealing. Their prison sentences are months rather than years, and there is no prospect of stripping any of these extremists of their British passports and making them stateless, as has been done previously to British Muslims.