In contrast to Britain’s foreign intelligence Secret Intelligence Service, SIS or MI6, MI5’s primary tasks are comprised of domestic security and counter-espionage. The evaluation of the respective seriousness of the radical Islamic terror threat and the extreme right terror threat was revealed about midway through a Guardian report which predominantly focused on the latter threat. Similar articles were republished by other mainstream liberal media outlets like MSNBC and CNN.
In the same article, the leftist Guardian’s cites claims made by the Swedish far-left HOPE Not Hate organization which purported that ‘huge numbers of Britons are among the global audience for far-right forums’ online. ‘HOPE Not Hate’ describes itself as ‘anti-fascist’ and has received funding from the billionaire, preeminent globalist, and open borders guru George Soros.
If you read about halfway through the article, however, the author of the piece admits that even though the security services “have not revealed how many of the 700 or so live terror plots and 20,000 individuals classified as ‘closed subjects’ … are related to right-wing extremism”, MI5 did divulge that such cases are “absolutely dwarfed by the number of Islamist cases” being dealt with.
Bear in mind that this is the case even though the white population in Britain, the pool from which the extreme right is most likely to draw from, comprises over 50 million people, while the Muslim population, the pool from which radical Islamists recruit from, is only around 2.7 million. This clearly suggests that the radical Islamic terror threat is vastly more potent than any threat posed by the extreme right by way of its capacity to radicalize individuals.
However, irrespective of this statistical fact, authorities in Britain have incessantly stressed the need to tackle the far-right both prior to and following the Christchurch shooting. Neoliberal establishment rhetoric regarding this issue has become so hysterical, that people like Amber Rudd, the UK’s Cabinet minister, have warned that individuals who view what is arbitrarily described as ‘far-right propaganda’ online could face up to 15 years in prison under draconian new ‘counter-extremist’ penalties.
Extreme measures like these have come under intense criticism from the former terrorism legislation watchdog, Max Hill, who is now the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales. Hill warned the British government should not “criminalize thought without action or preparation for action”, and that “the struggle for national security must not be used as a stick to beat down the rights we hold dear.”
Lastly, Hills added, “If that were to happen, terrorism would have prevailed.”
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