Inside Britain’s Quiet War on Opinion
How the civil service uses propaganda to criminalise cultural concern. It's time to take The Sniff Test.
Trigger Warnings and Policing Thought
The 75th anniversary edition of 1984 comes with a trigger warning about the protagonist Winston Smith. The reviewer, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, struggles to connect with the book, as it does not speak to race or ethnicity. Orwell’s message is that obedience is not enough for totalitarian regimes. They do not stop until citizens believe. This is not a racial or ethnic observation.
Last week, in Stopping the Boats, I wrote that most asylum seekers don’t come to Britain to assimilate. In a multicultural society, different groups exist in parallel and, by definition, there is separation. I since discovered I am skating close to the definition of terrorism.
That’s according to Prevent, a Home Office programme with the admirable task of stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists. It issues training documents aimed in most part at those governing and working in schools. The programme is administered by local authorities, police teams, community organisations and charities.
Prevent labels its three types of extreme right wing ideologies as cultural nationalism, white/ethno-nationalism, and white supremacism. I oppose racial intolerance and that last one is for morons. The middle one believes mass migration is an existential threat to the white race and Western culture. The first label intrigues me, because it covers claims Western culture may be diminished by mass migration and a lack of integration.
Western culture is often equated with fundamental British values. According to Wikipedia, these are democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. How to tolerate those whose beliefs threaten other core values, is an age-old philosophical dilemma.
I’d argue that support for an alternative system of law, or the segregation by gender in public spaces, is in direct opposition to UK culture. My argument is not terrorism, I hope, because I am not advocating discrimination or violence against any minority groups. Yet as we saw in The Ridiculous Case of the Non-Racist Sam Kerr, it is my accusers and judges who determine my intentions.
Anyone can refer anyone else to Prevent. Those referred may be offered a voluntary intervention, involving mentoring, theological guidance and education. If it is determined that there is a risk of radicalisation, then the police get involved. The referral is decided by a panel of local politicians, police, and those providing educational, social, and mental health services.
It's easy to disregard this because it is not the law. To do so is to misunderstand propaganda. Its power is constant repetition, especially to the young. Legal challenges to laws are far more common and successful than those to the curriculum.
Why Labels Matter More Than Outcomes
A few years ago, the Home Office faced the major challenge of intercepting Daesh propaganda on social media. There were a lot of copycat posts and false leads to chase. Big tech would not help. The Home Office worked with a company called Faculty to use AI to spot patterns in the posts from genuine terrorists. When they showed the tech companies, it turned out they could do something similar.
Soon after, the reaction to the Southport stabbings shocked the establishment. In the inner circles of power, mass migration is not debated. The priority was to stamp out opposition to a core policy.
Yet on the streets, people are frustrated by a policy they voted against and which creates no-go areas in neighbourhoods they used to call their own. In dismissing the protesters by pointing out that the murderer was second generation, the government is tone deaf to the issue.
Spontaneous rioting is not coordinated by a well-funded terrorist organisation. Without a group to go after, the Home Office picked on individuals. That’s why Lucy Connolly remains in prison for a tweet she regrets and deleted after three and a half hours. To be able to convict in these cases, the Home Office needs a broad definition of right-wing extremism.
This week’s disturbances in Ballymena demonstrate the hostility to migrants bubbling close to the surface. The correct reaction is to stop crowding immigrants into low-rent areas. This must be part of a controlled migration programme, which recognises that assimilation is a kindness, because it affords arrivals the same opportunity as the rest. The cruelty is welcoming migrants and then dumping them where they have no prospects or incentives to integrate. No wonder hostility to the host nation builds in our inner cities.
There were 6,922 referrals to Prevent in the 12 months to March 2024. More were for the risk of right-wing extremism than Islamic radicalism. The Home Office notes there are twice as many Islamic terrorists in custody than right-wing extremists. Is it redressing a perceived imbalance?
Only 7% of referrals were adopted as Channel cases, meaning they involve an intervention. A disproportionate number were for right-wing extremism. Four in ten were for children aged 11-15, reflecting the focus on educational services. With more than nine in ten referrals ignored, the policy might be considered a failure. Again that is to misunderstand propaganda. The labelling of the accused is what matters because it persists as a deterrent to others.
The Prime Minister, a human rights lawyer who defended immigrants, recognises the issue when warning of a nation of strangers. Yet the Home Office bureaucracy continues to churn out propaganda that classifies justifiable concerns as potential terrorism.
Hiring for Diversity not Debate
The Home Office headcount expanded by 18% in the year to March 2024, reaching over 51,000. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is not involved in the day-to-day scheduling of that many people. Homeland Security, the group containing Prevent, is only 2% of the total and we might expect Cooper’s eyes to be elsewhere. If so, she may miss some important statistics.
In 2018, the Home Office set diversity goals for 2025. These target representation in line with the economically active population of England and Wales. As of 2024, it is achieving all of them except the share of lesbian, gay and bisexual at junior levels.
New hires were skewed towards minorities to achieve these targets. This is what DEI means for any organisation. The majority is discriminated against until perceived wrongs are righted. It's bad luck if you’re in the generation affected, particularly when it’s across the whole economy. Labelling young people with white privilege is a critical piece of propaganda, because it is used to justify bias.
The proportion of ethnicity at the Home Office is shown below. There is a far higher ethnic representation at junior grades on the left of the chart. This indicates recent target-driven hiring of minorities.
The most common grades across the Home Office are Executive Officer (EO) and Higher or Senior Executive Officer (HEO/SEO). Homeland Security is between 25 and 40% ethnic at these grades and Migration and borders between 30 and almost 60%. These overrepresented juniors will become overrepresented seniors in future. DEI creates the type of unstable equilibrium explained in A New Dawn in Europe that, in theory, will require disproportionate hiring of whites in the future.
The purpose of DEI is to recognise that there is no difference between people’s ability to do a job based on ethnicity or sexual orientation. This is a theory we should embrace in many roles. We might, however, question whether cultural differences have an impact on views on migration policy and what counts as terrorism.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez would surely agree. She cannot read a book without searching for racial and ethnic elements. Even one written when the non-white population was 0.1% of the total. If we must be sensitive to cultural differences as writers, then we must acknowledge differing views on migration and the risks of terrorism. Yet, someone in the Home Office believes this to be borderline terrorism.
Faceless Power and Fabricated Consensus
Prevent’s website says it is not about spying, surveillance, or restricting free speech. That’s admitting that many may see it this way. The department needs strong leadership to reassure the public.
The Director of Prevent left his role in March, after a savage review of the failure to track the Southport murderer. To date there is no replacement. The staff continue to churn out propaganda, which on one interpretation of its training materials, includes expanding the definition of right-wing extremism to statements of fact.
In 1984, the party forces Winston Smith to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. At the end of the novel, while Smith is physically free, his psychological and emotional liberty are lost. For Orwell, the foundation of freedom is the ability to assert simple truths in defiance of political dogma.
Thoughtcrime in 1984 is questioning the ruling party’s ideology. In the UK, the state’s ideology is created by faceless bureaucrats. This is taught in schools and barely challenged.
I am not suggesting the opponents of Western culture are always or even disproportionately from ethnic minorities. The Far Left is mostly white. If they wanted to change the ideology of society they might work for the government. Homeland Security would be a good place to start.