Author: Bill

Theory informed by practice. Application informed by purpose. Why to understand and manage risk, cultural context is the key

Abstract: Risk analysis and risk management are reliant in order to be effective on their ability to engage with and communicate to non-specialist audiences, whether these be policy-makers asked to turn the advice that they agree with into practice, those implementing decisions, or the public, who are often on the receiving end of these.

Accordingly, there needs to be clarity of purpose regarding – and reflected through – the language used, the partners engaged, and the proposed ends of any measures to be implemented. These elements sit within specific cultural contexts – both geographical and historical – and it is essential to account for these in translating theory into practice.

This article surveys the discourse used across various examples, including a detailed case study. The most significant conclusion is that while data and evidence certainly matter for validation – understanding culture remains key to effective risk analysis and trustworthy risk management because, on the whole, people look for meaning beyond the mere ‘facts’. This applies to risks assumed to be narrowly technical as much as those with a strong social, cultural and political dimension.

Few risk analysts and safety experts consider or account for the broader, contextual and cultural factors that impact their choices, analyses and modes of dissemination. This creates a divide between those commissioning and conducting the research and those to whom it is held to apply and needs to be implemented by, which undermines democratic accountability, as well as the possible benefits of, and trust in, their enterprise.

Durodie, W. (2017). Theory informed by practice. Application informed by purpose. Why to understand and manage risk, cultural context is the key. Safety Science, 99(B), 244-254. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2017.04.002

Why vigils aren’t enough

Our response to terror attacks has become increasingly therapeutic.

‘Despair is suffering without meaning’, proffered Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in an interview once. In his most famous work, Man’s Search for Meaning, he paraphrased Nietzsche to the effect that: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ So, in gauging how people in Manchester and across the UK pursue their lives in the trail of the nihilistic attack on the Manchester Arena last Monday, as well as in the aftermath of other recent attacks, it ought to be to the question of meaning and purpose that we all turn.

I once interviewed two Singaporean citizens who had been caught up in the incidents in Mumbai in November 2008. Ten supposed affiliates of a Pakistani Islamist group had pursued a coordinated series of bombings and murderous attacks across the city over a period of four days, killing 164 people and wounding 308. The company the Singaporeans worked for asked me to speak to them to offer support – if any were needed – beyond that to be provided by their government.

I thought long and hard about how best to go about the task and determined to keep my questions simple and objective: When did you fly out? What were you there for? What did you do that day? When did you first notice something was wrong? What did you do then? What happened next? How did you get out? At the end I left an opening for them to contact me again should they want to.

Many might imagine that asking ‘Were you affected by anything you experienced?’ would have been somewhat more sensitive. But in whatever way they would have answered, the power of suggestion could then readily have elicited manifestations of psychosomatic trauma in them at a later date. Our minds work in mysterious ways. Singapore suffered its first ever fatality at the hands of terrorists during those attacks and so the media were keeping the matter salient in the popular imagination. It was to the media’s credit, though, that they did so in a considerably less protracted, shrill or emotional way than I have witnessed elsewhere after similar incidents.

Both of my respondents had spent many hours cooped up in their rooms at one of the hotels that was attacked, the Oberoi, before being freed. One had focused variously on his faith and on his family during his time there. The other had made some rather dangerous, if somewhat understandable, decisions – first trying to escape down a smoke-filled stairwell and then almost being unable to find his way back to his room before trying to smash the window open with an armchair and ultimately lacerating his leg on the fractured glass. Oddly, it was the need to stop the bleeding from this wound that then allowed him to remain calm and collected over the ensuing hours.

Frankl proposed that it is down to each individual to attribute an appropriate meaning to situations of adversity and that nobody else, however well intentioned, can do it for us. We may offer too much support and sympathy at such times. Emotional appeals from loved ones, concerned employers, the media, and government agents wanting to support their citizens, can cause additional stress and confusion during an emergency, as well as, in many instances, perpetuating suffering long after it.

‘Whatever you do, don’t give your name to any journalist’, my friend Simon Wessely, now the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told me following the London bombings in 2005. ‘They’ll never let it drop and will call you on every anniversary thereafter.’ People can and do forget. For many that really is the best option. Short-term anxieties rarely last.

Of course, participating in communal events like a mass vigil may seem positive to others, though I suspect that those who attend are mostly not those who are caught up in the incidents. Surveys showed inordinate numbers of people across the US claiming to have been affected by 9/11, even when their only exposure had been through the medium of television. Well-meaning as such gatherings and online statements of condolences may be, these can also be superficial and self-serving. Some turn it into an identity. We live in the age of virtue-signalling, after all. And if the best response to such incidents is to go about our lives as normal, as politicians assert at such times, then this is hardly normal.

Another friend of mine, sociologist and spiked contributor Frank Furedi, pointed out to me once that if the Israeli state held a few days of national mourning after every terror incident there, as the Spanish government did after the train bombings in Madrid in 2002, then at times it would be permanently closed down. Like it or not, the Jewish people have had to habituate to the circumstances they are in, supported maybe by a narrative of being God’s chosen people and of having endured suffering throughout their history. Of course, Palestinians also suffer there and their way of explaining this to themselves has also been through a narrative of resistance and future liberation.

At the beginning of 2001, before the attacks on New York and Washington, there had been a series of throwback incidents in Northern Ireland, as if from a time before the peace process. For weeks, hundreds of Loyalist protesters tried to stop young Catholic schoolgirls from traversing their Protestant enclave to reach the Holy Cross Primary School in Belfast. They hurled abuse, as well as urine-filled balloons and improvised grenades, at them. Police and soldiers had to escort the parents and terrified children through.

The school, as was already a growing norm then, offered the families counselling. There was no indication of what type of therapy this was to be or whether there would ever be any follow-up to verify if it had worked, so I later commissioned research to assess its effects.

What my collaborator discovered was that the girls most affected had been those with younger parents. These parents had been less able to situate the incidents within the political framework of the Troubles and communicate this to their children. To them, the violence appeared simply mindless and random. And this had left their daughters conceptually unarmed.

Encouragingly, there appear to be plenty in Manchester and beyond who are not afraid of articulating why what happened there did, and who are keen to show their defiance. Their framing can be rudimentary. It is certainly far less equivocal than that of the authorities who appear, as spiked’s Brendan O’Neill has noted, simply to offer vapid appeals for unity and harmony. But to not be angry at these events, argues O’Neill, is to be dead already.

Amazingly, at the height of the Mumbai attacks, one of the perpetrators used the mobile phone of someone he had just killed to conduct a live interview with newscasters at India TV. When the anchors asked him for his demands, he was heard putting the phone down and asking another of the attackers what these were. Almost nine years on, no one has yet articulated them. Not even those held to have planned and controlled those events from afar. That the so-called terrorists today have no explicit agenda or purpose, beyond carnage, is surely the element we should be exploiting the most. That is, so long as we are clear about our own.

Republished on spiked, 30 May 2017

Remaking Bandung, 60 years on

Introduction: This Communication Article proposes that if the Bandung Spirit is to be revived in the twenty-first century, then this will necessitate an appreciation in the first instance how different the world is today from conditions 60 years ago – both across the South but also, more particularly, in the West. The key shift may have been one from an assertive imposition of rule based on a clarity of vision and purpose, to a more insecure and reactive form of engagement that lacks direction. This latter seeks to compensate for an absence of meaning behind forms of procedural risk management. It will be the ability of the former colonies to put forward a direction that captivates all, based on transcending the past and presenting coherent human values rather than mere economic might that will determine the future. 

Bill Durodié (2016) Remaking Bandung 60 years on, Global Change, Peace & Security, 28:3, 307-315, DOI: 10.1080/14781158.2016.1193848

Securitising Education to Prevent Terrorism or Losing Direction?

Abstract: This article examines the growing relationship between security and education, particularly in the light of the UK government’s Prevent Duty that seeks to tackle radicalisation in a variety of milieus, including universities. However, rather than seeing this process as being merely one-way, through a so-called securitisation of education (in the parlance of the Copenhagen School of International Relations), what is explored here is the dialectic between these two spheres. It is suggested that a heightened sensitivity to the supposed consequences of inflammatory rhetoric on the well-being of supposedly suggestible or vulnerable students has been in existence within education for quite some time. In that regard, the securitising efforts of politicians and officials are pushing against an open door. What’s more, it is proposed that the inability of the authorities to hold the line in support of absolute freedom of expression, within academia and beyond, tacitly encourages the very people the government would hope to detract.

Bill Durodie (2016) Securitising Education to Prevent Terrorism or Losing Direction?, British Journal of Educational Studies, 64:1, 21-35, DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2015.1107023

The pretentious nihilism of Plane Stupid

They pose as radicals, but actually are the worst kind of elitists.

That 13 supposed climate-change protesters from direct-action group Plane Stupid managed to breach security at London’s Heathrow Airport in the early hours of yesterday, chain themselves together and remain on the runway until 10am, over seven hours later, will, no doubt, be cause for considerable embarrassment in some circles.

True, the economic cost may not have been severe, due to there being flight restrictions in operation relating to take-offs prior to 6am. What’s more, the number of flights cancelled – 22 out of some 1,300 – would not have caused much more disruption than may be expected normally. But the implications of this protest, especially in relation to potentially more serious security breaches, seem evident to many.

What, runs this dominant commentary, if the individuals concerned had not been smiling, predominantly well-to-do types opposed to the planned expansion of Heathrow? What if they had been jihadists, affiliated to al-Qaeda or so-called Islamic State? What if they had been armed?

No doubt, such questions ought to be asked in certain circles. But, at the same time, we should not lose sight of the fact that many supposedly secure facilities have had their security compromised in one way or another since 9/11 – despite the vast sums expended to ensure this would not happen. If anything, such events suggest terrorism is not the main problem.

The Houses of Parliament in Westminster have been invaded on at least three occasions over recent years. Two members of campaign group Fathers 4 Justice threw flour bombs during Prime Minister’s Questions in 2004. Later that year, five supporters of the Countryside Alliance invaded the chamber.

In 2009, more than 30 Greenpeace activists climbed on to the roof of Westminster Hall, and many of them spent the night there, before being removed. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle have suffered similar incursions from self-styled activists, as well as burglars and attention-seekers.

The incursion at Heathrow was clearly not an aberration.

What’s more, this particular type of incident – often perpetrated by self-absorbed types in pursuit of their usually limited political agendas – is not even the most significant in relation to airports and aviation security. In the intervening period, there have also been countless incursions worldwide into cargo areas by more organised criminals in pursuit of bullion and other goods.

If anything, Plane Stupid’s stunt seems to confirm the analysis of American political scientist John Mueller in his 2006 book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them. As Mueller wrote, stepping up security for passengers has done little to ensure airside security. Terrorists know this, so there must be fewer of them than we imagine.

There is one aspect, though – missed by most commentators – that we ought to pay some attention to. Those middle-class types, smiling for the photographers on the tarmac, are born of the same cultural malaise as many wannabe terrorists and fantasy Islamists. They start from an unshakeable moral certitude regarding their project and require little public support or engagement.

They have also – by-and-large – been indulged by the authorities. In the past, when the authorities were more confident of what it was they wanted for society, they would not have given any of them the time of day. Today, however, these protesters are handled with kid gloves. That is because those self-same agencies are no longer even sure of what it is they believe in.

That the Plane Stupid protesters could so blithely interrupt the plans of thousands of people – whether they were attending a loved one’s funeral in a foreign land or simply having a break – and not even trouble themselves to engage those people in a debate regarding their actions is a form of pretentious nihilism.

It is born of an age in which we no longer demand that people support their actions through reason, or build community support for their opinions. Rather, we accept that if someone feels passionately about something then that alone may condone their actions. According to some, having a grievance or being offended can explain – if not justify – someone’s rage.

Most alienated white Brits cannot readily join the ranks of those throwing a tantrum and heading off to Syria. They will have to find other forms of expression for their self-distancing disconnection from society. It may well be that terrorism is simply the more violent end of a spectrum, connecting extremists to the mainstream narcissists of groups like Plane Stupid.

By banning those they reject, our leaders reveal their own crisis

The failure to understand what tolerance really is reveals a low view of freedom and other people, and a complete absence of any purposive vision for society.

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.’” With these words to the National Security Council, the re-elected British Prime Minister David Cameron laid out his intention to establish new powers to make it harder for people to promote so-called extremist views. His reappointed Home Secretary Theresa May had already introduced new legislation earlier in the year that mandated those in specified authorities – including schools, colleges, and universities – to take measures “to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” (a notably passive formulation).

They appear to be in good company. A supportive article in the establishment paper The Telegraph ran under the title “Britain is too tolerant of the intolerant.” And it is not just conservatives who hold such a position. Many liberals, as well as those on the old left of the political spectrum, seek to have those whose opinions they oppose banned from speaking in public. Some Muslim community leaders now see their role as “protecting our younger generation from the toxic effects of extremist propaganda,” too. Even a few academics have been arguing as much for years.

But aside from the small matter of who defines what is “extremist” – a task legal professionals will most likely relish – these individuals betray their failure to understand what tolerance really is, revealing a low view of freedom and other people, and a complete absence of any purposive vision of their own for society.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – the apocryphal phrase attributed to the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire is as good a place to start as any in elucidating these points. Tolerance, in this sense, can never be passive as Cameron suggested. It starts from disapproval, which is an active judgment. Only the non-judgmental – an attitude unfortunately encouraged by contemporary multiculturalism – are passive. And accordingly, they are not tolerant either – just indifferent, turning a blind eye to the beliefs and actions of others.

True tolerance, as Voltaire’s predecessor the English philosopher John Locke understood full well, requires ruthlessly engaging those whose opinions you disagree with, while agreeing not to censor them or resort to violence. It is an acceptance that the world is uncertain and a willingness to be open to the possibility of your own error or partiality. It needs absolute freedom of expression, both to prevent viewpoints being banned or hidden from view, and to allow all parties to better develop their own position or understanding.

This lies at the heart of what a university is. Indeed, it is why many choose to go there – to have the opportunity to put their ideas to the test (no matter how outlandish they may be), and, in turn, to test others. To deny this to the young – for fear that supposedly bad ideas may have “toxic effects” – is to view and treat them as infants. Sadly, this is a position already adopted by successive heads of the British Security Service (MI5), who have described their concerns of young adults being “vulnerable” or “groomed” into becoming terrorists.

As at least one commentator has noticed, this approach turns the war on terror into a child protection issue that draws on contemporary social fears regarding pedophiles. It presents young people as mindless sheep in need of protection. Yet, the recent actions of several youth who made their way to join the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) in Syria suggests the opposite is true. These are bright, energetic, and willful individuals in search of something to believe in, which is also necessarily an indictment of what they are provided with at home – in the West.

At home, they see politicians who have given up on the need to engage and inspire, and who would rather be seen to censor and regulate (despite the fact that many of them marched in support of free speech in solidarity with the cartoonists murdered in France earlier this year).

Similarly, universities that know the new legislation to be unnecessary and unworkable – let alone opposed to the spirit of a liberal education – will, nevertheless, introduce new procedures and audits to be seen to be in compliance with government diktat. Little wonder that those in search of a real purpose and meaning to their lives are left to look for this elsewhere.

By seeking to ban the opinions they disapprove of, our leaders implicitly reveal their weaknesses – both in failing to engage with and argue against those they so stridently reject, and, even more so, in having nothing more positive to put forward as a vision of their own. In doing so, they do not make society more tolerant, but more authoritarian – and blindly so, to boot, for what is it that they want people to be de-radicalized to?
First published by The Mark News, 5 June 2015

Anti-terror: the perversion of tolerance

Cameron’s crackdown on extremists will destroy freedom, not protect it.

The announcement by prime minister David Cameron today that a new counter-extremism bill is to form part of the Queen’s Speech on 27 May, providing the authorities with new powers to tackle terrorism, confirms that, as early as the first week of his new government, all pretence at inspiring and engaging has been set aside in favour of legislating and coercing.

When home secretary Theresa May told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that she wanted to ‘bring people together to ensure we are living together as one society’, she omitted to say that this ‘bringing together’ is to be made mandatory, with severe penalties for those who will not comply with what the authorities define as British values.

The window for free speech has now been firmly shut just a few months after so many political leaders walked in supposed solidarity for murdered cartoonists in France. Yet, it was only just over 200 years ago that the very British poet William Wordsworth, observing the spirit of liberty that had just been unleashed in France, exclaimed: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’

Today, we face the twilight of freedom, and to be young is to be cowed and scrutinised, as the government implicitly reveals that it has given up on trying to understand the reasons why growing numbers of youths are disengaged from society, leading at the margins to the vexatious violence of a small minority. Interception and incarceration are to be the bold new vision for the future of Britain.

Most strikingly of all, the BBC reports that May will tell the National Security Council that the government will empower institutions to ‘challenge bigotry and ignorance’. Lest we forget, it was only five years ago that the previous PM, Gordon Brown, castigated a traditional Labour voter as a bigot. And, presumably, old-fashioned Church of England adherents opposed to gay marriage on principled religious grounds will also face the need to be re-programmed under Cameron’s new regime, just as much as the many who don’t know their Sunni from their Shia?

Cameron states that for too long ‘we have been a passively tolerant society’ and is presumably ‘pumped-up’ at the possibility of actively changing this image. But, in truth, Britain has strayed a long way from the Enlightenment conceptualisation of tolerance, which advocated robust engagement with others over matters of principle while recognising and accepting the need to live side-by-side.

In recent years, British society has become not tolerant but indifferent to the mores of others, preferring to turn a blind eye to outlooks and activities deemed not too threatening. You can believe anything you like, so long as you don’t believe in it too much, has been the unstated outlook of the authorities. Now, Cameron seeks to shift gear from passive indifference to active authoritarianism.

Of course, deep down, neither Cameron, May nor any other person in power truly believes that this approach can work. At best, it is a form of containment. And, as the security services know full-well, there can be no security solutions to social problems. Their capacity is already fully stretched monitoring the active few. Presumably, then, our ignorance is to be challenged by local authority-led training workshops?

What this will achieve, though, is to mandate bad faith across society. The government legislates to be seen to be Doing Something. Institutions and individuals will act and speak accordingly – to be seen to be in compliance. No wonder so many voted Tory without telling the pollsters; to say what you really think is no longer a constituent of British values.

Meanwhile, a generation of young people in search of purpose and meaning in their lives, looking for something to believe in, will find this in all manner of bizarre and, sadly, occasionally twisted avenues. It is not ideas on the internet that radicalise. To presume so is to view people as mindless sponges. Rather, it is the gaping hole at the heart of where real values ought to be that these young people actively seek to fill – a hole best exemplified through the recent election, where no party sought to provide any strategic or principled vision for society.

Sadly, it really is through the prism of an authoritarian form of child protection that the government now views the populace, and especially the young. Successive heads of MI5 have alluded to how these people are ‘vulnerable’ and ‘groomed’ online by vicious malcontents. While feeding off and into contemporary anxieties and fears of paedophiles, this formulation also presents the next generation (who, oddly it would seem, manage to get to Syria quite easily) as lacking any agency, autonomy and – inadvertently perhaps – accountability for their actions.

A far more useful approach would have been to challenge the therapeutic culture that has now infected our education system – a culture where children are taught from kindergarten on that their feelings are sacrosanct and that having their personal beliefs challenged is a form of offence. It is a culture that has spread right through society leading to a situation where the impulse to ban ideas and activities that some find unacceptable has become the mainstream solution. In his announcement today, Cameron has shown that the government now best exemplifies this new and dangerous trend.

First published on spiked, 12 May 2015

Lee Kuan Yew: the last of the great authoritarians

Love him or loathe him, the former Singapore leader had something his successors lack.

Lee Kuan Yew – the founding father of modern Singapore – has died aged 91. He was a controversial figure. Revered by many, despised by others, his aura became such that, in recent years, few people dared say his name in public – preferring to call him either ‘LKY’ or ‘the old man’.

Brought up under British rule, and educated in law at Cambridge, Harry Lee, as he was known then, became the figure the British could do business with (as did Gandhi in India) in the period of postwar decolonisation. His memoirs and actions revealed that he imbibed many of the racial caricatures and elitist prejudices of the British.

When he became the first prime minister of Singapore in 1959, he inherited and made full use of the Internal Security Act, which allowed for the preventative detention of individuals indefinitely without charge or trial. Accordingly, under the guise of anti-Communism, and in the shadow of the Malayan Emergency, he advocated for the internment of many of his former allies in the early 1960s. Several of whom – figures virtually unknown in the West – remained in prison until the early 1990s, for periods on a par with Nelson Mandela’s incarceration.

The fact that many of these prisoners managed to maintain their political beliefs with considerable dignity throughout their internment is a tribute to their courage. The recriminations over what exactly occurred are likely to resurface in the wake of Lee’s death. Singaporeans will re-examine their past, with accusations of historical revisionism from one side meeting considerable evidence of concealment by government, media and academic lackeys from the other.

The swamps-to-skyscrapers narrative, the idea that Lee pulled Singapore from a Third World to a First World country in the space of a single generation, is now being questioned, though developments in housing and infrastructure are still likely to be his abiding legacy. Singapore’s development was undoubtedly assisted by Western interference in both of Singapore’s neighbouring states – most barbarically in Indonesia, where more than half-a-million lost their lives during the CIA-backed anti-Communist purges of the mid-1960s. This period gave rise to the myth of Asian values, and of non-interference, which served to conceal domestic suppression.

Many foreigners may be familiar with Singapore as the ultra-clean city-state which, alongside the draconian regulation of jaywalking and chewing gum, continues to restrict freedom of expression and sexuality. But anyone who has spent time in its heartlands will know there is little enforcement of such petty rules. Police are noticeably absent on the streets. Rather, such codes have been ingrained in people’s heads. Smear campaigns against opposition parties and systematic electoral gerrymandering has meant dissent in Singapore is muted.

The People’s Action Party (PAP) – established by Lee in 1954, with a logo strangely reminiscent of that of the British Union of Fascists – has accordingly run Singapore since the late 1950s. Lee was prime minister at the time of Singapore’s merger with, and forcible ejection from, Malaysia, and remained in power until 1990. After that, he became senior minister and minister mentor, and continued to loom large in the background of Singaporean politics, even with his son at the helm, as he remains today.

Born, like many nations, in a period of great conflict, it may have been inevitable that Singapore came to be steered for so long by a leader like Lee. While many may focus on his authoritarian rule or politically incorrect views, it is likely that the greatest failing of the incredibly wilful, last-of-a-kind individual that was Lee Kuan Yew was his inability to instil the same sense of conviction in his successors. Singapore now faces being governed by largely uninspiring bureaucrats for the foreseeable future.

First published by spiked, 24 March 2015

Prevent: a very risky strategy

The UK’s clueless counterterrorism strategy sees threats everywhere.

In recent weeks, there has been much attention paid to, and some considerable opprobrium poured on, the UK government’s latest version of its Prevent strategy. Prevent is one part of the four Ps (the others are Pursue, Protect and Prepare), originally framed within CONTEST – the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy. CONTEST – driven by a dawning recognition of the problems posed by homegrown terrorism – was first published in 2006, the year after the 7/7 London bombings, and (together with Prevent) has undergone significant revisions since, including: to demand adherence to specific values; to differentiate and broaden its remit; and to monitor outcomes more rigorously.

Since its inception, hundreds of millions of pounds have been poured into Prevent in order to encourage liaison and dialogue between the authorities and the supposed representatives of various Muslim religious and community groups. The latest furore results from changes to Prevent mandated under the Counterterrorism and Security Act 2015, in particular Section 26, which places a duty on certain specified authorities (local authorities, health authorities, schools, colleges, universities and prisons) to prevent people from ‘being drawn into terrorism’ (a notably passive formulation).

Being more socially and culturally oriented than the other elements of CONTEST, Prevent has always been subject to considerable criticism. Initially, much of this came from traditionally right-wing groups and media who accused the government of consorting with and funding radicals. More recently, after the 2011 revisions, left-wing and radical groups have joined the fray, criticising the partnerships created by Prevent on the grounds that they encourage the infiltration of Muslim communities and justify a culture of suspicion and surveillance.

Both sides in this debate have a point. Following the latest changes to Prevent, various institutions, groups and associations sought to make their reservations clear by responding to the government’s call for feedback. Many of these responses are available online and raise important points about terminology, academic and religious freedom, as well as trust and accountability.

But they also miss the wider problem, which is that the approach taken by Prevent – explicitly aimed at identifying those ‘at risk’ of becoming terrorists, and implicitly framed in the fashionable language of the so-called precautionary principle – is fundamentally flawed. Worse, its latest incarnation, rather than offering mere guidance, now imposes a duty backed up by significant sanctions for those identified as being non-compliant. It transforms risk management from a loose organising principle for societies that lack a broader strategic vision into a set of laws that impact on everyone.

Of course, as the American sociologist Robert Merton noted as far back as 1948, in an article on ‘The self-fulfilling prophecy’, false assumptions have real effects for all parties. In that regard, Prevent has been problematic since its inception. The very act of engaging particular groups around specific issues has the effect of identifying them as different. But it also limits the potential for genuine dialogue between communities, leading to silly spats between groups accusing each other of being either Islamophobes or Islamofascists instead.

As I have noted before, the real drivers behind homegrown terrorism are neither religious nor political ideologies. Rather, they emerge from domestic cultural confusion (as well as confusion further afield, as evidenced by the inability of the 2008 Mumbai attackers to identify their demands). Ours is an age in which Islam acts more as a motif than a motive. It emerges as a rationale for anger rather than necessarily driving it in the first instance. Why Islam appears to have become the religion of choice for the readily disaffected in the West is worthy of further study. Still, we are all engaged in a search for purpose and meaning due to the failure of contemporary society to provide any coherent direction. Governments also fall foul of this lack of societal purpose when presenting ill-defined de-radicalisation strategies that are incapable of saying what people should be de-radicalised to.

Accordingly, if we are to ‘identify those vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism’ – knowing that there is no single or simple model for this process – it ought to be almost everyone that now comes under the purview of the authorities (although, fortunately, only an impossible-to-identify minority will ever act out their nihilistic fantasies). And, far from being vulnerable and readily groomed online by charismatic preachers or activists, would-be jihadists, according to most evidence, tend to be smart and wilful individuals determined to connect with those forces that appear to inspire them in the first place. The real question to be addressed, then, is why it is that the jihadist narrative falls on such fertile soil here in the UK? Or, to put it another way, what it is about contemporary society that propels a minority to find meaning elsewhere?

The confusingly named Prevent Duty Guidance defines extremism as ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy’, among other things. But who is it that is undermining democracy in the current climate? When Avinash Tharoor – a contemporary of Mohammed Emwazi (aka Jihadi John) at the University of Westminster – noted in his Washington Post piece that a Westminster student wearing a niqab opposed Kant’s democratic peace theory during a seminar on the grounds that, ‘as a Muslim, I don’t believe in democracy’, who should have been reported to the authorities? The student? The instructor, who Tharoor noted, did not question her? Or all parties to the exchange (or lack of it)?

Prevent also puts great store by ‘Channel’ – a programme that offers more targeted support to certain individuals identified as being ‘at risk’ by various authorities – which has now been put on a statutory footing. That such programmes, like those offered by the Religious Rehabilitation Group in Singapore, may actually make matters worse by presenting rather confused individuals with the somewhat more robust anti-modernist discourses of enthusiastic mentors, as well as teaching Islam to those who hitherto knew little of it, is rarely conceded.

Authorities don’t simply have to comply with Prevent. There are many other interrelated policies, too, and a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms and agencies: CTLPs, LSCBs, BCUs, CSPs, LSPs, NCTTs and PEOs – to name just a few. Far from being strategic, the cacophony of voices reflects the absence of direction and purpose. Little wonder that former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove made a speech at the Royal United Services Institute last year asking for a sense of proportionality to be restored. At the height of the Cold War, his agency only ever put 38 per cent of its resources – at most – into addressing the presumed threat posed by the Soviet Union. Today, by contrast, in excess of 50 per cent of the budget of the three non-military security agencies is expended on counterterrorism.

When the Cold War ended in 1989, a few insightful voices noted that one of the consequences would be a short interregnum during which time social forces would have to be reorganised to maintain the status quo. This period might have offered some opportunities for political alternatives to emerge but, at the same time, the advent of an exaggerated consciousness of risk and a concomitant diminished sense of agency simultaneously pointed to what might lie ahead as a barrier to change. Albeit unconsciously, that new framework for society – organised around risk and precaution, and treating citizens as hapless victims – has now been legislated for, and we are beginning to see the signs of a new ideology emerging that will continue to close down avenues of opportunity.

As many world leaders joined hands two months ago – ostensibly to march for freedom of expression post-Charlie Hebdo – there were some who, somewhat naively, hoped this might represent the resurgence of a core Enlightenment value. In fact, what we witnessed was the last blast from the past, and the final closing of the door to freedom for the foreseeable future. It also confirmed the establishment of a new age of control through behaviour management and a now legally mandated expectation of conformity. That so many have been complicit in allowing this to happen only highlights the enormity of the task ahead for those who still hold to freedom as the basis for any enlightened future society.

First published on spiked, 19 March 2015

Bitter Lake: searching for meaning in the Afghan abyss

Adam Curtis’s latest is a Heart of Darkness for the post-9/11 era.

‘We’re your boys, you stupid bitch! We’ve brought back Mujahideen ghosts!’

So shouts a disabled Russian serviceman to a woman who has asked him to stop his ranting and raving about the Afghan War of the 1980s on a subway train. The scene appears halfway through award-winning BBC filmmaker Adam Curtis’s latest piece, Bitter Lake. Afghanistan was the Soviet Union’s heart of darkness – the place where a crumbling empire sought to rediscover a last gasp of purpose. More recently it was the West’s apocalypse now.

The film, lasting over two hours and only officially available on BBC iPlayer, is ostensibly a search for the meaning of the absence of meaning that afflicts contemporary Western society. It is told through the prism of the West’s engagements with Afghanistan – specifically Helmand Province – over a 60-year period, as mediated by relations with Saudi Arabia and occasionally reaching back as far as the Anglo-Afghan wars of the nineteenth century.

As with all of Curtis’s work, certain aspects beg contestation and clarification. ‘Those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality. But those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow’, he begins, seemingly unabashed at the single narrative he, too, is about to tell. But while replete with contradiction, he does have a point. Authorities increasingly talk of the need for narratives today – unaware, it would seem, of the need for material and ideological drivers that might determine such narratives.

It is the first Saudi monarch, Ibn Saud, whose machinations serve as the start for Curtis’s narrative. According to this tale, Ibn Saud was supposedly involved in hoodwinking an ailing President Roosevelt in the closing days of the Second World War. Roosevelt was allegedly tricked into turning a blind eye to the Kingdom of Saud’s religious radicals in return for Saudi oil. The negotiations, held on the USS Quincy at Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal, provide both the film’s title and the deus ex machina for its plot.

A smug Saudi oil minister, Sheikh Yamani, then lectures the West on the need to get used to the new normal in the aftermath of the 1973 oil-price hike designed, in part, to chill American support for Israel. The glut of petrodollars that ensued had to find a new home, and it is here that Curtis’s second bête noir – international investment bankers – comes in. The funds were invested primarily in armaments, a ruse to support ailing Western economies. And the weapons produced were sold back to the same Arab leaders who needed to keep their neighbours and domestic populations in check.

So far, so simple. Except that surely Curtis, too, is eliding the odd complexity here?

Because two years before the oil crisis of 1973, the US had unilaterally terminated the convertibility of the dollar to gold, thereby ending the Bretton Woods agreement on monetary management and injecting considerable uncertainty into the markets – including the oil market. This, in turn, had been driven by the relentless printing of dollar bills to fund the Vietnam War and – more significantly – by the steady exhaustion of the US economy in the aftermath of the postwar boom. Unable to invest at home, capital was flooding overseas. Dubious allies were a consequence, not a cause, of America’s economic woe.

But the tendency for the rate of profit to fall never seems to make as good box office as bloody Arabs and greedy bankers. Fortunately though, Curtis does note the extent to which the bankers were then encouraged in their profligacy by Western leaders desperate to make ends meet and devoid of any political vision or agenda. But those leaders largely escape judgment in Bitter Lake.

It is probably Curtis’s bleakest vision yet, punctuated by a typically insistent soundtrack, new musical additions and copious quantities of silence. Images are made to speak for themselves – a drop of blood working its way down a camera lens, a terribly injured Afghan girl dressed up by her father as a princess with a tiara to meet the press, and a scene lasting over two minutes of a fully-kitted soldier picking up and stroking a somewhat ragged-looking dove. Such footage would usually have been left on the cutting-room floor. You wonder what Nietzsche would have made of the scene in which the squaddie stares increasingly meaningfully into the dove’s eyes.

Atrocities abound – some young Afghans unselfconsciously confirm their part in the stoning of prisoners, and US Marines joke about the number of unofficial rounds, including fatal ones, they have fired. But only the most naive or innocent would be shocked by these tales. As to the inevitable question as to what the overall montage means, surely the right response is to point to the total absence of purpose or meaning in the Afghan War itself.

The overall effect of the film is both disorienting and dispiriting. How did the West come to abandon its 1950s-era optimism, when it wanted to construct dams in Helmand to help build a modern state? Why did it opt instead to chase shadows (a British Army captain admits to defining any opposition as ‘the Taliban’)? A crisis of nerve, built on the inability to define and develop a new project for humanity in the shadow of political and economic exhaustion, was the real answer here.

By the 1970s, rich, hippy kids were travelling from the West to Afghanistan in search of authenticity. It spoke volumes about their inability to find meaning domestically, and more so of the failure of Western elites to promote a purpose for them. A decade later, when wealthy US socialites like Joanne Herring were sent to Afghanistan to connect with the Mujahideen, her Orientalist fantasies about saving ‘these people who believed so much in their God’ sound as shallow and libidinal as those of Joan Sims in Carry On Up the Khyber, which Curtis uses clips from.

Repeating one of my contributions to his 2004 three-part, BAFTA award-winning TV documentary series, The Power of Nightmares, Curtis notes how we in the West no longer believe in anything anymore. It is to compensate for this that thousands of young people in the West now seek to find meaning in Islam – with some embracing particularly backward versions of it. But it was really 40 years earlier that the rot set in, as the sons and daughters of the well-to-do paved the way for today’s Islamist meaning-seekers with their own hippy-ish escapism.

It may well be – like the Russian soldier railing on the subway – that elements of the Afghan abyss will come back to stare into us here. But, as in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it seems more likely that it is we who will have ended up exporting our confusions over there.

Along with the army of security consultants, legal advisers and civil-society reformers who fleeced the fledgling Afghan state of its funds in recent years, the West also sent some ‘experts’ to improve Afghans’ wellbeing and culture. So it is that the abiding image of the film for me is that of an English art teacher enthusiastically extolling the meaning of Marcel Duchamp’s conceptual artwork, Fountain, an inverted male urinal, to a group of recently liberated and incredulous Afghan women.

‘The horror! The horror!’

First published on spiked, 5 February 2015