Author: Bill

Why ‘deradicalisation’ is not the answer

It’s time Jacqui Smith realised that Islamist extremism is not a ‘foreign’ invader of Britain, but rather springs from our own bankrupt culture.

On Tuesday, the British home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced the development of a nationwide ‘deradicalisation’ programme to tackle people who have supposedly been drawn into violent Islamist extremism in Britain. Muslim community groups and councils will be allocated £12.5million, in addition to the £40million the government has already committed to the ‘prevent’ element of the national counterterrorism strategy made public in July 2006. The funding will be used for projects that will ‘challenge and resist’ the ideas and outlooks deemed to have informed recent acts of terror in the UK.

This strategy will fail for the simple reason that the government has yet to fully appreciate what the influences are that they seek to alter. In addition, officials have no idea as to what it is they would wish to alter them to.

The simplistic model that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11 was that the West was confronted by a resurgent form of political Islam emanating from the Middle East and further afield. Subsequent events, including the London bombings on 7 July 2005, led to an almost begrudging recognition that many of the perpetrators of terrorism had been educated in the West, if not born there.

This still allowed for the possibility that their ideas were largely foreign in origin, or that their outlooks were alien to the presumed norms prevailing in the West. Hence the continuing focus on the form that these ideas take – couched in their jihadist rhetoric – or appeals to defending an ill-defined sense of ‘our values’ or ‘our way of life’. The UK government has failed to confront the true content of what these ideas expressed: a rejection of all things Western, rather than a positive affirmation of anything else.

Nor has the government offered an alternative vision of what we stand for as a society, beyond rhetorical references to freedom and democracy. However, the espousal of such values jars with current proposals to extend the period that alleged terrorists may be held without charge (from 28 to 42 days) – from a prime minister, Gordon Brown, who was never elected by the people.

The truth is that the sources of self-styled Islamist terrorism are more likely to be found within our own shores and within our own communities as anywhere else. It may be more likely, for now, that British Asians will act upon these ideas – with the benefit of an enhanced sense of victimhood that they may have picked up within the British education system. But as the steadily increasing number of white faces appearing on the counterterrorism radar suggests, this need not necessarily be true for much longer.

If this sounds rather harsh, let me illustrate what I mean by way of an example. A good friend of mine recently spent a day in the law faculty of a prestigious British university. The distinguished professor she spent time with advised her that nowadays students are not the same as they once were. They were no longer expected to read numerous books, write long essays or memorise case law. Rather, they are presented with handouts of Powerpoint presentations to read and they keep a weblog of their activities.

That evening, my friend attended the Islamic society meeting in the same university. There, she encountered many of the same students she had met earlier in the day (when they had been disinterestedly sending texts on their mobile phones during the law seminars). Now, however, the students appeared eager to learn. The cleric who ran the meeting expected them to recall specific lines from the Koran and to be familiar with all aspects of Islamic jurisprudence.

Maybe somebody should ask Jacqui Smith who here is the ‘radicalising’ influence? Is it the foreign mullah who ran the evening class, demanding attention and commanding respect, or was it the jaded Western intellectual who deep down believes that there is no truth that can be taught, that not too much should be expected of young people nowadays, and who in any case would not wish to damage their ‘self-esteem’ through challenging them in class?

I use this vignette to suggest that the roots of so-called ‘radicalisation’ are much wider and deeper than can be addressed by a prejudicially targeted programme focusing on ill-founded notions as to where such ideas might emanate from. Indeed, rather than targeting Muslim communities and monitoring Islamic society meetings, the authorities would be better off observing and monitoring their own contemporary culture.

Far from there being a layer of vulnerable young Muslims who are preyed upon by various hotheads, what we find, time and again, are passionate, intelligent and energetic individuals who somehow fail to find any meaning or purpose to their lives from within the confines of contemporary Western culture. Most of these are neither disconnected nor alienated from society, and rather than being ‘radicalised’ from the outside, they actively look for something to join. Nick Reilly, the supposed simpleton whose rudimentary device exploded in his face recently in Exeter, is proof that it is almost impossible to ‘recruit’ anyone of note into terrorism.

In short: a few, fairly intelligent people, deprived of a sense of purpose, will go looking for answers in radical Islam. These are Western people looking for some alternatives to the bankrupt intellectual and political culture around them. Those who are apparently ‘recruited’, on the other hand, are mostly idiots.

In focusing on so-called ‘extremists’ and ‘radicals’, the authorities and security agencies manage to miss that which lies right under their nose. What’s worse, the very language they use belies their own difficulty. By accusing someone of being ‘extreme’ or ‘radical’, they effectively give up on any attempt to address the content of what people supposedly believe, targeting instead the extent to which they are held to believe it. This is like saying, ‘I don’t care what it is you believe in, so long as it is not too much’, which in its turn is an admission that they themselves believe in nothing.

At a talk given to the Smith Institute in London on the evening of her announcement regarding the proposed ‘deredicalisation’ programme, Jacqui Smith suggested that ‘lacking a positive vision, al-Qaeda can only define itself by what it opposes’. Talk of projecting yourself on to others! She and her cronies would be better off outlining what kind of Britain it is that they do want to live in, rather than obsessing over a handful of dangerous idiots whose ideas and outlooks would seem entirely unimpressive were it not for the vacuum that they confront.

First published on spiked, 5 June 2008

History: it’s just one bloody thing after another

Having jettisoned political and historical frameworks, Michael Burleigh’s story of terrorism combines a lack of insight with excessive prejudice about curry-eating loyalists and headbutting Glaswegians.

In a recent interview for the Guardian’s education supplement, historian and writer Michael Burleigh suggested that his decision to leave academia five years ago, after stints, amongst others, at New College Oxford and the London School of Economics, was driven by a determination not to ‘become a guru-like figure’, ‘who surrounded himself with cronies’ and ended up creating ‘clones’ (1).

Judging by his latest book, Blood and Rage – A Cultural History of Terrorism, a more likely explanation is that such is the impoverished nature of his arguments that the only people who were prepared to listen were either cronies or clones. So, while describing women in burqas as ‘black sacks’, or suggesting that ‘headbutting one another’ is ‘a national (sic) pastime in Glasgow’, may appeal to a certain juvenile sense of humour, it is unlikely to endear him to those, as yet un-cloned, constituencies he might wish or need to influence.

One can only presume that he does not care. Over the course of 486 pages on the emergence and development of terrorism, which begins with nineteenth-century Fenians, Nihilists and Anarchists, ends with al-Qaeda, and takes in Italy’s Red Brigades and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang on the way, there is very little in the way of analysis. Indeed, he openly declares a desire to focus on ‘actions rather than theories’. But in the absence of analysis, his bombastic and belligerent asides become not just tedious – they encourage suspicion as to his reading of events.

It makes for a grating experience. Reading Blood and Rage reminded me of the great Cambridge historian Sir Herbert Butterfield’s famous aphorism – memorably adapted by Alan Bennett in his 2004 play The History Boys – that history is ‘just one bloody thing after another’. Sounding like a breathless and overexcited child who has just come back from a school trip, Burleigh delivers to the reader an un-insightful and somewhat random list of things that happened. Nowhere, other than in a short passage by Nelson Mandela, is there any attempt to explain how ideas and events may be shaped by context or will.

What really betrays Burleigh’s approach is the subtitle to his book: ‘A Cultural History of Terrorism’. That is, it’s history with the society and politics taken out. With no attempt to engage with the ideas and aspirations that motivated his assorted protagonists, be it the Basque ETA or Algeria’s FLN, or any attempt to appreciate the circumstances in which groupings found themselves, it is little wonder that Burleigh’s narration appears as a sequence of inexplicable events. Burleigh is left instead with just their actions to describe – mysterious, dangerous and impenetrable.

Annoyingly, this also means that even a reactionary like Burleigh effectively lets those who resort to acts of terror off the hook. To him they have become addicted to violence or, as he dubiously proposes, ‘are morally insane’, in which case they can hardly be held culpable.

With less sophistication and reason than the succession of mediocrities occupying the role of British home secretary, his rant continues, page after page after page. In the Daily Telegraph he continued his moan: ‘there are people in this country …who despise our way of life and seek to change it for all time.’ (2) But which people and what way of life?

Like many others, his prejudices encourage him to see such forces as largely emanating from far-flung places and foreign outlooks, in other words, ‘over there’. Yet closer scrutiny of his own invective would reveal to him the vast list of domestic enemies that exist among the ‘liberal elites’. These are variously castigated as ‘fervent human rights lawyers’, ‘loathsome academic[s]’, ‘fanciful journalists’, ‘celebrity useful idiots’ and other ‘well-to-do apologists’. He may have a point, but unable to engage with the breadth and depth of this cultural conflict on the homefront, he simply dismisses it and comes across as a grumpy old man.

At every turn, whether it is in the Middle East, North Africa, Italy, Germany or the UK, he resorts to the tired and trite notion that the roots of terror lie in the rapid expansion of higher education without a concomitant development of employment opportunities. This growth may well have presented him with students less sympathetic to his cheap caricatures of Northern Ireland’s loyalists as people whose ‘idea of an exotic meal was to add curry sauce to a bag of chips, while venturing as far as Tenerife for their first overseas holiday’. But this supposed explanation is unlikely to be ‘the actual source of anger on the part of young Muslims’, as he suggests on his website (3).

Almost inevitably, amidst so much manure, the odd flower of insight blooms. But his apercus could have resulted in a 20-page essay rather than a 500-page book. One of the most useful bits, stemming from his rampant, yet oddly anachronistic anti-left wing prejudices, is a useful section – unusual to books covering Islamist terrorism – detailing the role and barbarity of the Mujahideen in Bosnia, as well as how their actions were supported or ignored by Western radicals.

Elsewhere, he astutely describes terrorists as ‘juvenile fantasists’ and ‘self-styled victims’ whose ‘misdirected or frustrated altruism’ makes them ‘too eager to repudiate themselves’ through their actions, hoping thereby to ‘overcome the boredom and purposelessness of their own lives’.

He also usefully debunks many illusions as to the supposed uniqueness of the threats we face today – simultaneous attacks, suicide bombings, bomb-making manuals, training camps and the targeting of information networks – as well as the overreaction of the authorities to these threats. His detailing of the sheer number and intensity of terrorist attacks in the not too distant past also acts as a reality check.

Yet, despite seeing through Islamism as a pose, he is still driven, through his refusal to see the origins and parallels for this within the West, to describe the contemporary crop of self-styled Islamist losers, plotting terrorist outrages from their bedrooms in east London, as somehow presenting ‘an existential threat to the whole of civilisation’. This seems like a tall order, but one somehow befitting a former academic left howling to the barking of Barking.

Senior figures in the world of national security today call for a new narrative of resilience to be developed in the face of these supposed threats. It is possible that Burleigh may seem to them to offer a little of what they need. But while history is always contested, his story is simply a fanciful myth, unable to engage or captivate a broader community, as real resilience and proper history would.

In the end, Burleigh abdicates all responsibility by suggesting that ‘the battle with jihadism will only be won by Muslims themselves’. In fact, he laments that ‘it is difficult to see how things can be rectified’, comparing contemporary counterterrorism initiatives to an endless game of ‘whack a mole’. Unable to engage in, let alone win, the battle of ideas, as has happened before, Burleigh will simply be left alone with his cronies and his clones.

Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism, by Michael Burleigh is published by Harper Press. (Buy this book from Amazon (UK).)

(1) Michael Burleigh: The reluctant guru, Guardian, 11 March 2008

(2) See Michael Burleigh’s website here.

(3) Actions speak loudest to terrorists, Mr Brown , Telegraph, 15 November 2007

First published on spiked, 30 May 2008

Death of the warrior ethos

Weaving a path from Achilles to Rambo via Shakespeare and Tolstoy, Christopher Coker’s insightful new book captures the increasing demonisation of war – even ‘good wars’ – and the denigration of honour, duty and glory.

In his 1998 BBC Reith lectures, ‘War and Our World’, the military historian and journalist John Keegan described war as ‘collective killing for a purpose’ (1). It is hardly surprising, then, that societies in which a spirit of solidarity has been diminished, the necessity to fight dismissed, and attempts to impart a sense of direction or meaning discredited, are unable to celebrate their wars and their warriors.

Primarily, of course, it is the ‘killing’ part of Keegan’s definition that contemporary societies feel uncomfortable with, or reject outright, rather than the ‘collective’ or ‘purpose’ elements, which many would dearly like to rediscover while remaining sceptical about some of their earlier incarnations. But it is precisely the absence of these latter factors that have served to create confusion about the former.

Anyone wishing to pay tribute to warriors today, or to compose a paean to war as ‘a test of, and testament to, a nation’s resilience’, would be ill-advised to do so. Christopher Coker, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, has done the next best thing. His book The Warrior Ethos, while imbued with a sense of loss, also appropriately captures the ambivalence and ambiguity of our times.

Despite copious notes and references, this is far from being an academic text. In parts The Warrior Ethos feels more poetic than polemic, as Coker endeavours to weave a path from Achilles to Rambo via Shakespeare and Tolstoy. His sense that the spirit of an age can be captured through its literature and culture, rather than historical and political analysis alone, proves most rewarding, especially in revealing what has changed.

It is not simply a lost world that is unravelled, but lost words, too. ‘Honour’, ‘Duty’ and ‘Glory’ lose their meaning, and their use, if we forget the past, dismiss the present and refuse to face up to the future. ‘Heroism’, stripped of its subjective factor, appears merely to be bred-in, or institutionalised. Alternatively it is pathologised, as a self-serving and dangerous obsession, or worse, as the sad struggle of trauma victims.

Henry V’s decisive defeat of the French at Agincourt in 1415, as well as Shakespeare’s account of it with the infamous ‘band of brothers’, can now be portrayed as being about people suffering from ‘a centuries-old “deception” about the glory of war’. Inverting this new orthodoxy, Coker reveals brilliantly how ‘we tend to deprive them of the fullness of their lives in order to support and sustain the smallness of our own’.

It is our contemporary construction of events that can transform these historic episodes from being ‘full of meaning’ to being seen as a ‘futile waste’. In that sense, the postmodern disposition towards not taking anything too seriously is quite disabling, even in the absence of any enemy we may face. But we should be clear, that this ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ (2), stems from an interpretation of the world rather than being inherent.

‘All of us in the Western world come from a culture which doubts its own first principles’, rails Coker. So freedom must be fought for afresh in each generation. Stuggle, too, despite its rejection by those of sensitive dispositions, is also a necessity in nature. ‘Only in the last thirty years have we begun to imagine living at peace with nature’, he notes, yet increasing numbers seem to be forgetting this at their peril.

War, like all struggles, is transformative, both for the individuals concerned and for society. Little wonder then, that societies which – despite their rhetoric – fear change, rejecting the uncertainties it creates and endlessly seeking to control risks, should have such qualms about it. Fighting forces them to take a view of the future, regardless of whether they prefer the present or believe in any particular cause.

This transcendental element of existence is most acutely felt by warriors, who are asked to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the ‘greater good’ – another unfashionable concept, and one invoked by The Military Covenant that has only relatively recently been codified and released (3). But again, a ‘greater good’ presumes a ‘collective’ with a sense of ‘purpose’, despite these being noticeable by their absence today.

Coker does not romanticise killing, although, like a recent report accusing the British Army of glamorising warfare (4), he notes a growing reluctance in military circles to use the ‘K’ word. The preference for euphemisms, such as ‘engage’ or ‘suppress’, can rightly be interpreted as defensive. As in animal testing laboratories, when researchers avoid the ‘K’ word, or claim to prioritise ‘welfare’, their evasion allows opponents to run riot.

It was enlightened modernity itself that put paid to Homeric heroes such as Achilles who, living in an unfettered Hobbesian ‘state of nature’, could go about butchering their opponents with little sense of remorse. The modern warrior is accountable to society, choosing to fight for a shared interest. We are not driven mindlessly into feuds through genetic blood ties, but determine our course by our own reason.

But society, suggests Coker, by sanctioning its warriors’ actions, simultaneously removes the determination of their destiny from them. This suppression of the one to the many works so long as there are many who wish to be one, and so long as all parties trust one another and themselves. If these bonds are broken, a vast array of legal codes is imposed upon would-be warriors to patrol their actions and even their thoughts.

In addition, the American cultural historian Paul Fussell suggests that the attenuation of religious belief in the modern world contributed to making modern war and especially death much harder to bear than in the past (5). ‘How does a society cope with death when it no longer dreams of eternity?’ asks Coker, noting how it has been turned into a risk to be avoided, thereby robbing it, and life, of their significance.

The error is to measure life in terms of risk at all. Life, argued Freud, loses its interest when death may not be risked (6). Another way to put it is that there is more to life than mere existence through risk management. As Coker argues, ‘Reason serves the passions; it doesn’t suppress them.’ Yet, in recent years, the military has tied itself in knots assessing risks, thereby encouraging its detractors to do likewise (7).

Take one example, the tragic deaths from gunshot wounds of four young soldiers at the Princess Royal Barracks in Deepcut, England, between 1995 and 2002. This has now led to, by one count, 17 separate inquiries, including those by members of parliament, the Ministry of Defence, the Official Review, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and a two-year independent review of the various re-investigations (8). No wonder the military feels paralysed.

Meanwhile, the West’s enemies in the ‘war on terror’ claim to embrace death. But suicide bombers are not warriors, proposes Coker, because they are not accountable to society. The problem here is to take them at face value, or to view them as that different to us in the first place. It is not just the Ummah that is not consulted nowadays, but the self-disenfranchised millions in Western democracies, too.

Maybe, in the absence of a cohering society, we are all afflicted by a form of nihilism to some degree. Coker cites Nate Fick in his memoir of the Second Gulf War exclaiming: ‘Death before dishonour. Marines tattoo it on their forearms, but these fuckers [the Iraqis] live it.’ (9) Other, more dispassionate observers, however, characterise self-styled jihadists as making a lot of noise but saying very little, and as having a passion for self-publicity.

Image influences reality, but is limited too, notes Coker. He sees how today’s ‘Jarheads’ are more likely to style themselves upon one-dimensional Hollywood heroes, hip hop and the lyrics of Marilyn Manson, than to have read or appreciated the psychological depth of Greek epic poetry, and bemoans the ‘bad ass’ influence within the US military of those for whom Tupac Shakur is a more familiar figure than Abraham Lincoln (10).

This is a lazy caricature, for while not describing Iraqis as ‘motherfuckers’ or themselves as ‘cool because we’re so good at blowing shit up’, it is the elites who are confused in the current period. They fail to lead for lack of purpose or belief in themselves. And contrary to Coker’s assertions, films do capture mythical dimensions and transcendence, as epics like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Pan’s Labyrinth prove.

He is also in danger of overstating the role of technology. Coker seems mesmerised by the world of cybernetic warriors and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs). Quite how much he knows of the ‘hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis’ is anybody’s guess. True, such developments impact on the conduct of war, but it is the loss of confidence in humanity that drives these developments, rather than the other way around.

Technology need not erode tradition and myth, as he suggests. If, for myth, we read a self-affirming narrative that inspires, instructs, enables and connects, as he proposes, then this necessitates the engagement of human passions. For tradition, we could prioritise the truth, as we see it, one that has to be fought for and engaged with, not just imparted. This is the business of politics, not technology or management.

‘Theory’, wrote Marx, ‘becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses’ (11). It is the inability of the elites today to appreciate the material power of ideas, let alone fight for them, that leave them unarmed, looking to technology or management to fill the gap. Ensuring ideas ‘grip the masses’, and become the truth, combining objective evidence with subjective will, is a labour of love entirely alien to them.

There is a real irony, then, in the US military having now introduced a ‘Warrior Ethos’ programme across its force, from basic training to the Army War College, to remind its personnel as to what is expected of them. Like ‘citizenship classes’ in the UK, this seems doomed to fail where it is most needed – at the level of lived ethos as opposed to paper exercises where, unlike on the battlefield, targets are readily met.

The British military is not immune to such instrumental trends. Reports highlight how a career in the Armed Forces ‘equips people with skills and qualifications that can be transferred to civilian life’ (12), or provide ‘an opportunity that may have been denied in civilian life’ (13). In general, the approach is one that emphasises what people can get out of the military, rather than what they will need to give.

Unsurprisingly, then, with such confusion at large across society, as well as embedded in the ranks of the military, Coker identifies how a ‘Therapy Culture’ further confuses matters. It acts as an ‘invitation to infirmity’, he proposes, noting ‘we heal psychic wounds when we are able to give meaning to our experiences. Clearly, if an experience is deemed ‘meaningless’, then ‘so is the pain and suffering that results’.

We are now a long way away from George C Scott’s portrayal of the great American General, George Patton. Talking about war at the start of the 1970 movie, he is depicted as confessing, ‘I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life’. Nowadays, it is journalists who self-depict themselves as the real heroes of war, risking it all in search of ‘the truth’ and without killing anyone to boot (14).

There is no glory in killing but, as Plato reminds us, ‘What makes us human … is not nature or nurture but our capacity to rise above both’. If we do not want, as Nietzsche warned, to find the abyss looking into us when we look into it (15), then it is high time we were reminded of these few basic truths. The fight for truth and for freedom is essential, and Coker’s book goes some way towards highlighting this.

The Warrior Ethos: Military Culture and the War on Terror by Christopher Coker is published by Routledge. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

First published on spiked, 29 February 2008

(1) War and Our World: The Reith Lectures 1998, John Keegan, Hutchinson, 1998, p.2

(2) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Jean-François Lyotard, Manchester University Press, 1984, p.xxiv

(3) Soldiering – The Military Covenant, Army Doctrine Publication Volume 5, 2000

(4) Informed Choice? Armed Forces Recruitment Practice in the United Kingdom, David Gee, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, 2007

(5) The Bloody Game: An Anthology of Modern Warfare, Paul Fussell, Scribner, 1991, p.24

(6) Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, Paul Ricoeur, New Haven, 1970, p.329

(7) Informed Choice?, op. cit.

(8) Breaking the Covenant: Governance of the British Army in the Twenty-First Century, Anthony Forster, International Affairs, 2006, Vol.82, No.6, p.1048

(9) One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, Nathaniel Fick, Houghton Mifflin, 2005, p.82

(10) Generation Kill: Living Dangerously on the Road to Baghdad with the Ultra-Violent Marines of Bravo Company, Evan Wright, Bantam 2004

(11) A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx, 1844

(12) Ministry of Defence Responds to Independent Report ‘Informed Choice?’ on Armed Forces Recruitment Practice in the UK, Government News Network, 7 January 2008

(13) House of Commons Defence Committee, Duty of Care (Vol.1), The Stationery Office 2005, p.5-6

(14) This Man’s Army: A Soldier’s Story from the Front Line of the War on Terrorism, Andrew Exum, Gotham, 2005, p.233

(15) Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

Gordon Brown’s state of terror

The UK prime minister’s vision for counterterrorism would involve reorganising the whole of society around precaution and fear.

The British prime minister’s announcement of new security measures, and his promotion of wide-ranging new partnerships to root out extremism in the United Kingdom, confirms that counterterrorism is fast becoming one of the main organising principles of society in the twenty-first century.

Gordon Brown used the annual security statement to parliament to announce a wide range of new proposals for combating terrorism. In a packed House of Commons, he presented both hard measures – increased surveillance, checks, barriers and monitoring – as well as softer ones designed to win the hearts and minds of those who might be tempted by terror.

On the same day, a related article by him in the tabloid Sun newspaper, entitled ‘I need YOUR help to beat terrorists’, sought to drive the message home. This was, he proposed, ‘a generation-long challenge’, that would require a partnership ‘with everyone’. He concluded, for those who had still not absorbed the breadth or gravity of the situation, with a piece of over-inflated, pseudo-Churchillian prose exhorting us to ‘fight street by street, community by community and year by year’.

But his actual proposals look anything but brave or combative. Rather, they are a concession and a gift to the handful of nihilistic, self-styled, radical Islamists, fantasists and wannabe terrorists whose actual impact on British life, were it not for such grandiose and vacuous security responses, remains largely marginal.

In fact, Brown’s mantra on the need for ‘physical barriers’ is the perfect metaphor for the authorities’ inability to tackle this limited threat either intellectually or emotionally. Unwilling to believe that the nation is not about to crumble in a heap of cowering vulnerability, and unable to provide any grand vision of why British society is worth defending, Brown hides behind steel doors and blast-proof windows.

Last summer, after failed attempts by alleged al-Qaeda sympathisers to detonate gas canisters at a London nightclub and Glasgow Airport, the new prime minister, less than 24 hours in the post, asked the former head of defence intelligence and the Navy, Sir Alan West, to conduct a review of security in public places. Sir Alan’s report back, now in his new capacity as Labour minister for security, formed a key part of these proposals, arguing, amongst other things, for the designing, or redesigning, of public spaces and buildings – specifically airports, major railway stations, shopping centres and sports facilities – to deter future terrorists, or to mitigate their possible impact.

As I have argued on spiked before, this focus on managing risks, rather than projecting a sense of positive purpose, reflects a defeatist attitude that can only encourage those who would want to have a go. This outlook deflects society from clarifying and pursuing any grand broader aims and objectives (see Britain’s bunker mentality, by Bill Durodié). Turning ourselves into some kind of Fortress Britain offers an easy win to the small number of cack-handed idiots we truly confront. Bombing civilisation out of existence is an impossible task, but turning society in on itself has been achieved far too easily.

Now, according to the new proposals, planners and architects will be required to consider their designs from a counterterrorist perspective, relocating windows to reduce the risk should they shatter, placing obstacles on pavements to prevent vehicle-borne devices and not building underground car parks – a restriction guaranteed to warm the heart of many environmentalists. In fact, such buildings have successfully been designed previously. They were called castles. But whilst functional, they were never the emblems of a free and open society such as ours.

Such measures have not been forced upon us through the activities of hardened terrorists – the prime minister noted in his speech that ‘no major failures in our protective security have been identified’. It is the new ethos of precaution that has been adopted throughout government that is driving these proposals. In effect, this argues that in all instances of uncertainty or doubt, society should be reorganised along the lines of the worst that might happen, applying an ‘act first, find the evidence later’ principle of organisation.

Far from suffering from ‘a failure of imagination’, the criticism levelled at the US security services by the 9/11 Commission report, it would seem now that officials and politicians seem keen to imagine rather too much. ‘Terrorism can hit us anywhere from any place’, argued Brown in the Sun. As such limitless possibilities might mean attacks beyond the major public buildings and places his security minister’s report addressed, the prime minister, in his speech to the Commons, also offered ‘updates’, ‘more detailed advice’ and ‘greater vigilance’ for other, less prominent places, such as shops, schools, hospitals and places of religious worship.

This support will be backed up by guidance and training from 160 counter-terrorism advisers who will clearly have very busy jobs. To help them in their thankless task of spreading the Gospel of Doom across the entire nation, local authorities will also now be mandated, as part of their performance framework, to assess the measures they have taken to counter terrorism. Judging by the way such targets tend to be usurped by those who are called upon to enact them, it is likely that any minor act, such as watering the hanging flower baskets that adorn many city centres, will now be counted as a possible opportunity for deterring terror.

More insidiously, Brown hopes to engage young people in opposing so-called ‘extremist influences’ not just in schools and colleges – which, over recent years, have already been turned into social engineering outlets – but also ‘through the media, culture, sport and arts’. The British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sport England, Tate Britain and Arts Council England have already signed up to such initiatives.

Once upon a time, it was just the former education secretary, Charles Clarke, who thought that ‘education for its own sake is a bit dodgy’. Now, it appears, Gordon Brown and others are proposing we all go much further than that. Culture for its own sake, sport for its own sake and the arts for their own sake, without a good dose of anti-radicalisation thrown in for good measure, are all a bit dodgy, too, it would seem.

In short, British society is to be reorganised around precaution and the fear of terrorism. Everything we do, from the buildings we use to the ideas that are taught, will be informed by the risk of a handful of nihilistic nutters blowing us all to smithereens. Society will be built – often literally – in fear of the uncommon enemy rather than to further the common good.

A youth panel to advise the government was also announced. By this logic, it is the government that is in need of support. That may not be too far from the truth. Lord West has already had to make an embarrassing U-turn regarding his endorsement, or not, for longer periods of detention without trial. West explained away his unfortunate public disagreement with the prime minister as the act of a ‘simple sailor’.

While the UK government is keen on advising President Musharraf of Pakistan as to the need to end his state of emergency, the British authorities will nevertheless seek to use their own set of emergency powers to achieve the goal of holding suspects without charge for longer than is currently allowed. Without some kind of permanent emergency in Britain today, there would be little to talk about.

First published on spiked, 15 November 2007

Suicide Bombers vs Sexual Abusers: A Battle of Depravity or Western Fixations?

Abstract: In this paper, originally presented as a talk to “The Barbarisation of Warfare” conference, held at the University of Wolverhampton on 27–28 June 2005, I indicate that if warfare is perceived as barbaric today – possibly more so than in the past – then this has more to do with our subjective confusion as to the purpose and direction of contemporary society, as well as the conflicts produced by it, than by any objective index of barbarism. While all sides in recent conflicts appear to have behaved in a degenerate or degrading manner to one another, it is worth noting that much of this perception stems from a Western inability to comprehend suicide as sacrifice, due to the demise of purpose and commitment, as well as a refusal to confront the corrosion and corruption of Western culture, and in particular the confusion and conflation of the public–private divide, driven from the top of society down. Unfortunately, a well-meaning but moralistic focus on acts of barbarism has encouraged a less than critical mindset to develop, which seeks affirmation in particular events, irrespective of evidence. This approach also fails to build a robust and effective political challenge to those who have argued for Western intervention in the affairs of other states. Indeed, these two outlooks can often exist side-by-side, thereby revealing their inner bankruptcy.

Suicide Bombers v Sexual Abusers: A Battle of Depravity or Western Fixations? Security Journal, Vol.20, No.3, pp.146-157, July 2007

Fear and Terror in a Post-Political Age

Abstract: Despite an investigation lasting almost a year there is still no clarity as to why the perpetrators of the London bombings of 2005 acted as they did. Many commentators projected their own views into the vacuum left by the terrorists. These ideas, ranging from revenge for British foreign policy to the logical outcome of social exclusion, may shape security and community-related policies adversely. This article suggests that the bombers reflected a wider sense of disgruntlement in contemporary culture, one that is largely home grown and inculcated. Exploring the recent development of this politics of alienation, and a concomitant search for identity and meaning, it is proposed that the biggest danger is to live in a society with no clear sense of direction or purpose.

Fear and Terror in a Post-Political Age, Government and Opposition, Vol.42, No.3, pp.427-450, July 2007

A cultural revolution at Tate Liverpool

In the Gospel according to John, Pontius Pilate is held to have asked Jesus ‘What is truth?’ That question lies at the heart of a major UK exhibition of contemporary Chinese art – The Real Thing.

How do we know anything? The Chinese say that the height of Mount Everest is 8,848m, so when in 1999 an American GPS reading pegged it at 8,850m the radical artist Xu Zhen organised an expedition to the mountain to bring back the top part of the summit and put it on display in Shanghai, thereby restoring the mountain to its ‘real’ height. This provoked outrage among foreign correspondents in China, especially when experts confirmed that Everest was indeed shorter than had been assumed.

The pinnacle of Everest in a refrigerated cabinet, along with expedition maps, equipment and a video of the team sawing off the peak and sliding it down the mountain – together with before and after shots – are now on display for all to see in the exhibition at Tate Liverpool as ‘8848 Minus 1.86’.

Or are they? Was it all an elaborate hoax by citizens of a country that once banned irony? Who is having the sense of humour failure now? How tall is Everest really? How do we know? Does it change? Does it matter?

Chinese art, like China itself, is too vast to be contained or pigeonholed. This allows critics to project whatever they want on to it. If they see China to be out of control and rapacious then they are more likely to fall for the Everest scam. If they see it as suffering from the tremendous upheavals of rapid industrialisation then they will read misery and drudgery in the faces of factory workers who would otherwise have toiled in the fields.

What is the real thing when it comes to China? The co-curators of the exhibition should be commended for daring to ask the question, even if the answer is full of contradictions and ambiguities, ‘the real thing’ oscillating as it does between an aspiration towards authenticity on the one hand and the Coca-Cola slogan on the other – which is perceived by many as a metaphor for the dangers of unfettered consumerism.

Outside the exhibition, in Albert Dock itself, floats a 7m high model of Russian constructionist Vladimir Tatlin’s ‘Monument to the Third International’ of 1919. Except that Ai Weiwei has remodelled the replica as ‘Working Progress (Fountain of Light) 2007′, transforming it into an illuminated chandelier that glistens on the water to celebrate ‘the enlightened thinking behind Lenin’s theories’ – distinguishing these from the system that sent Weiwei’s own family into exile during the Cultural Revolution.

Inside the exhibition hall Qiu Zhijie also references the past in his ‘Railway from Lhasa to Kathmandu’. In 1863, a 33-year-old Indian, Nain Singh, was tasked by the Royal British Engineers to map out Tibet in precise 33inch strides whilst concealing his purpose from onlookers by using prayer beads to keep count. Qiu has completed the journey in reverse, wearing ankle chains separated by 33inches and collecting local artefacts along the way that he smelted into railway tracks now suspended in the air, to symbolise the completion of the highest railway in the world, which opened in 2006.

It is as if both these artists are pointing to the fact that neither the Soviet Union nor the British Empire quite completed their plans. Only now might it be possible to fulfil Tatlin’s vision. Ai Weiwei should know as he is working with the engineers Ove Arup to build a similar structure for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Qiu Zhijie states directly that the opening of the railway would have more impact on these remote parts than the British Empire or the Chinese imposition of sovereignty on Tibet in 1959.

Nearby Wang Wei has made a video of a walled space built by migrant labourers in Beijing as part of his exhibition in the 798 Space of the Dashanzi Art District. What is he saying?

Is this a new construction within an old building that finally gets pushed down by those that made it, representing the possible fragility and futility of the new China? Or is it an old construction (using recycled bricks that arrive on donkey-drawn carts) within a newer space (built of steel and concrete) even though the space itself is reclaimed from a former machine tool factory? Wang wanted to highlight the workers’ plight in a period of constant churning and the creation of new divisions, symbolised by the wall. But his views on this and what it means may be very different to ours.

The opening exhibit itself is a play on our sense of reality. Arriving from the brightly lit gallery you walk onto a grey and dreary factory floor, populated by vast grinding machines and heavy metal ring sections over 30cm thick and a metre in length. Zhuang Hui’s ‘Factory Floor’ is eerily silent. Where are the workers? And why have they abandoned their lunch on the floor? Based on his real experience of working in ‘The East is Red Tractor Factory’ the exhibit recalls an incident when workers rushed off to the aid of an injured comrade.

Except that the meticulously recreated walls, complete with graffiti and grime, as well as the machines, chains, steel sheets and drums are all made of polystyrene, carefully and painstakingly painted to appear like the real thing. Like Everest, it fools the casual observer, but unlike much contemporary art elsewhere in the world it makes no pretence to being something it is not on any supposedly deeper level.

Elsewhere in this collection of mostly young artists, all of whose work has been completed since 2000, a sense of mirth abounds. Wang Peng locked his friends and guests into a gallery space with a padlock for which he did not have the key. How would they cope? Now the film of their reactions is the exhibit, although they did not know this at the time. More amusingly maybe, Wang is also found being filmed walking through New York and Beijing trailing a ball of string that unravels from a hole in the back of his jacket. ‘Passing Through New York 1997’ and ‘Passing Through Beijing 2006′ explores the respective reactions of passers-by, traffic and officials as they literally get caught up in his journey. Is there a difference? You decide.

Some exhibits, such as Yang Shaobin’s series of paintings, ‘800 Metres’, examining workers in a coalmine, are undoubtedly bleaker (and weaker) than others. China suffered fatal accidents in 30 mines in 2005. No one should imagine that development has not come at a cost. But is it one worth paying? Certainly the presumption by the curators that Wang Gongxin’s exhibit ‘Our Sky is Falling!’ should be read as an indictment of change appears unduly negative: a family stare in wonder as their roof caves in – but their faces neither suggest fear nor anger.

Cao Fei’s video of workers at the Osram lighting factory in Foshan was previously exhibited as part of the China Power Station: Part 1 exhibition put on by the Serpentine Gallery at Battersea Power Station in 2006 and previously reviewed on spiked (see Reawakening the ‘yellow peril’ by Tristan Edmondson).

This beautiful work can be read in many different ways. The tedium of factory work may not appeal to the artistic sensitivities of some Western cultural commentators. An appreciation of a world without light seems beyond them. But the final part of Fei’s video, ‘Whose Utopia? What are you doing here?’ entitled ‘My Future is not a Dream’, suggests hope and aspiration for a bright future among those who, for now, toil to light up the new China.

In many ways ambition and ambiguity are the key themes running through this exhibition. The works themselves are not necessarily typical of the artists. As Simon Groom, head of exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, notes in his introduction to the catalogue: ‘[M]any commentators on Chinese art are often bewildered by the variety of work an artist is capable of producing; works that might appear to lack consistency or logical connection between them, so opening them to accusations of unevenness, or lack of authenticity.’

But why should these artists be consistent, and who demands authenticity? China is a dynamic, exciting and rapidly changing society. This art reflects that. In his introduction, Xu Zhen, the man who would move mountains, urges us ‘not to seek out a logic that’s not there’, as well as stating boldly that ‘We’ll make better exhibitions next year…’. In the last of his Theses on Feuerbach, written in 1845, Karl Marx wrote; ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’. Replacing the word ‘philosophers’ with ‘Westerners’ in the above might provide an apt description for the ambitions behind The Real Thing.

In the run-up to its China Week in 2005, the BBC ran a series of interviews with young Chinese people. One of them, Jeff Qiang, remarked: ‘I know one day we will be the greatest power in the world. We all believe that.’ (2) The Real Thing suggests Chinese artists lack none of this self-belief and seem to be willing to explore almost anything, in any medium, including the meaning of meaning. Instead of trying to discover an authentic Chinese ‘voice’, Westerners would do well to be inspired by their ambition.

First published on spiked, 11 April 2007

Is London still stressed out about 7/7?

A survey claiming that 11 per cent of Londoners were ‘substantially stressed’ by the bombings raises more questions than answers.

I have an interest to declare. My partner is one of those who lost a good friend in the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005. Miriam Hyman was on the bus at Tavistock Square when the youngest of the suicide bombers, Hasib Hussain, detonated his device about an hour after the three other attacks on the London Underground.

Is my partner affected? Undoubtedly. Bereavement is painful, and it is felt individually in a way that few others can appreciate. Loss hurts. And loss of a young life brought about by such an ultimately pointless act as 7/7 can hurt even more (1).

So does my partner (a) feel upset when reminded of what happened; (b) have repeated thoughts about what happened; (c) have difficulty concentrating; (d) have trouble falling asleep; or (e) feel irritable or angry? Definitely. Yet now, answering ‘yes’ to having experienced any of these feelings in the aftermath of 7/7 indicates the presence of ‘substantial stress’, according to a team of researchers at King’s College and University College, London, in a survey conducted shortly after the 2005 attacks and now published in full.

Never mind the fact that most of us could answer ‘yes’ to at least (c), (d) and (e) every now and then – the conclusions of the research team, as presented in the British Journal of Psychiatry and reported in the Sun newspaper yesterday, are held to indicate that 11 per cent of the British population have suffered from persistent and substantial stress as a result of 7/7 (2).

The researchers first telephoned 1,010 Londoners 11 to 13 days after the 7/7 bombings and asked them about their feelings and thoughts; they then carried out a follow-up survey of 574 Londoners between seven and eight months after the bombings. In the first survey, they found that around a third of respondents were suffering from ‘substantial stress’ as a result of the bombings; by the time of the second survey, that had fallen to around 11 per cent of Londoners.

There seems to be a definitional problem in some of the language used. How upset does one need to be in order to be suffering from ‘substantial stress’? Using non-specific terms to explain an ill-defined concept like ‘stress’ is a formula that allows one to conclude pretty much anything, according to prevailing prejudices. The researchers themselves are not unaware of this problem. In their paper they argue: ‘It is reasonable to question whether our measure of substantial stress might have produced an artificially inflated prevalence estimate.’ (3) Tucked away in the ‘Limitations’ section of the paper, this caveat did not make the headlines.

If respondents answered yes to any of the questions (a) to (e) listed above, then they were judged to be suffering from ‘substantial stress’. Most said yes to the first question: ‘Do you feel upset when something reminds you of what happened?’ If you remove the yes responses to this question from the overall survey, then the percentage number of those who suffered from persistent and substantial stress falls from 11 per cent of the population to five per cent of the population.

It is somewhat surprising that the researchers, among the myriad questions they asked, did not enquire about the influence of media images and reporting of 7/7 on people’s views of the terrorist event. We are informed about the respondents’ age, gender, social class, working status, residential location, housing tenure, ethnicity, religion, income and parental status, but no mention is made of what media they follow and what kind of media images and claims they consumed post-7/7.

Those who have a link to individuals directly affected by the bombing will know that the constant reappearance of references to the attacks in the news, and particularly images of the blown-up bus (the other Underground incidents did not provide a similarly iconic image), often reminds them of what happened and leaves them feeling upset.

Feelings and perceptions are usually a poor guide for social research. For example, numerous surveys of both ordinary people and public figures in the US have consistently shown a high degree of expectation that there will be a terrorist attack in the coming months; such an attack has not come to pass. This shows that expectations can be wrong – and policy built on misplaced expectations can be disastrous.

As I have argued elsewhere, as more money has been spent on the ‘war on terror’, and as more measures are put in place to protect people from an allegedly big terrorist threat, the more people’s awareness about terrorism is raised and the more ‘stressed’ they seem to feel about it (4). Many in the British media and the authorities seem loathe to ‘let go’ of the 7/7 bombings, instead revisiting them as symbols of evil and as a justification for various legal measures. This institutionalisation of 7/7 and its effects no doubt has an impact on how people feel about the event. Could it be that society itself is prolonging the impact of terrorism on the population, by elevating terrorism to the main issue of the day and working from the presumption that it will have a long-lasting and damaging emotional impact on those who experience it?

At the same time, as the sociologist Frank Furedi has pointed out, people’s individual identities are increasingly fragile today. There is a widespread assumption that people are vulnerable and open to suffering from stress and other mental problems (5). It is notable, for instance, that those who took part in the 7/7 stress surveys were older and wealthier than non-respondents, and were less likely to have previously reported being stressed.

No doubt, some affected by 7/7 will have needed the support of psychiatrists to come to terms with their loss. But the growing presumption among professionals is that significant numbers of us have been affected somehow – a presumption which, sadly, this research will have done little to question. Ironically, those truly needing support may find it more difficult to receive it, given that we now have a situation where everyone involved in an incident is encouraged to seek counselling.

Professor Simon Wessely, a leading and insightful psychiatrist at King’s College London, tells people that whatever they do after an emergency, they should not give their name to the media. Otherwise they will never be able to ‘let go’ as the various anniversaries of the incident will bring a fresh round of calls to remember and reflect. Maybe we could add that nor should you give your name to ‘boffins’; certainly when research is carried out along these kinds of uncritical lines, the benefits are far from obvious.

First published on spiked, 3 April 2007

The government is for turning

As U-turn follows U-turn, New Labour is looking more and more like a party devoid of direction.

Another day, another U-turn. Less than a week into the New Year, a UK government minister has been told to ‘get back in your box and stay there’ by his own boss after criticising the airline industry. But this kind of thing is nothing new for a government that doesn’t know whether it is coming or going.

The minister, Ian Pearson, responsible for climate change, had very publicly rebuked a number of airlines for not taking seriously enough what he considers to be their responsibilities in relation to climate change. In an interview published in the Guardian, Pearson accused Michael O’Leary, chief executive of the budget airline Ryanair, of being ‘the irresponsible face of capitalism’, for describing a proposed EU carbon trading scheme as ‘just another tax’.

He also criticised American airlines for not wanting to have anything to do with the scheme and added that even British Airways were ‘only just playing ball’. But the following day Mr Pearson was severely reprimanded by his boss, David Miliband, for speaking out of turn. According to a senior adviser quoted in The Times (London) that day, ‘this is not how you make government policy’, and she indicated that in future Mr Miliband would lead the discussions on the carbon trading scheme.

It wasn’t the only U-turn that day. Elsewhere in The Times, it was reported that Tony Blair had questioned plans by his ministers to ban the use of ‘human-animal’ cloned embryos.

The proposed ban on fusing human DNA with animal eggs, which could provide experimental material for research into diseases like motor neurone disease and Alzheimer’s, had been criticised by leading scientists in The Times the previous day. The Department of Health had only just set out their proposals to introduce restrictions in a White Paper published in December, and officials had privately advised scientists that their applications to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to conduct such research were unlikely to be successful.

But, the scientists, including Professor Ian Wilmut – who led the team that created Dolly the cloned sheep – argued that Caroline Flint, the public health minister, and Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, had been ill-advised. Their decision appeared to be based on a small number of unrepresentative responses from interested parties answering a call for public consultation. This went on to generate adverse newspaper headlines referring to ‘frankenbunnies’ and ‘moo-tants’. Now it appears as if Tony Blair is prepared to overrule his ministers by indicating that the law should be amended.

What both these instances reveal is not hard-nosed commercial pressures winning out over vacuous rhetoric about environmental awareness and scientific ethics, even if David Miliband and Tony Blair did baulk at the economic implications of what some of their more zealous ministers were proposing. After all, slapping down the airline industry and British science is quite a lot for one day.

Rather, the fact that such senior-level decisions were reversed within 24 hours is more significant. It reveals a government whose left hand doesn’t know, or does not agree with, what its right hand is doing – a government increasingly organised around endless streams of fleeting and reversible policies rather than a small number of firm and enduring principles.

New Labour was forged in the politics of pragmatism when Tony Blair announced his government would be the people’s servant upon being elected in 1997. But his claim sought to conceal the real and growing disconnection between the party and its traditional base. Far from being popular, politicians now needed to be populist. And policy based on unchallenged prejudice and emotion does not provide a stable base to build from.

More bereft of a coherent ideology than any political party before it, New Labour also came to be dependent on a growing army of privately appointed experts and cronies. Policy led by consultants and focus groups, and an obsession with new initiatives and measurable targets, hampered its ability to define an agenda. What one group of experts or consumers might come up with on a Monday was readily undone by what another group (or even the same group) thought on a Tuesday.

Nor are these inherently contradictory tendencies restricted to government circles either. For example, last week, Derbyshire Constabulary refused to release photographs of two escaped, convicted murderers on the grounds of having to protect their human rights. Greater Manchester police issued them instead, after the Lord Chancellor had intervened, on the grounds of protecting public safety.

Over the coming months we can expect many more policy U-turns and confusions such as these, as the plethora of incoherent policy initiatives produced over the last decade, and still emanating from various quarters, are increasingly doomed to clash. What we are witnessing is a government that has no strategy or guiding vision (hence Gordon Brown’s growing obsession with the need to find one), and policymakers and institutions that have no sense of purpose or direction around which to frame their ideas and decisions.

First published on spiked, 8 January 2007

Tempted by terror

To lose a few citizens to radical Islam is unfortunate. To lose as many as 1,600 (according to the MI5 boss) could be considered careless.

Let us assume, just for a minute, that Eliza Manningham-Buller’s headline-grabbing figures about the number of terrorists who threaten Britain are accurate. The head of Britain’s security service, MI5, claimed at the end of last week that there have been five intercepted terror plots since the attacks in London on 7 July 2005 and 30 more alleged conspiracies, and that there are 200 active groups or networks and at least 1,600 individuals under surveillance in the UK.

These figures seem to have been issued in good faith – and we all have an interest in the security services ensuring that anyone who is actually planning to harm the public is stopped in his or her tracks. But, to paraphrase and abuse the words of Oscar Wilde, we might also say that, ‘To lose a few citizens to becoming terrorists is unfortunate; but to lose this many must surely count as careless.’ The MI5 boss’s revelation of scary numbers was effectively a pitch for more resources, but she also unwittingly revealed that Britain should spend as much time addressing its broader cultural problems as it does its security threat. And we could start by asking why, according to MI5, so many Britons are turning to, or at least professing to support terrorism.

Take the case of Dhiren Barot for example. This convert to Islam was, according to those who put him away for 40 years last week for plotting various terrorist attacks in London and beyond, ‘the most significant al-Qaeda terrorist captured in Britain’. If that is true, then it would seem we don’t have as much reason to fear al-Qaeda as we thought. Despite keeping copious notes about radioactive substances and filling limousines with gas cylinders, Barot had yet to acquire any actual materials. He was more like a self-styled al-Qaeda agent, and a deluded fantasist to boot.

Barot and various others, including those radical imams who sometimes hit the headlines by screaming and shouting and threatening beheadings, are all shirt and no trousers. Their barks or actions are unlikely to bring civilisation to its knees. And yet as politicians and journalists obsess over such individuals, a much bigger point is being missed: the extent to which these individuals’ views about Western civilisation being corrupt and decadent have a broader popular resonance, and not only among the Muslim community.

For instance, rather than worrying about the radicalisation of a few individuals in schools and universities – as many have been doing recently, following claims that ‘al-Qaeda’ is recruiting among these influential constituencies – we would do far better to ask what exactly we want schools to teach in the first place. Is the curriculum so uninspiring that, to some kids, radical Islamists look like an attractive alternative? Surely it is the state’s inability to provide young, bright, energetic and ambitious individuals with any clear sense of purpose and direction that is the real problem here. And yet, how much easier it is to blame the odd guy with a beard for leading young people astray.

Many of the individuals caught up in contemporary terror plots have little if any connection to people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya, Bosnia, or anywhere much beyond Luton, Burnley and Leeds. Islam is their motif rather than their motive. It is a brand name for sticking two fingers up to what they perceive to be a degenerate Western culture. But then, the assumption that Western societies are decadent and corrupt is a common one, not limited to the ranks of radical Islam.

Some people were surprised over the summer to hear that one of those arrested in relation to an alleged plot to blow up planes leaving Heathrow was the son of a Conservative Party agent. And yet, if you read the words of various firebrand Islamists, they sometimes sound quite similar to those expressed by disgruntled Conservatives, especially in the right-leaning tabloid the Daily Mail: both sides seem concerned about wayward youth, chavs, drunkenness, lack of respect, moral decline and so on. Of course one side chooses (allegedly, in many instances) to react violently against this perceived rottenness of contemporary society, while the other side merely writes irate newspaper columns about it. But both seem to share a kind of cultural self-loathing.

It is this broader cultural problem that needs to be addressed. Eliza Manningham-Buller almost reached that conclusion herself towards the end of her talk last week, when she said there are aspects to this problem that cannot be solved through her service. If we fail to engage in the bigger social debate about what we are for (rather than just against), then we will continue to scare ourselves by highlighting the potential plans of a few freaks and ignoring the wider social forces that sometimes nurture these freaks’ ideas.

First published on spiked, 14 November 2006