There is a far bigger threat to Britain than fringe extremists: Tory radicalisation

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If Michael Gove really wants to root out the forces threatening British society, perhaps his party should look in the mirror, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

‘Tories revving ideological engines with a Trumpian direction in mind will not be listed under whatever rubric Michael Gove devises.’‘Tories revving ideological engines with a Trumpian direction in mind will not be listed under whatever rubric Michael Gove devises.’If Michael Gove really wants to root out the forces threatening British society, perhaps his party should look in the mirrorwas arrested for the murder of Jo Cox MP in 2016, he told police he was a “political activist”.

The two assassins’ doctrines, radical Islamism and white supremacism, are antithetical but not dissimilar. Both summon adherents to holy war. Mair and Harbi Ali shared a sense of sacred duty to avenge injustices against their people. In local MPs from different parties, they found a common concept of the enemy.

Jo Cox was killed because she was campaigning for Britain to remain in the EU. Mair saw himself as a soldier in a liberation struggle against foreign powers that conspired to swamp white Britain with migrants. That was a derangement, but it could be reached on a trajectory from. Remainers were still being called traitors, quislings and saboteurs in parliament and the press for years after Cox’s death.

The search for a location where the “extremism” happens leads not to a line on the political spectrum but a threshold in the radical psyche. It is a critical mass of perceived victimisation that becomes an obligation to take revenge. It is the cognitive fuse that blows, turning activist into executioner.

Of course, democracies must vigilantly monitor traffic in extreme views. But the paradox of a free society is that a tiny minority is allowed to believe things that would, if enacted as majority rule, extinguish freedom for all. Democracy allows the virus of anti-democracy to incubate and trusts that it won’t be contagious.

A prime minister who deferred to the unwritten codes of British democracy would never have dissolved parliament on a whim,when his Brexit plans were thwarted. Conservatives who cared about the rule of law would not support a bill to declare that certain facts about Rwanda, asserted by the supreme court,

 

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