In the wake of the spike in far-right activity, the risk of 'cumulative extremism' is one of the issues that should occupy minds
The horrific murder in Woolwich has already triggered a disturbing chain of events. In less than 24 hours, the number of supporters of the far-right English Defence League's (EDL) Facebook page has rocketed more than threefold, from around 25,000 to over 75,000. Then, in response to the group's online call for "feet on streets" and its claim that "we are at war", about 100 EDL activists descended on Woolwich to "tell the religion of peace that we don't need them here", and threw missiles at police. Online, many EDL supporters were calling for violence. Around the same time, in Essex a 43-year-old man was arrested for walking into a mosque with a weapon and attempting arson, while at a mosque in Gillingham a man was taken into custody on suspicion of racially-aggravated criminal damage. This morning, Nick Griffin of the fading BNP has called for a demonstration in Woolwich, to bring the disparate extreme right groups together.
However depressing, these reactions and attacks are not surprising. Recent research in the United States has indicated how much hate crimes against minorities tend to increase in the first week after a terrorist attack. So it is likely that the event will both harden the mindset of rightwing extremists, who are themselves fanatical about what they deem to be the threat from Islam, and bring a new cohort of citizens into the orbit of rightwing extremism. As of today, about 50,000 new people will be receiving regular messages from the EDL into their Facebook news feed.
These reactions point to a set of issues that should be on the minds of security and policy communities. Here are three, which I think are particularly important.
The first concerns the neglected challenge from what is often called "cumulative extremism". In Britain, we have become used to forms of extremism that attempt to mobilise support from clearly-defined and often specific issues, such as grievances over British foreign policy, or anxieties over immigration and Islam. But cumulative extremism is far more complex, and occurs instead when one form of extremism, for example rightwing extremism, mobilises specifically in response to another form, for example violent Islamism. As with neighbourly or playground disputes, the actual original grievance is often forgotten.
The risk is that cumulative extremism leads to a spiral of mobilisation and then counter-mobilisation, which requires an altogether different set of policy and security tools than simply managing a renegade EDL demonstration or a single terrorist attack. While at first this may produce hardened rhetoric or discourse on Facebook, it may have more serious long-term effects, by strengthening feelings of collective identity and loyalty among activists, sparking violent and sporadic reprisals and, at the absolute extreme, an enduring cycle of violent or terrorist action. We have seen this dynamic in cases such as Northern Ireland. Cumulative extremism arguably exposes the inadequacy of so-called "counter-narratives" that focus simply on attempting to resolve particular grievances within particular extremist communities. We need to know far more about how and when this interplay occurs, how it escalates and how it can be stopped.
A second issue is the changing nature of extremism. In many respects, we are a long way from the days of 7/7, where our collective focus was on tackling al-Qaida affiliated or inspired groups. Today, it is routine for analysts within terrorism studies to point to the capacity of individual activists, some of whom are radicalised online and have never engaged offline with actual ideologues, to commit attacks in the name of Islam. This brings its own set of challenges. At the same time the extreme right has also become far more fragmented, chaotic and less predictable. It is now less interested in the conventional political system, and has disintegrated into a higher number of small but openly combative groups, most of which have given up on elections in favour of the streets, as we saw in Woolwich. Our research shows that EDL supporters are more likely than others in society to view violence as a justifiable course of action, especially when it is against perceived extremists. But the events of the past day also demonstrate, clearly, how the modern extreme right can translate online bluster into offline action. In only a few hours, the EDL had a small number of committed activists on the streets, disrupting investigations and distracting police resources. While cumulative extremism may well be the broad challenge, we also need to sharpen our understanding about how current and specific forms of extremism are evolving: how they move online to offline; when and where to intervene in this process; and how to minimise the prospect of violence.
A third and more sensitive issue is the relationship between the extreme right and the armed forces. In its own world, the extreme right has long aligned itself with the armed forces, organising followers around slogans such as "no surrender", and juxtaposing the courage and service of soldiers with the "corrupt" and "out-of-touch" politicians. The extreme right actively pitches to the armed forces, largely because they believe they need support from the army to achieve power, or during the "race war" that activists argue will soon descend upon Britain. This is what led the BNP, in 2005, to promise that retiring members of the armed forces should be able to retain their weapons and ammunition, and the BNP and EDL to establish internal divisions for these personnel. These links have generated attention from mainstream media, and in countries such as Germany and Greece have sparked interest among policy and security agencies who have expressed concern at the ability of extremists to rally support within the infrastructure of the state. It remains early days, but rightwing extremists will almost certainly seek to exploit Woolwich to bolster support among the armed forces. For this reason, we would be well placed to look more seriously at this relationship.
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