Can Britain fight ‘extreme misogyny’ like terrorism? I have my doubts | Samira Shackle

BWhen riots broke out in the UK in late July, self-described misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate was one of the most prominent purveyors of misinformation. The riots followed a horrific knife attack in Southport – and Tate was one of those who falsely tweeted that the attacker was “an illegal immigrant who arrived by boat a month ago”. This is an example of how misogyny intersects with far-right ideology, and how the spread of extremist ideas has changed by forging connections between different online audiences. People like Tate can build a large following by spreading one type of outrage, misogyny, and then move on to other issues to attract new audiences and mix ideas – especially around large events that offer lots of engagement.

The riots showed that the way the extreme right organizes itself online is very different today than seven years ago, when the government last looked at the UK's strategy to counter extremism. It is therefore timely that the new government has commissioned a rapid policy review. Announcing the measure last week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said it would assess not only the rise of Islamist and far-right ideologies – the usual focus of the counter-extremism strategy – but also other trends, including extreme misogyny.

While this made headlines, it is not really clear what defining misogyny as extremism will mean in practice. Would expressing misogynistic views in and of itself be grounds for a referral to Channel, the government's secretive deradicalisation programme? Would it put these people on the police radar? Or would the tipping point be evidence of violent intent? (“Incel” ideology has been linked to violent attacks around the world, including in Plymouth in 2021, when 22-year-old Jake Davison killed five people and himself).

Misogyny is depressingly widespread. So how do authorities define when it is considered “extreme”? Would a police officer who circulates photos of a dead woman's body or makes derogatory comments about female colleagues be classified as an extremist? And what about a judge who decides not to convict a man of sexual assault because of the impact it could have on the man's life?

Asked on LBC about the potential risks to free speech, Home Secretary Jess Phillips replied: “You're just applying exactly the same test as you do for right-wing extremism and Islamism, aren't you? The same test should apply.” But a look at the recent history of anti-extremism policy in the UK shows that there is no clear-cut test: in fact, the question of what constitutes an extreme idea and when state intervention is appropriate is hotly contested.

When the Preventing Violent Extremism programme was launched in 2007 after the 2005 London bombings, the focus was, as the name suggests, on preventing violent acts by tackling “pernicious ideologies”. Over the following years, as the strategy was revised, the focus shifted from violent extremism to extremism in general. While some states consider disengagement – where a person rejects violent acts – to be a sufficient goal of deradicalisation work, the UK wants the rejection of extremist ideas themselves. When the Prevent strategy was relaunched in 2015, the focus on extreme ideas – rather than the risk of violence – was cemented. “For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, telling our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we'll leave you alone,” said David Cameron in May 2015.

This raises an obvious question: Should Should the government take action against people who obey the law? At the time and in the nine years since, the consensus was that it should. In fact, the state has gone beyond banning hate speech and incitement to violence and now tries to distinguish between ideas that can be freely expressed and ideas that cannot.

Most people probably agree that we do not want to live in a society where many people hold anti-egalitarian or bigoted views. The problem is defining what views are unacceptable and to what extent. In one sense, extremism is defined as by its distance from mainstream opinion, which makes it difficult to grasp. Even if one accepts the premise that the government should combat – or even criminalize – dangerous or extreme ideas, the central problem remains how to define those ideas and how exactly to combat diffuse and widespread views.

A key criticism of Prevent is that the bar for reporting is too low. The 2015 strategy (which is still in force) made it a legal requirement for teachers, doctors and other public sector workers to report extremism. Numerous human rights organisations have argued that this has led to a chilling effect, with Muslim students in particular feeling less able to express certain views, including criticism of UK foreign policy. A 2023 Amnesty report on Prevent, titled 'This is the thought police', said the programme 'strips people of their basic human rights and hampers their ability to live, work and speak freely', with reports often based on little more than a 'gut feeling'.

Politicians find it much easier to talk about “tackling hateful thinking” than to tackle the underlying causes of those beliefs. In the years since Prevent was introduced, the economy has stagnated, living standards have fallen dramatically, public services have been hollowed out, meaning many of the community support services that proved helpful in promoting cohesion have been lost. Announcing a new counter-extremism strategy is a cheaper and more immediate way of showing you are “doing something” than trying to address the structural problems that might drive people to those beliefs. Still, it is not a risk-free proposition. Responding to the announcement, the charity Women's Aid said: “If we are to overcome gender-based abuse, previous governments' previous approaches to deradicalisation have left us cautious and concerned” and warned against “burying the issue in the highly politicised counter-extremism agenda”.

If we are to believe Cooper's claim that extremism has flourished and increased in recent years, then this shows that the current approach is not working. And if that is the case, then simply adding other forms of ideology will not do much to solve the problem.

• Samira Shackle is a journalist and writes regularly for the Guardian Long Read

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