By Noah Rothman
Friday, May 31, 2019
Americans have never been entirely comfortable with their
freedoms, particularly those that license the wrong sorts of behavior from their political adversaries. The First
Amendment to the Constitution is a particular source of consternation. It’s far
harder, after all, to combat unproductive or anti-social forms of expression in
the arena of ideas than it is to silence them through the courts or the
legislature. But Americans who lament the excesses that accompany liberty can
look to the rest of the Anglophonic world to see what life would be like
without those freedoms.
The U.K. is a compelling case study in what a
government-led campaign against “bad ideas” looks like. Amid British efforts to
clamp down on the kind of ideological fervor that can manifest in criminality,
the government itself has become extremist.
“The United Kingdom is concerned about homegrown
radicalization and possible terrorist attacks committed by British nationals on
British soil,” reads the British government’s summary of the campaign against
“extremism.” The terroristic threat posed by everyone from Islamist radicals to
neo-Nazis to Irish separatists has necessitated extraordinary measures. Because
the government of this largely free society cannot capriciously imprison people
it doesn’t like, it must combat radicalization in other ways. One of those ways
has been to brand certain political activities “extreme” and to apply legal
consequences to that status.
In 2017, four members of the British military were
arrested on suspicion that they were affiliating with a far-right group that
was banned after it endorsed the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, who was
assassinated in June 2016. The Ministry of Defense determined that it had a
problem with militant nationalism in its ranks. So, to combat and stigmatize
those ideas, it trained the soldiers under its command to recognize that kind
of militancy and instructed them to inform on their radicalized comrades.
A U.K. Army document identified the “indicators &
warnings” that suggest a soldier had become “Extreme Right Wing (XRW).” So,
what are the signs that your compatriot in the trenches may be swayed by the
ramblings of the racially anxious right? Among some more overt expressions of
white nationalism, the solider may also be prone to making “inaccurate
generalizations about the Left.” He might be “increasingly angry at perceived
injustices or threats to so-called national identity” and could describe
political opponents as “Traitors.” Worst of all, the XRW among you will be
known by the fact that they “describe themselves as ‘Patriots.’”
Obviously, issuing an all-points bulletin to be on the
lookout for “patriots” in the armed forces is going to leave aspiring
informants spoiled for choice. Nor is it entirely clear why patriotic
sentiments would be limited to the British right. The British Ministry of
Defense seems aware of the controversy surrounding the document, which leaked
to the press following a freedom of information request earlier this month.
Displaying one or more of the traits of an XRW does not itself make one an XRW,
a ministry spokesperson explained. A holistic approach to combating
radicalization demands, however, that almost all right-wing views be deemed
potentially suspect, if only out of an abundance of caution.
The right isn’t alone in being targeted. Last year, the
journalist Michael Segalov was banned for no ostensible reasons from covering a
Labour Party conference on the grounds that he could potentially disrupt it. He
sued the local police force that issued the ban and discovered that he had been
secretly labeled a “known extreme leftwing (XLW) activist.” His crime was guilt
by association. Police justified the ban by noting that Segalov had once met
with leftist anti-deportation activists, some of whom later released a swarm of
cockroaches in a local restaurant. Segalov claims he was just reporting on the
events around this group’s protest, and a judge agreed. But that didn’t prevent
him from being secretly branded a threat to the state for years.
A government that is empowered to police free expression
and association will always make liberal use of its authority. Republicans and
Democrats who would prefer to see the federal government empowered to police
the kinds of conduct they don’t like should be prepared to see themselves and
their allies become the target of such a state. There is no permissive liberal
society that does not wrestle over how to combat radical ideas that prescribe
violence and persecution. But introducing severity to combat severity
sacrifices the moral high ground and is ultimately unproductive. The
undeserving who are swept up in these excessive measures now have cause to be
radicalized themselves, after all.
Britain has embraced extremism to fight extremism. In the
end, extremism wins.
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