I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Notes from the Borderland: Back and sizzling at the table

After a very considerable hiatus, the parapolitical magazine Notes from the Borderland is back. Issue 12 is out now, and covers an eclectic range of issues. The magazine is available in bookshops like Housmans in Kings Cross and stores stocked by Central distribution, and also via the Magazine Heaven chain.

The front cover shows the disastrous National Action rally in 2015, where the far-right's finest ended up hiding in the left luggage facility at Liverpool Lime Street station, besieged by anti-fascists and surrounded by rather nervous looking coppers. Larry O'Hara and Dave Hughes question the state response to far-right terrorism in recent years, not least when it is a phenomenon so significantly dwarfed by its jihadist rivals. A significant player in the trials involving neo-Nazis has been academic Matthew Feldman - O'Hara dissects just how low the bar may be when it comes to academic 'expertise' in some of these cases. The sorry collapse of CARR - the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right - an organisation Feldman founded, features as a perhaps classic example of the ability of some of those on the left of politics (as they would see themselves) to eat their own. The questions this debacle raises illustrate that even within an academia where it has the pitch to itself, the left's iconoclasm ensures that it is more interested in smashing up, than building institutions.

NFB is perhaps the only parapolitical magazine in the UK now appearing in print form. Old rival Lobster moved to online only many years ago, and if there are any new kids on the block (Declassified UK perhaps?) they have been born and will no doubt only ever breathe and toddle online. I think that's a shame - I don't believe the human brain can read detail or theory online for a significant amount of time. Its pleasing therefore to see Verona Silenda pick up her stiletto and wield it in the direction of artificial intelligence and the threat technology poses to both our politics and our personal freedoms. Technology of course, makes hypocrites of us all, and it was a delight to be reminded once more of Steve Booth's old cartoon, on page 50 about the primitivist CD-Rom.

One book I don't have from my days in the Anarchist movement is the Anarchist Cookbook. Heidi Svenson covers recent terrorism trials involving this text, and some of the curious specimens caught up in them - none more so than Mr Logic lookalike Oliver Bel. I have contributed a short piece on the environmental movement and its giddy approach to fascism, which it seems to see virtually everywhere, but most certainly in the production of the fossil fuels that we, for now at least, cannot do without. Comments on my article are welcome.

In general terms the magazine, while detailed, sustains a humourous tone, is well produced and is perhaps best read in chunks. As Brian Clough once said of televised football - you don't want Sunday roast every day of the week. Notes from the Borderland is a roast dinner, not a sandwich at your desk. As with any roast however, some parts are perhaps better than others. If there is a rubbery carrot served it is Dave Hughes's article 'It isn't just them.' This is almost teenage in its naiveté about pro-Palestinian marches, and the wider Gaza conflict. Contrary to Mr Hughes's rose tinted spectacles, the reason the arrest rate at these marches is 'lower than Glastonbury' is because the authorities (including the very spooks NFB is supposedly watching) have treated them as a safety valve, broadly allowing extreme behaviour, threats and support for terrorism to occur on the streets, rather than force it underground. Indeed the point is made by Neil Basu, former head of counter-terrorism policing and Sir Keir Starmer's newest buddy, that the marches are important for that very reason. Bear in mind though, that those people calling for jihad here or anywhere else are not your friend........

And there's more. There is also an NFB special issue on the 1999 London nail bombings, an outrage for which we have just seen the twenty-fifth anniversary. Details of that publication and where to order it, are here.

The phoney war? Radical environmentalists, animal rights activists and direct action

Earlier this year Routledge, who seem to dominate academic output when it comes to the political fringe, published the Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism.

Edited by Elisa Orofino and William Allchorn, it is a pretty hefty piece of work, with 32 separate articles.

One of them is from me, 'The phoney war,' which charts radical environmental and animal rights activism across five decades. I argue direct action leads to a conversation between protestors and the authorities, and in the case of the animal rights movement, militant activism faded as many of the protestors core demands (such as the abolition of hunting) were won. The present era is significantly different, in that activists propagate arguments of imminent environmental collapse, a position that is to at least some degree accepted, and even echoed, by ruling elites.

What happens though, to this movement, as we get potentially closer to the environmental point of no return (2030?) that they insist is approaching? When does the conversation stop?

Two short comments on the handbook itself. It is a substantial piece of work, covering differing types of extremism, from religious actors to the far-right, far-left and environmentalists. Unfortunately the nature of academic publishing means that for all the sterling work put into the project, few will seriously study it. The cheapest price - £178.18 - guarantees that. Although you can read it via a Kindle for £38. Academic publishing appears content to phase out actual books, and to sell at a high price to universities and similar institutions, leaving out the man and woman in the street. In the long-term that strategy is unsustainable - it is taxation which of course funds the universities. The relevance of academic research, especially in the social sciences, needs to be debated far more than it is. Secondly, I salute the enormous amount of work the editors have put in to tie this project together. It is much appreciated by this author.

The Trojan Horse Affair: A Documentary Record

Last month I was co-author, along with my colleague Damon Perry, of a report into the Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham Schools.

You can read The Trojan Horse Affair: A Documentary Record online here. A pdf of the report can also be downloaded below.

Download The Trojan Horse Affair A Documentary Record

The Personal Is Perhaps Not Political

A couple of years after everyone else, I have just finished reading 'The Madness of crowds: Gender, Race and Identity' by Douglas Murray.

It is very good, indeed the only one of his books which has missed the mark is probably the one no one talks about now - the 2006 text 'Neoconservatism: Why we need it'. The truth of course is that we didn't!

In the conclusion to the Madness of Crowds, Murray writes beautifully of the effort people put into politics, and how identity politics in particular becomes all-consuming. It is worth quoting in full:

But of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics - let alone politics on such a scale - is one of the unhappiest. Politics may be an important aspect of our lives, but as a source of personal meaning it is disastrous. Not just because the ambitions it strives after nearly always go unachieved, but because finding purpose in politics laces politics with a passion - including rage - that perverts the whole enterprise.

For anyone who has ever been involved in, or observed a political split within an organisation, these words hit home:

If two people are in disagreement about something important, they may disagree as amicably as they like if it is just a matter of getting to the truth or the most amenable option. But if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement, then the chances of amicability fade fast and the likelihood of reaching any truth recedes.

The quotes are on p.255-56 of the 2020 paperback edition.

Why is Extinction Rebellion protesting against gender-critical feminists?

Yesterday spiked were good enough to publish an article I wrote on the Bristol Extinction Rebellion FB page calling a protest against a feminist meeting at Bristol University.

A link to the article on the spiked website is here. A pdf of the piece may be read below.

Download Why is Extinction Rebellion protesting against gender-critical feminists_ - spiked 08 05 2022

Delegitimising Counter-Terrorism: The activist campaign to demonise Prevent

Last month I was one of three authors of a new report for Policy Exchange, looking at the Islamist campaign against the prevent policy.

You can find a link to the report here. And download a pdf of the report below.

Download Delegitimising-Counter-Terrorism 2022

20 Years On From 9/11, Are We Still Funding Those Who Mock Us?

9/11 retrospective articles are everywhere this weekend.

This piece, for the Policy Exchange website, dabbles with that, but attempts to look more broadly at the importance of funding in the propaganda wars which follow in the wake of both terrorism and counter terrorism.

You can view online here, or as a pdf below:

Download 20 years on from 9 11 are we still funding those who mock us Policy Exchange 10 09 2021

Could the Fishmongers Hall attack have been prevented?

Following the inquest into the killing of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt in the November 2019 terrorist attack at Fishmongers Hall in London, I have written a short piece for Spiked on the question of whether the attack could have been prevented.

The article is on the Spiked website here.

It can also be read as a pdf below.

Download Could the Fishmongers Hall attack have been prevented spiked 02 06 2021

A Review of Al-Qaeda 2.0: A Critical Reader by Donald Holbrook (ed.)

Critical Studies on Terrorism has published my review of Al-Qaeda 2.0, which is largely a compilation of Ayman al-Zawahiri's writings in the post Bin Laden era. It shows the religosity of al-Zawahiri's world view, and the depth of the historical sweep from which he, and indeed Al-Qaeda, view the world.

The first 50 people to do so, can download a free pdf copy here. I think after that, you will need access to an academic library.