Thread by @docrussjackson

The @Conservatives know that their cynical & inflammatory culture war is not just divisive, but extremely dangerous.

The head of Historic England says employees have received many threats.

The unhinged Tories & their media backers are going full Trump.

theguardian.com/p/ghb95/stw

Last year, Britain’s top lawyers wrote to Priti Patel to express their concern after a man with a large knife entered a London law firm & launched a “violent, racist attack” was said to be directly motivated by Patel's irresponsible comments.

theguardian.com/politics/2020/…

Since 2018, Europol, the FBI & MI5 have all said that FAR RIGHT TERROR PLOTS ARE MULTIPLYING FASTER THAN ISLAMIST ONES, yet a #PREVENT review is to be led by grotesque hard-right crank William Shawcross, who describes gay rights & climate change as "PC". theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Shawcross adores #Murdoch, & has written of a “vast fifth column” of Muslims in Europe who “wish to destroy us”.

PREVENT stats show that in 2020, 30% of people deemed to be at risk of hateful #radicalisation came from Islamic backgrounds, 43% were potential far-right extremists.

17 human rights & community groups say they will boycott the #PREVENT review in protest at the appointment of Shawcross, because "the UK government has no interest in conducting an objective & impartial review of the strategy". amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

Shawcross is an Old Etonian & friend of Michael Gove, & a regular at hard-right thinktanks Policy Exchange & the Henry Jackson Society.

The @Conservatives largely ignore #Islamophobia, & demonizing Muslims & human rights activists is now just part of their populist nationalism.

Depriving Begum of her citizenship was opportunistic populism: “The right to a fair trial is not something democratic govts should take away on a whim... wielding extreme powers like banishment without the basic safeguards of a fair trial sets an extremely #dangerous precedent."

Since 2018, Europol & MI5 have said that FAR RIGHT TERROR PLOTS ARE MULTIPLYING FASTER THAN ISLAMIST ONES: far right extremism is now a major threat in the UK - more than a quarter of serious terrorist attacks stopped in the final stages are linked to neo-fascist/racist groups.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Hate Crime warned that far-right group 'Patriotic Alternative' is promoting an alternative home-schooling curriculum, which includes racist songs, claims that only white people are English, & that #BLM is out to destroy ‘western civilisation’!

'Patriotic Alternative' claims 10,000 people a month are viewing its syllabus online.

It claims it helps kids “learn history & culture free from the shackles & ideology of the National Curriculum”, focusing on a “heroic age” when Britons were “a #SUPERIOR kind of people".

Counterterror experts warned 'Patriotic Alternative' is recruiting children AS YOUNG AS 12 online.

Leader Mark Collett was exposed in a 2002 documentary about the BNP: he said he admired Adolf Hitler & called AIDS a “friendly disease because blacks, drug users & gays have it”.

The @Conservatives know all this. But they don't care. They WANT division & polarization, even though it has resulted in the return of far right extremism, And the Govt's dangerously irresponsible culture war rhetoric, it's artificial "war on woke", will make things MUCH worse.

So every time MPs, journalists, & people like Andrew Neil, Laurence Fox, Hartley-Brewer & Farage amplify "the war on woke", or use far-right antisemitic conspiracy theories like "cultural Marxism", or denigrate attempts to learn from colonial history, it's FUCKING #TERRIFYING.

Free speech is hard won & incredibly important, but MUST NOT BE ABUSED: it was PRECISELY the deliberately divisive & grossly misleading scapegoating of minorities in 1930s Germany that led directly to intolerance, Nazi authoritarianism, & the #Holocaust.

#NeverForget
#NeverAgain