Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

New Met police commissioner, Mark Rowley, has refused to meet the president of the National Black Police Association, & suggested he will ban officers from “taking the knee” - but he HAS met lobbyists from the hard-right Henry Jackson Society...

theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/s…

In 2018 we found out that Rowley, at the time the UK's top counter-terrorism police officer, had met officials from the right-wing extremist US think tank, the anti-abortion Henry Jackson Society, after agreeing to endorse a report on Islamist terrorism.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1564931297314803713?s=20&t=KrpLCEyYzxuQr3qeAFvskg

Mark Rowley is linked not just to the Henry Jackson Society, & the anti-abortion Heritage Foundation, he is also an "Academic Advisor" to the Tories' favourite opaquely funded free-market lobbying group, 'Policy Exchange', who have attacked our Police.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1564931297314803713

In 2019, Policy Exchange published a polemic, widely covered by the "news" media, claiming #ExtinctionRebellion is led by 'dangerous extremists'. Policy Exchange has received funding from the power company Drax, the trade association Energy UK, & the gas companies E.ON & Cadent.

Here's Rowley at a Policy Exchange event in November 2021, 'Tackling Terrorism in Britain: Threats, responses & challenges twenty years after 9/11' (😬), arguing the UK focuses too much on (the fastest growing UK terrorist threat) the far-right, at the cost of non-white threats.

It was 2017 when Rowley met with officials from the right-wing opaquely funded 'trans-Atlantic foreign policy & national security think tank' (in reality, a lobbying group), the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), when Rowley was the UK's top counter-terrorism police officer.

While describing itself as non-partisan, its outlook has been described as neoliberal & neoconservative.

In March 2017, Rowley had been due to speak at the parliamentary launch of a HJS report on Islamist terrorism, but pulled out the afternoon before the event.

Rowley pulled out following complaints from Muslim organisations, which accused HJS of “peddling Islamophobia” & "demonising" Muslims.

The Met Police said he'd been unable to attend because of “work commitments” & instead he sent a statement of support welcoming the report.

Rowley described the controversial report as a “factual, impartial & highly useful resource”.

Emails reveal Rowley had by then met Hannah Stuart, an HJS senior research fellow & the author of the report, who wrote "I very much enjoyed talking with the Assistant Commissioner”.

Following the 2019 Christchurch attacks in New Zealand, Rowley told the @BBC that it was "clumsy thinking" to claim Islamophobia is a form of racism, has also told the BBC that the rise in far-right extremism & hate crimes was due to a "lack of integration" by ethnic minorities.

Earlier this year, & entirely predictably, William Shawcross's controversial PREVENT review was leaked, & it claimed the government’s counter-terrorism programme has been too focused on right-wing extremism and should now crack down on Islamist extremism.

In 2012, as a director of the Henry Jackson Society, William Shawcross said: “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future. I think all European countries have vastly, very quickly growing Islamic populations.”

theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/m…

A key contradiction about UK-based Islamic radicalisation is that while the Right claim 'lack of integration' among some Muslim communities is a significant contributing factor, the ethos of the free-market Right is that they are AGAINST "social engineering" (Govt intervention).

Two points in this thread need further clarification.

First, The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) is NOT an exclusively US "think tank", it is a trans-Atlantic "think tank", based in the UK.

The second is more complex.

I claimed the HJS is 'anti-abortion'. While the Heritage Foundation, at which Liz Truss has spoken, IS explicitly anti-abortion, this is NOT the position of the HSJ - apologies.

This 2015 Spinwatch report touches on the HJS & its relation to abortion:

purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles…

The Spinwatch Report highlights the tension between the HJS’s attempt to broaden its appeal to liberals over issues like women’s rights, & its increasingly right-wing agenda, which continued in 2015, when it published a report on ‘honour’-based violence against women in the UK.

"The report followed a screening hosted by HJS in summer 2014 of the film ‘Honour Diaries’, which was produced by the New York-based Islamophobic organisation the Clarion Project. Before this, HJS had never shown any substantive interest in women’s rights in the UK."

The HJS had never conducted any research previously on the far more widespread problem of domestic violence more broadly. But the HJS's interest in women's rights is undermined by the fact that in the same month it hosted a talk by the Republican Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal.

In 2014, pro-lifer Jindal became embroiled in a row due to his involvement in a prayer rally paid for by the ultra-conservative American Family Association, accused of linking natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage & abortion.

Back in Louisiana following his trip to the UK, he also provoked the ire of women’s rights advocates for his involvement in efforts to block a New Orleans abortion clinic in February 2015.

Jindal’s event with HJS at Westminster on 19 January also caused controversy.

During his speech, Jindal amplified what we now call The Great replacement Conspiracy Theory by claiming that some Muslim immigrants were seeking ‘to colonise western countries, because setting up your own enclave & demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that’.

Despite the fact Fox News pundit & self-declared ‘Islamic terrorism expert’ Steven Emerson had been widely ridiculed just one week earlier for making similar claims about ‘no-go’ zones in Britain, Jindal stood by his comments & the HJS issued neither clarification nor criticism.

The Spinwatch report authors say Jindal’s subsequent insistence, during a CNN interview, that in London ‘there are neighbourhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils,’ is emblematic of the HJS’s effort to spin Islamophobia as concern for women’s rights.

For more on the links between the Henry Jackson Society – a lobbying group sponsored by the financial backers of the US far-right – the UK Government, & new London Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley, see this 2021 @BylineTimes article:

bylinetimes.com/2021/03/17/the…

Finally, an article about the Head of Security & Extremism at Policy Exchange, one of Britain’s largest & most influential right-wing think-tanks, 20-year veteran of an anarchist group which advocates violent action to overthrow the state, Dr Paul Stott.

bylinetimes.com/2022/05/18/tor…