Wednesday 17 April 2013

EDL Has ‘Potential’ To Stoke Radicalisation

Last month, a minister warned that far-right movements like the English Defence League (EDL) have the potential to inspire individuals to break off and join more extreme groups.


Delivering a speech at a conference on far-right extremism, security minister James Brokenshire said that the rise of movements such as the EDL was a “worrying phenomenon”, Bolton News reported.

He warned that the EDL and others have the potential to “stoke radicalisation” and could ultimately cross the line into an area that concerns counter-terrorism strategy.

The minister also revealed that more than 2,000 websites had been shut down since 2010 for breaching UK terror laws by the Counter-terrorism Internet Referral Unit.

Mr Brokenshire hit out at groups such as the EDL for “inflaming tensions and spreading hate-filled prejudice within communities.

His speech came as a King’s College London report claimed the EDL was exploiting concerns surrounding grooming gangs to fuel its anti-Islam agenda, focussing less on those who aren’t necessarily ‘Muslim’ or ‘Asian’ (examples here).

The far-right group is using recent cases, such as the nine Asian men jailed last year for grooming girls in Rochdale, to build support and is building a far-right network with countries across Europe, according to the university’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

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