Tories intend to tackle 'extremism'

[Red Son]

The party line continues in the grand old tradition of Blair, Thatcher and others who were keen to weed out the 'extremists' / anti-government elements in society.

From a BBC article entitled "What is extreme?"

Home Secretary Theresa May has proposed a significant shift in government policy, expanding the counter-terrorism strategy to include fighting what she describes as "the full spectrum of extremism".
The Conservatives have long-argued that they have sought to tackle both violent and non-violent extremism, but existing legislation and the courts have always limited restrictions to those organisations or individuals who it can be demonstrated are concerned in terrorism.
Now Mrs May is proposing a future Tory government introduce banning orders and extremist disruption orders for activities that clear a much lower bar. The model "will reflect the existing proscription system" for terrorist groups, but the criteria will be different.

So what would constitute an extremist group? There are three kinds of activity listed as reasons for designating an organisation or an individual as extremist:

spreading, inciting, promoting or justifying hatred on the grounds of disability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and/or transgender identity
proposing to overthrow democracy
members of the public, or a section of it, will be harmed
Harm is defined as:

at risk from acts of violence or other criminal acts
at risk from public disorder
at risk from harassment, alarm or distress
a threat to the functioning of democracy
Some bullet points can (and have) been used to define any number of anti-capitalist and similiar protestors and activists. So, further strengthening of this kind of legislation may not lead to late 1930s Germany or some other hack comparison but it's getting there!

[GiantMonkeyMan]

All of it besides the first bullet point regarding discrimination could potentially define most revolutionary groups (if by 'democracy' they mean liberal bourgeois democracy).

[Martin Luther]

This is targeted at social unrest first of all. The first bullet point is thrown in to include rightists and islamists.

[bricolage]

members of the public, or a section of it, will be harmed
at risk from public disorder
at risk from harassment, alarm or distress

yeesh, disorder, alarm, distress. that's very broad.

it all depends on how the 'banning orders and extremist disruption orders' are implemented but still, urgh.

[Futility Personified]

Extremism is one of the most annoying words in the language. You might argue it's a bit extreme to expect me to work for minimum wage or have to live on £120 a fortnight, failing to find work after an allotted amount of time where I will be hassled and put down constantly to then go on to the point where I depend on theft or charity for nourishment.

Anything is extreme from the right angle. I hate to invoke Orwell, but I will anyway. Extreme is synonymous with bad, now we have reached the point where the state apparatus can censor contrary information unless people explicitly ask not to, and what sort of deranged pervert would want to be exposed to extreme pornography? I am referring to the laws they passed maybe a bit more than a year ago in relation to opt out internet censorship.

It is pretty fair from their perspective to say I am an 'extremist', so that might be why the moniker pisses me off so much, but it is just lazy. So lazy. It stifles debate and denies a platform instantaneously. If you label something as 'extreme', how can you understand what it is? It is just a political slur, and nothing really new from the tories in many ways. Not that Labour wouldn't stoop either. Good old BoJo was on the tube earlier calling Ed Miliband a marxist (I shite you not). I'm rambling and losing my point, but i'm just tired of this horseshit.

What is the acceptable way to express dissent? Is voting Green the sign of impending bolshevism? I recall some tory fuckstick going on about how the environmental movement had been infiltrated by trotskyists a couple of months ago. Surely those people are dangerous extremists.

While we're at it, let's get rid of those anti-war mongers! War is a pretty normal concept in this day and age, it's a bit extreme to want to get rid of it! My point is becoming banal at this stage but you get the picture. Dissent is extremist. At this point, critical thought is becoming extremist.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Opposing "bigotry" would be uncontroversial and presumably would entail opposing both ISIS sympathizers and the EDL. Opposing "harm" to "members of the public" or the "overthrow" of "democracy" is vague and can be used easily to justify banning Leftists the way McCarthy went after Communists

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

to be honest, I don't see them seriously targeting the EDL or Britain First - or rather, they'll probably make a show of 'tackling' the more violent ones and continue as normal.