By Dr. Julian French.
Alphen, Netherlands. 12 June. A young British soldier is mown down in a London street and then hacked to death. Mosques and Islamic centres across England are attacked.
The liberal elite in London mouth their concerns and trot out the usual reality-defying, free speech quenching politically correct nonsense. And then it is alleged that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are using a new computer programme called PRISM to tap into emails and web-sites and that self-same elite go into over-drive.
Who is the problem here? In Britain conspiracy theorists and other assorted nutters are of course having a field day with the revelation that US and UK security services are basically doing their job.
In fact the total number of email accounts accessed by GCHQ has thus far been very small. In a frenzy of false self-righteousness the big picture has as usual been missed. There has been a failure of governments of all persuasions to promote the integration, tolerance and mutual respect upon which any functioning liberal society must rest. Having created the problem government has gone AWOL.
The simple truth is that there are an awful lot of very nasty people out there of all political and faith hues. The Internet has given them the means to connect, plan and carry out their campaigns of hatred. Now, Britain is facing an action-reaction cycle of violence as extremists feed off each other in an increasingly symbiotic relationship of hate.
The job of government is to protect the cohesion of society from enemies within and without. Government must ensure and assure the conditions for reasonable people from across society, Muslim and non-Muslim, Briton and immigrant to deploy society’s greatest defence – tolerance and mutual respect.
That is why the focus should not be on GCHQ but rather on how best to bring decent people together. Who is the enemy? It is the extremists on both sides. Therefore, to listen to the very people who have helped create the fearful society that GCHQ now must protect complain about civil liberties is to see them for what they are – hypocrites.
