In a speech tomorrow, the Prime Mister will announce a ream of new measures to fight extremism, including banning extremists from the Internet and from working with children, and closing some mosques. The government will also revive the so-call “snooper’s charter.”
The measures will include blacklisting groups that “foment hate,” which public sector organisations will then be forced to boycott, and the use of “extremism disruption orders” on those deemed to be trying to radicalise young people online, and banning them from going online or communicating on social media.
Employers will now be able to check whether an individual is an “extremist”, and then bar them from working with children.
Some mosques will also be closed where extremist meetings have taken place, the Prime Minister will claim, and powers available to the media regulator, Ofcom, will be strengthened to bring harsher sanctions against channels that broadcast content the government deems extremist.
The announcement has been made alongside a £5m fund to be handed to moderate Muslim groups and media outlets over the next six month, in a move to counter the “poison” peddled other groups.
The Draft Communications Data Bill, or “snooper’s charter”, which gives sweeping powers to the intelligence services to spy on the activities of suspected terrorists online, is also to be revived, with Ministers set to vote on the matter early next year. The legislation was blocked by the Liberal Democrats in the last Parliament.
With the government simultaneously extending its power to spy on citizens, it’s powers to monitor the press, as well as pouring money into state-sanctioned media outlets, obvious questions have been raised about freedom and expression.
“These Orwellian recommendations represent a most dangerous overreach of the state,” wrote the Christian institute, referring to the fact that those who disagree with gay marriage could be labeled as extremists.
Adding: “The Christian understanding of the relationship of citizen to state and of the state and citizen to God is being rapidly destroyed in the West.
“The outrageous absurdity in the incremental growth of oppression and harassment is that it is being done in the name of freedom, and, specifically in the U.K, of ‘British values’.”
The government’s vague definition of “British values” is: “democracy, free speech, mutual respect and opportunity for all.”
The Prime Minister has utterly unable to be more specific about what this means in practice.
He said: “We need to systematically confront and challenge extremism and the ideologies that underpin it, exposing the lies and the destructive consequences it leaves in its wake.”
Adding: “We have to stop this seed of hatred even being planted in people’s minds and cut off the oxygen it needs to grow,” The Sunday Times reports.
“MP’s should not be above the law. But this is why we need to stop the Snoopers Charter & bring in a Digital Bill of rights,” tweeted Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron.
The Scottish National Party have also pledged to try and defeat the snooper’s charter bill next year.