Why anti-radicalisation software for schools is completely redundant. 

Once again, we see how completely disingenuous the UK government is in tackling terrorism. Recently, they have launched an anti-radicalisation software for schools. For whatever reason (probably based on the advice of some expensive consultants), they are implementing a “don’t join ISIS or anything like them” type software for schools. It’s like the Net Nanny used to stop porn, but instead of “busty blondes giving blow jobs” being flagged as “no-no” content, it will be a “dummies guide to jihad” instead. The completely piss-weak logic is that students get radicalised by searching for radical content and websites. Upon reading said content they are magically brainwashed into joining ISIS, pack up sticks and take one way flights to Syria. Such robust anti-radicalisation software will stop them in their tracks and instead direct them to Nike commercials or old episodes of Dad’s Army.

This whole process brings with it new jobs, as we suddenly have a whole field of anti-radicalisation experts that pop up selling their feeble wares to schools and government organisations. These same experts are probably the ones suggesting this software in the first place. All these attempts to stem radicalisation seem to be conveniently leaving out the core drives behind what motivates someone to go from a humble nurse to committed jihadist. That is, the people joining ISIS are an expression of the kind of dysfunctional and fucked up society we have become. They are symptoms of the wider malaise and rot that has set itself into society. 

shock and awe

In the total saturation of western propaganda we are all immersed in, people find it hard to accept that we are not only just as radical, but actually even more radical than ISIS itself. The criminality and violence the UK has inflicted on the world over the last 50 years is astounding. Historian Mark Curtis estimated around 10 million innocent lives have been ended due to direct or indirect intervention of the various UK governments. Being one of the richest and most experienced terrorist states, we get to create the false narrative that we are one of the good guys, yet like the paedophile priest who preaches the word of God on Sunday and then violently rapes small children on Monday, we relish in our blatant and unapologetic hypocrisy. The success of the UK government’s vertical propaganda is evident in how, over the last 20 years, we have murdered, maimed and displaced millions of Muslims, but the UK public mindlessly associates “Muslims” with terrorism, rather than the confronting reality that their own government, for whom they pay taxes and vote, is one of the world’s worst rapacious and murderous terrorist states. Gerbils would be proud. The UK breeds terrorists because it is, in fact, a well-established and successful terrorist state. It’s no surprise that at some point there is an equally violent and abhorrent response to the society we have become.

Another element of what radicalises people is the fact that many are looking for meaning and belonging and find it in what ISIS is professing. For many, the societal drive toward assimilating to a secular culture that is built for work, consumption and leisure feels empty, mundane and basically pointless. Seeing as we don’t offer, in any direct way, to answer people’s need for spirituality and meaning, groups like ISIS can offer a false and token version of this thirst for more.

So really stopping people from joining ISIS requires us to first stop our own terrorist actions, and secondly to address the empty and shallow materialistic culture we have become. Isis is a brutal, violent and nasty symptom of our own collective karma. To deal with ISIS, we must deal with ourselves. Looking in the mirror serves us a chance to get to the root of what’s really going on, yet our government, being perpetrators of the most violence, will instead focus people’s attention to that “terrorism” is something “out there,” some “bad thing” done by “bad people” that we must protect ourselves from. Then, in true Orwellian fashion, it may even become illegal and deemed an act of terrorism itself to state the truth that we are, in fact, the terrorists. Like the line from Breaking Bad goes, “I’m not in danger. I am the danger.”