On Tuesday evening, our Director Richard Garside discussed whether the Prevent agenda to tackle terrorist attacks and extreme violence is fit for purpose.
Richard explained the background to current approaches to terrorism in the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the 7/7 bombings in London.
A lot of extreme violence, he agreed with the presenter Petrie Hosken, is perpetrated by men with violent misogynistic fantasies about women and girls.
A lot of the young men who go on to commit extreme acts of violence, her said, “have a background of misogyny, of violence towards the women and girls in their lives, and I don’t think we are taking that seriously enough”.
While expressing scepticism of approaches that “throw the net wide and scoop up a load of people, a few of whom are going to be potentially dangerous”, he also acknowledged the dilemma government faced:
If a government can’t take adequate steps to seek to intervene and prevent very very serious acts of violence against British citizens and indeed anybody living in this country then frankly what is the point of government.
