The UK's PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy appears to promote rather than prevent violence

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the impacts of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy. The conclusion is reached that violence may be being promoted rather than prevented by government attempts to counter ‘radicalisation’ and ‘extremism’. The motivation for this paper is the author's experience of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy in a school in east London; and its main recommendation is that counter-extremism strategies can and should be contested. This conclusion, and the explanation for it, is reached by using a critical realist approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, supported by the framework of the semiotic triangle in the context of Bhaskar's transformational model of social activity. This brings in a time dimension that, it is argued, has previously been neglected in critical realist versions of Critical Discourse Analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical discourse analysis
• critical realism
• extremism
• PREVENT Strategy
• radicalisation
• semiotic triangle

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Rob Faure Walker has recently completed a PhD at UCL Institute of Education. Prior to this he had worked as a secondary school teacher in north and east London. He also manages www.preventdigest.co.uk.

ORCID

Rob Faure Walker http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3641-6457

Notes

1 This use of ‘a notional’ is as described by Bhaskar in his final and posthumously published book, Enlightened Common Sense Bhaskar (2016a, 109). While using ‘notional’ as a noun might be unfamiliar, it is assumed that Bhaskar was referring to a notional future and, as that future may not ever exist beyond thought, the use of ‘notional’ as a noun is applicable.

2 By Tomruen at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17023785.