Going global: the UK government’s ‘CVE’ agenda, counter-radicalisation and covert propaganda

Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) efforts, the government tells us, "address the root causes of extremism through community engagement". But could this globalising project have counter-productive consequences?

By Asim Qureshi and Ben Hayes

Published: May 04, 2016, 3:05 pm

Earlier this week the advocacy group CAGE and the Guardian both published revelations concerning a covert propaganda programme run by the UK Home Office as part of the Prevent programme.

We have been investigating the government Research and Information Communications Unit (RICU), the PR agency Breakthrough Media and the many 'grassroots' campaigns they worked with for almost a year with varying degrees of complicity. We have only published a small amount of the information we amassed and expect the Guardian and other journalists to reveal more in the coming days.

In this article we show how those orchestrating the campaigns have global ambitions – and despite the abject lack of debate – how the UK’s "industrial scale propaganda" programme is already being held up as best practice by the EU and UN.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.