In Rishi Sunak’s latest attempt to revive his floundering leadership bid, he has announced that he would widen the definition of extremism to include those with an “extreme hatred of Britain”.
Anyone expressing anti-nationalist views could be referred to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation scheme. Though the government claims participation in the ‘deradicalisation’ programme is voluntary, when referrals lead to the police banging on your door at dawn or pulling your child out of maths to interrogate them, the government’s definition of ‘voluntary’ starts to seem as vague and inconsistent as its definition of ‘extremism’.
There’s a long history of British governments criminalising dissent. Sedition laws were a cornerstone of the counterinsurgency strategy that Britain used to quell anticolonial rebellions. The Indian Penal Code, drafted by Thomas Macauley, makes displaying ‘disaffection’ towards the government a criminal offence. India, like many other postcolonial nations, kept this repressive law on the books. The Modi government has used it to cement its shift towards a virulent, authoritarian nationalism. Now the postcolonial boomerang is rebounding once again on British shores.
