In my blog on the prevent industry and the RAN, I referred to the It-briefs-well mechanism that I described as a systemic pattern in which mostly those things are said and done which brief well to others, i.e. are liked and welcomed by colleagues, superiors, politicians, and other relevant third parties – regardless of what practice experts in the field are saying. It may thus be understood as a systemic form of obedience which has detrimental effects on the success of practical prevent work and may even cause “European added damage”.
One instance of the It-briefs-well mechanism regarded the fact that the EU and Member States in their Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) discourses since the beginning of the 2000s had largely fallen prey to a cross-the-board bias on so-called Islamism – thus obfuscating other forms and more contextual and systemic views on extremism, which would also implicate one’s own role in it. This bias had violated two ground rules of good practice in PVE policy-making, which are: Never focus on only one sort of violent extremism, and: Avoid terms which implicate ethnic or religious groups, such as Islamism and Salafism. Instead use general concepts, such as “violent extremism” or “religiously motivated violent extremism”. Also always be aware that good practice in prevention often follows the same methodological principles across all forms of extremism.
The reasons for these rules are as simple as they are evident: For if you don’t follow the first rule you will inevitably cause polarizing effects by involuntarily pitting the one (reciprocal) extremism against another; and if you were to use terms like Islamism, Salafism, Christianism or the like, we would stigmatize large groups of society. All this fuels further polarisation, resentment and violent extremism.
