The “psychologisation of counter-extremism” is happening within a growing pre-crime industry, creating a deep overlap between national security and mental health, and the UK’s Prevent strategy is a key example of this.
This journal article published in the journal Race and Class in September 2020 and authored by Tarek Younis, explores how British nationalism in a “post-racial era” facilitates psychologisation of counter-extremism.
This is done, critically, in order to “evade the charge of racism in the management of Muslim political agency”.
By unpacking Prevent policy documents and training, this article explores how the counter-radicalisation industry of the ‘war on terror’ reveals the triangular relationship between:
- racialisation of Muslims under nationalism;
- psychologisation of the political and its associated colourblindness; and
- the nation-state’s management of dissent.
The .pdf journal article is available in full here.
This article was cited in the People’s Review of Prevent.
Related Resources
- Revealed: Secretive ‘Vulnerability Support Hubs’ in the UK Health Sector (Report, 2020)
- Separating Families: The Use of Prevent in Child Removal Cases in the UK (Report, 2018)
- Prevent and Counter-Extremism as Counter-Insurgency (Journal article, 2017)
- The ‘Science’ of Pre-Crime: The Secretive Study Underpinning Prevent (Report, 2016)
(Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash)
