British Government Reportedly Believes “Radicalization Into The Far-Right” Can Occur From Reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, And George Orwell.
Writing in The Spectator, author Douglas Murray revealed he viewed a number of documents from the United Kingdom’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) that show the agency is now attempting to address “right wing extremism.”
One of the documents he viewed contained a “reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU.” According to Murray this list included Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Edmund Burke’s Reflection on the Revolution in France. He also noted it contained select works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith.
Murray goes on to claim, “Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad.”
In fact, Murray details that George Orwell’s 1984 is also on this list of books that produces red flags to RICU.
An independent review of Prevent, a program that encompasses RICU, seemingly found that the strategy was capturing “mainstream politicians, commentators, or publications” in its web for identifying ideological extremism.
In the British government’s response to this review, a foreword by Home Secretary Suella Braverman reveaks, “[Prevent] has defined the extreme right-wing too broadly, so that it sometimes draws in right-wing and centre-right politicians and commentators.”
