Far-right Violence and Online Extremism

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I have long been a good friend of Baroness Warsi. I read her book and met with her, and indeed I encouraged her to apply to be the extremism commissioner at the time the post was advertised, because I thought she would bring a good measure of sense to dealing with some of those issues. Regrettably, she did not take up my invitation, but it would have been a good thing.

I am not making excuses for Islamophobia. Islamophobia exists. Islamophobia is racism. Islamophobia should be dealt with. If it happens in my party, we should deal with it and we should deal with it forthwith, and I am happy to do that wherever I see it. We should all make sure we deal with it. I totally agree with the hon. Lady: it is racism and where we see it we should stop it in its tracks.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

There is an old expression, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Words, written and spoken, have consequences. Over the past 20 years we have seen the rise of anti-migrant sentiment, anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-black and minority ethnic community sentiment, not only in the United Kingdom, Europe and America, but in Australia. Politicians and media online, in print and in other forms, newspaper moguls and editors such as the owners of Fox News and Murdoch, the Daily Express, The Sun and others have consistently run lies about all those communities. It is not surprising that some people seeing this day in, day out, start to hate those communities. We have established writers and columnists in this country, such as Katie Hopkins, Rod Liddle and Melanie Phillips, encouraging all this. When will we seriously tackle the issue of what is in the media?

[Mr Wallace]

I still believe that the best way to challenge the ignorance and misinformation spread by the likes of Katie Hopkins is to call them out and challenge their argument. The best way to bring these people down and show them to be the Walter Mittys or the fake people they are is to put their arguments to the test, because time and again they fail. I read the online advice published by groups such as al-Qaeda; it is by made-up half-trained imams who do not know what they are talking about when they talk about Islam. I see the neo-Nazi and National Action stuff; it is written by pretty much imbeciles making two plus two equal 10. The best way to expose them to our young people is to challenge them, because when they are challenged in any forum they fall over at the first test. That is a good way to put them out of business for good.