Islamic extremism has joined forces with the far left and represents a greater threat to the UK than the “phantom” far right, commentator and writer Pete North has said.
Speaking to NTD’s Lee Hall for the “British Thought Leaders” programme, Mr. North, who runs the Northern Variant account on social media platform X, said that the “real” far right extremism in the UK is coming from Islamism.
“What we’ve actually seen is, the real far right in this country is Islamic extremism,” Mr. North said, alluding to the “horseshoe theory” where political extremes meet in the middle.
Islamic Extremism and the Far Left
“It’s joined forces with the far left,” Mr. North continued, observing that in the Islamic extremist protests on the streets, a large proportion of them are leftists.“Of course, Islamism is a huge issue. But when you look at these mobs, at least 50 percent of them are a particular type of white, middle class, lefty liberal,” he said, describing those with sympathies for Jeremy Corbyn, eco-extremism, and “usually Remainer to the core.”
“This is far left extremism,” he said, noting that leftists are also the ones engaged in traffic-blocking climate protests, “the ones in the art galleries attempting to destroy priceless works of art.”
“The eco-extremism that permeates into energy policy has caused no end of damage,” he said, “and so to talk about this phantom far right threat, it’s pure misdirection.”
Qutb, who in 1966 was convicted and executed for his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, had studied socialism and literature in the 1920s and 1930s before joining the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He was a liaison for the Brotherhood to Communist International and to Egypt’s communist party. His philosophies were steeped in communist ideology.
Outrage of the Leftist Elite
Mr. North called the threat of leftist extremism an “absolutely unhinged” elephant in the room, which is “a manifestation of what I believe to be middle class entitlement.”“That’s what the far left is now,” he said, adding that the day after the election, they were “protesting the result of the general election, protesting the result of the [Brexit] referendum, trying to overturn the result of the referendum.”
“These are tyrants who are absolutely used to getting absolutely everything their own way, all the time,” he said.
The commentator said that this liberal elite’s outrage was driven by anger that ordinary people could use their vote to inform major decisions.
“This is a class war,” Mr. North said, adding that it was a particular set of the middle class who “were absolutely outraged that we had a referendum in the first place.”
“They didn’t believe that the ordinary person is qualified to comment on a major constitutional issue such as the European Union. And so they were outraged that we got a say, outraged that we got a vote, even more outraged that we won, and especially outraged that that referendum was actually carried out.
The Far Right
Mr. North also disagreed with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who last month equated Islamism and the far right, implying they were of equal threat.“This far right, as such, doesn’t exist and is not nearly as much of a threat as the far left,” he said.
“People talk about the far right in Britain. Generally, it consists of a few dozen bloggers and a few activists. There’s only—in terms of actual hardcore neo Nazis—there are vanishingly few of them ... It’s not a huge movement.”
While Mr. North disagrees with Melia’s beliefs, he thought that being jailed for making stickers was “a dark and dangerous road to go down.”
Islamic Extremism UK’s Primary Terror Threat
According to the government, the UK’s primary domestic terrorist threat comes from Islamism which accounts for more than two-thirds of attacks since 2018, 64 percent of those in prison for terrorism-related offences, and about three-quarters of MI5’s caseload.In it, Sir William said that the strategy was “not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism” and that Prevent “has a double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism.”
Normal People Branded Far Right
Mr. North also observed that ordinary Britons with “pedestrian” opinions on immigration and biology who represent the majority are now considered the extremists by the media class.“It’s actually us who are dubbed far right. We’re the majority: the people who believe that immigration should be controlled, that people who have no right to be here should be deported, that we should be able to freely discuss these issues online, that men cannot change sex.
“These are ordinary, everyday normal opinions that have been castigated as beyond the pale by a media class.”
“My opinions often get called far right,” he said. “I’m to the right of the centre right, but my views are pretty pedestrian. No different to what you would hear in the average pub in Bradford, Leeds, York, across the north, or anywhere in this country, because it’s the norm.”
