Introduction
Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy CONTEST, first launched in 2003 as the War on Terror ramped up, is most known through its Prevent programme, which aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or terrorist supporters. The Counter Terrorism and Security Act imposed a “Prevent duty” on public bodies such as health or education, requiring them to report those who they deemed at risk of radicalisation. In schools, this Prevent duty is carried out through Citizenship classes.
From its beginning, Prevent has been controversial, often accused of being racist or Islamophobic. In particular, the National Union of Students ran a campaign called Students Not Suspects, which called for the abolition of Prevent. In doing so, they collaborated heavily with controversial Islamic groups such as CAGE. In recent years however, there have been more Prevent referrals for those through to be at risk of far-right extremism than Islamist extremism. Although far-right extremism has claimed lives in Britain over the last few years, Islamist extremism has proved much deadlier, which has raised questions about why these referrals are so “out of kilter”. Most of those referred have been under the age of 20, due to the Prevent duty in schools.
As with all modern British government activity, there is a wealth of out-sourcing. One of the “civil society organisations” which has financially benefited most and which is directly supported by the Home Office is Shout Out UK.
What is Shout Out UK?
Shout Out UK was founded in 2015 by Matteo Bergamini, to “fix the lack of political education in schools”. It now operates as a social enterprise, going into schools and offering online learning platforms. In particular, they want to ensure that Political Literacy is taught as a subject in schools and that “young people are given the tools to identity disinformation for themselves” as otherwise “extreme views will thrive and democracy will suffer”.
As part of this, they operate as the secretariat of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Political Literacy. APPG stakeholders include a blizzard of groups, including The University of Edinburgh Law School, Clean Up The Internet, the Electoral Reform Society, Votes for Schools and a great many others.
Shout Out UK is very clear that there is no “shady” funding for their work. Instead, it all kicked off with £85,000 in seed money from SFC Capital. Otherwise they rely on schools, parents, and individuals who buy the workshops and courses they offer or who subscribe to their SOUK Ed platform. They also bid for government tenders and receive grants from familiar sources like the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (£54,275 over 13 months), Nesta, and the Paul Hamilton Foundation. Altogether grants make up 15% of their income.
Recently they teamed up with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to convene a Youth Policy Development Group (YPDG), which involves 18-25 year olds living in England getting the chance to join a “diverse 30-member team” to draft policy briefs, to be presented to government ministers. They describe this as “a fantastic opportunity to build up your CV, your policy-making and public speaking skills, and your contacts in government”.
Other projects have included using a picture of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King to encourage people to register to vote (funded by the Greater London Authority); creating a “climate change curriculum” (funded by the World Wildlife Fund), which oddly includes a question about how many US congressional candidates supported the Qanon conspiracy in 2020; teaching about the benefits of the European Convention on Human Rights in the UK (funded by the Open Society Foundations); a Women in Politics Hackathon intended to “‘hack’ the problem Parliament has with the lack of representation of women, particularly those who are BAME or LGBTQ+”; a Youth Leader’s Debate for Channel 4; a Media Literacy programme launched in 13 schools during the strictest period of the lockdown in 2020, in collaboration with DCMS and Nesta, to teach them to spot misinformation or disinformation; a counter-extremism project, for two London boroughs, which included asking students about their unconscious bias; and a counter Covid-19 misinformation project co-funded by the US Embassy in London and the Times.
They offer an online portal with course for schools, which will help them fulfil their Prevent duty or teach “British Values”, creative campaigns, workshops, and counter-misinformation training.
What does Shout Out UK teach?
Shout Out UK say that they help primary and secondary schools to “tackle extremism and radicalisation” through lessons which include quizzes, animation and discussions. The extremism they teach about is exclusively that of the far-right.
What their teaching involves can perhaps be best seen in a three minute video on the threat of right-wing extremism which they produced. In the video they say that the far-right aims to spread hate and incite violence, claiming they’re “cowards” who “work tirelessly every day” on the internet to “manipulate you into joining their cause”.
It warns that the far-right start by saying that nationalism is just loving your country but that it’s actually “believing that your culture, ethnicity or way of life is somehow superior” whereas patriotism means “loving and being proud of your country”. The far-right’s motivation is that they “cannot cope with diversity”, so they create a “racial hierarchy in which they are superior”, arguing that science shows that “having more melanin means being less evolved”. They will then expand into an attack on feminists, Jews and all foreigners, as well as criticism of democracy for being “weak”.
Who runs Shout Out UK?
Shout Out’s founder and CEO is Matteo Bergamini, who is not a shy figure online; he wrote most of Shout Out’s Wikipedia entry. It’s a strategy which has worked out, as he was named as one of Forbes 30 Under 30, the UN featuring him in a video warning of the dangers of misinformation and Samsung UK enlisting him for an online course they ran for young people.
Despite repeatedly expressing support for democracy and warning about the dangers of bias or misinformation, he regularly flouts his own advice.
Most noticeably, he’s a strong critic of Brexit, celebrating Europe Day and warning against those “trying to divide us” whilst criticising campaign claims from the 2016 referendum. When petrol stations in Britain ran short he was quick to blame the “#BrexitDisaster” and claim that “#BrexitHasFailed”, which is an embarrassing case of bias leading to misinformation because EU states were suffering from similar supply chain issues at the same time.
He’s similarly a strong critic of Boris Johnson, greeting his election as Conservative leader by claiming that it was a “dark day for Democracy and media literacy”. He’s attacked the “#BorisShamblesCabinet” and said “#borisjohnsonshouldnotbepm”. The Daily Mail meanwhile “deserves to go bust and be confined to history” as it is full of “pointless hate”. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage “has spent his whole life cashing in on racism and xenophobia” and is a “con man”.
Unsurprisingly, he’s a much happier man at Labour conference or enthusiastically claiming that “Corbyn and Labour offer the hope of that [drastic] change” to UK politics. Other enthusiasms have included calling for “#abolishthemonarchy” over Meghan Markle, criticising the Sewell report on racism, and even claiming that the UK can’t claim to be a democracy because of the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the existence of hereditary peers. He’s also spoken publicly at an event opposing the government’s Elections Bill.
His dislike of misinformation means that he supported the censoring and eventual suspension of Trump’s Twitter account on misinformation grounds. None of the media censorship against Trump during the campaign - for instance, the impact of the riots or the Hunter Biden laptop - seem to have excited any similar feeling. Indeed he’s a BLM supporter, tweeting out #BlackLivesMatter when controversial British activist Sasha Johnson was shot, even though it turns out that her attackers were “four young black men” and it had nothing to do with her activism.
His LinkedIn reveals that before he founded Shout Out UK, he was an intern for a Liberal Democrat MP, worked at their London Campaigns Office, was a Conference Committee Member for Liberal Youth, and was the Youth Officer for the Harrow Branch of the party. Although he hasn’t held any roles since 2014, it’s clear he was a committed member up until then.
Comment
Shout Out UK demonstrates the fundamental weakness of Prevent. In seeking to stop extremism, it suffers from being unable to explain the difference between a legitimate view and an illegitimate view. Islamic critics often pointed out that it risked censoring or criminalising the expression of orthodox Islamic beliefs or valid criticisms of the government’s actions. Here, right-wing criticisms of things like feminism or of mass immigration are depicted as inherently negative and wrong; covers for the far-right. Meanwhile concepts like diversity - whose meaning in politics is often nebulous or even opportunistic - are treated as unchallengeable beliefs.
This positions many right-wing views as being close to violence, despite the rarity of even far-right violence, and thus delegitimises them, even when a democratic majority might hold such views. Teaching this to children is therefore a far from neutral job, as the often biased or misinformed left-wing opinions of Shout Out UK’s founder show. It’s hard to rely on someone who thinks the elected Prime Minister is illegitimate or that the monarchy means that Britain isn’t really democratic to uphold British Values. Misinformation meanwhile often just means attempting to delegitimise certain views, where a self-selected class choose to determine what is true and false.
Both Labour and Conservative governments have proven uncomfortable with defining British Values in anything but the most generic, inoffensive, and universal terms; thus leading them to rely on outsourcing to civil society organisations, which means there is limited government control over them and an unclear level of responsibility. Rather than interfering in political or religious debates, where neutrality is difficult and over-reach is likely, it would be better if the law focused on stopping violent extremists or those who call for violence exclusively. In many cases upholding existing laws, such as effective control of the borders, keeping convicted terrorists in jail, and prosecuting rapists rather than covering up their crimes, would do more to stop violent extremism.