The UK Proves Yuri Bezmenov Right

Both Islamist and Communist activists have conducted a successful "Long March" through Britain's institutions.

In 1983, a former member of the Novosti Press Agency, Yuri Bezmenov, warned of Soviet subversion attempts in the West. A defector, Bezmenov detailed to his adopted home the four stages of communist infiltration — the “Long March Through the Institutions” advised by Rudi Dutschke. These were:

1. demoralization

2. destabilization

3. crisis

4. normalization

Demoralisation takes 15 - 20 years — or about the time it takes to marinate one full generation in a resentful, self-hating ideology such as intersectionality.

Destabilisation is an accelerated process downstream from this inculcated disbelief in one’s own civilisation. Factionalism of the Friend/Enemy kind occurs within 2 - 5 years, resulting in a crisis which fractures the homogenous polity upon which liberal democracies rely.

This results in the final stage, Normalisation, where the ideology of the revolutionaries becomes the ideology of the state which arises to commandeer the crisis.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

detailed this process in her founding essay for the

Restoration, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Substack:

Restoration

I mention this because, this week, I brought to light irrefutable proof that both Communists and Islamists have successfully waged a “Long March” on Britain’s institutions.

Here is how both groups influenced — and even infiltrated — the UK government.

Islamist Entryism

For Courage Media this week, I published a lengthy report into the origins of Islamaphobia, a Muslim activist network within the Home Office, and the mysterious RICU department — which centrally plans the state’s response to terror attacks.

For decades,

civil servants, activist groups, and both Labour and Conservative governments have spent millions on PR campaigns with the aim of advancing Muslim interests — particularly in the aftermath of terror attacks. It should alarm you all to learn that the grieving parents of the Manchester Arena attack were told “Don’t Look Back In Anger” in a coordinated propaganda effort by the UK government. Here’s how taxpayer funds were spent on gaslighting the public to rehabilitate the image of Islam.

The body responsible is called RICU — the Home Office’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit.

This month, RICU produced a report, calling the grooming gang scandal, in which thousands of girls across England were sexually exploited by predominantly-Pakistani Muslim perpetrators, a “grievance narrative” fabricated by “right-wing extremists”.

The report warned “right-wing extremist narratives (particularly around immigration and policing) are in some cases ‘leaking’ into mainstream debates”. It classified “Cultural Nationalism” as “extreme right-wing”: with the “main belief” being “’Western culture is under threat from mass migration’”. Another example it cited was “Claims of ‘two-tier’ policing, where two groups are allegedly treated differently after similar behaviour”.

RICU is also the parent body of counter-extremism programme, Prevent. Like many ostensibly neutral institutions, Prevent has been subject to ideological capture since its inception.

A review of Prevent found that, in 2019, RICU had compiled a dossier of materials circulated by social media users described as “actively patriotic and proud”. The canonical texts of these far right radicals include: books by Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips, and Douglas Murray; Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan; John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government; Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France; The Lord of the Rings; Beowulf; C.S. Lewis; Micahel Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys; and, without a hint of irony, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Curiously, the Qur’an and Hadiths were not mentioned — despite Islamic groups being the predominant perpetrators of lethal terror attacks both in the UK and the world. Ninety percent of the suspects on MI5’s watchlist are Islamic terrorists — equivalent to 1% of the entire British Muslim population. Since October 7th, arrests for terror offences in the UK have increased by 23 percent. But this embarrassing obsession with neo-Nazis hiding beneath every bed led to Prevent thinking watching The Thick of It would turn you into Anders Breivik.

As such, the Shawcross review concluded “Prevent is not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism”, and has applied “a double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism.”

Only 22% of Prevent referrals in 2020 – 2021 were for Islamic extremism; despite Islamic extremism comprising 80% of the Counter Terrorism Police network’s live investigations. Right-wing extremism comprised only 10% of live investigations, but 25% of Prevent referrals. Shawcross was concerned that Prevent had become myopically obsessed with right-wing extremism.

A tragic example of Prevent’s skewed priorities is the recent revelation that Abi Harbi Ali — who murdered Sir David Amess MP at a constituency surgery in Southend, Essex on October 15, 2021 — had been reported to Prevent in 2014, but had only one meeting before his case was closed. Amess’ daughter, Katie explained to The Times that “The police told us they didn’t follow up with him due to an admin error”. According to a July 2024 coroner’s report, Ali’s six-month case review was “missed”, and a 12-month review revealed “nothing of concern”.

Meanwhile, RICU staff were classifying right-wing extremism to encompass reading The Chronicles of Narnia.

I discussed the article with

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

for our new podcast, the Weekly Wrap, on Courage Media:

A key figure in this story is Keir Starmer.

While acting as the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008, Starmer took it upon himself to submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights in June on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s behalf, saying “it is very important that everyone is represented”.

Who are Hizb ut-Tahrir? Well, William Shawcross cited the now-proscribed terror group in his report:

Shawross expressed concern that the focus of Prevent and counter-extremism programmes was being purposefully drawn away from Islamism by bad-faith actors. He notes that the founding chair of the National Association of Muslim Police’s (NAMP) West Midlands branch shared videos on his social media which called for the destruction of Israel and described Jews as “filth”, and speeches delivered by a pro-Hamas cleric and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee (who has since joined CAGE). That same NAMP branch chair authored a paper in 2020, advising Counter Terrorism Policing to drop the terms ‘Islamism’ and ‘jihadism’. Other NAMP branches have hosted events with Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), whose former members have been accused of glorifying terrorism.

This trend has continued recently: with the Met Police distancing itself from former advisor Mohammed Kozbar, a member of the force’s London Muslim Communities Forum which “inform[s] and help[s] shape police policy and procedure at a strategic level”. Kozbar was found to have praised Hamas as “the master of the martyrs of the resistance” after October 7th, and expressed support for the now-proscribed group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Shawcross credits the campaign against Prevent monitoring Islamist extremism to Hizb ut-Tahrir, writing

In 2008, the revolutionary Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir published a report framing the strategy as an attempt by the state to gain “control over the Muslim community in Britain”, to bring about a “reformation of Islam”, and to “ban Islamic ideas”. These lines of argument have set the tone for much of the campaign against Prevent ever since.

Kozbar’s praise of Hizb ut-Tahrir may help explain why, in response to a video of Hizb ut-Tahrir gathering after October 7th to call for “Muslim armies” to wage “Jihad” against the West, the Met Police obfuscated by saying on X, “The word jihad has a number of meanings”, and that they had “not identified any offences arising from the specific clip.” In January, the Conservative government proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist organisation, making belonging to or supporting the group a criminal offence.

So Keir Starmer thought it was worthwhile that a Jihadist group be heard, all the while they were lobbying the Home Office to turn a blind eye to Islamic terrorism.

Sadly, that wasn’t the only Islamic terrorist that Keir Starmer made time to represent:

Throughout his career as a human rights lawyer, Keir Starmer chose to represent a number of Islamic terrorists, appealing restrictions on their freedom of movement using the European Convention on Human Rights.

This has been defended as him doing his duty as a barrister, under the “cab rank” rule: the Hippocratic Oath for lawyers, which dictates that, like cabs on a rank, barristers must take the first case which crosses their desk when available, to ensure even the worst criminals get representation.

This oh so conveniently meant that, like Sadiq Khan, Starmer’s clients were frequently Islamic terrorists. As a former senior Whitehall figure quipped, ‘if Starmer was in a cab rank, it was the one outside Finsbury Park Mosque.’

Examples include:

• Blocking the extradition of terror suspects to the United States, working with 14 other organisations including Amnesty, Liberty, the anti-torture group Redress and the Law Society to tie the hands of then-Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

• Ensuring a suspect known as Y, exposed by The Times as an associate of Abu Hamza, who ran the bookshop at Finsbury Park Mosque and was ordered to be deported as a danger to British security, was given amnesty to remain as part of peace negotiations in Algeria’s civil war.

• Successfully defending three defectors to Iraq, who intended to fight British forces, and getting their control orders thrown out. MI5 had evidence that one, a Kuwait-born student from Sheffield, had kept trying to board planes to the Middle East with a knuckle duster and a lock knife in his luggage.

• Removing control orders and 18-hour curfews from six asylum seekers, suspected by MI5 of supporting jihad in Iraq.

• Representing “E”, a suspect in the assassination of the Afghan anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, on the orders of Bin Laden, and having his control order ended.

• Representing al-Qaeda terrorist Khalid al-Fawwaz, fighting extradition to the US in 2000 for conspiring with bin Laden to bomb American embassies.

A former counter-extremism official told The Times that ‘They were seriously dangerous people.’

I covered Keir Starmer’s obsession with representing Islamic terrorists, sometimes pro bono, in the above segment for LotusEaters.com.

I previously covered Sadiq Khan’s questionable record as a human rights lawyer here:

Examples include:

• Representing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — who has called white people “devils”, Jews “termites” and Hitler a “very great man”

• Consulting for the defence of Zacarias Moussaoui — the only man convicted in the US for 9/11.

• Attending a conference agitating for the release of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay; organised by Yasser al-Siri, who fled to Britain after killing a 12-year-old girl in a car bomb in 1994, and was convicted in 2005 for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

• Calling moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms” on Iranian state TV in 2005.

But the subversion efforts by Starmer, sadly, don’t stop there.

Communist Subversion

It’s no exaggeration to call Keir Starmer a lifelong communist.

I am not merely basing this on his announcement, ‘I am a socialist,’ in May.

If you dig into his history, as I did this week for Tomlinson Talks, you’ll find Starmer has been a proud Pabloist — a socialist committed to climate and gender activism — since his twenties.

In an interview with the New Statesman in 2020, Starmer said 'I don't think there are big issues on which I've changed my mind. […] The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality — feminist politics, green politics, LGBT — which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important.’

He joined the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers in 1986, and only left when made Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008.

He joined a trip to Moscow and St Petersburg shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

He travelled to a Czechoslovakian work camp in 1986, aged 23, to ‘restore a memorial to victims of a Nazi atrocity’; where his personal details were passed onto the 'Foreign Intelligence Main Directorate – Operative Files' section of the Czechoslovakian secret police archives. In 1982, the same camp initiative had been assigned a spy, planted and posing as a camp 'supervisor' among the foreign students.

It should be no surprise why his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, hung a portrait of British Communist Party co-founder, “Red Ellen” Wilkinson in Number 11 Downing Street — replacing a framed photograph of Thatcher’s Chancellor, Nigel Lawson.

It might also explain the Labour government’s Stalinist land confiscation plan for Britain’s small family farmers.

Reeves’ Halloween Budget announced an inheritance tax raid on small family farms. The Treasury claimed only the wealthiest 500 estates each year would be taxed. However, this estimate uses property prices which are two years out of date.

In fact, DEFRA’s farm business survey figures, used by both the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the Liberal Democrats in alternative costings, estimate 70,000 farms will be affected.

Furthermore,

a Treasury source told The Telegraph an official assessment would not be published until next year’s autumn Budget – six months before the tax takes effect.

So the Treasury numbers are not only wrong, but are being hidden from the public until six months before these livelihood-ruining changes take effect.

While the state broadcaster, the BBC, has attempted to defend the policy, their Verify service was caught out: sourcing their “fact check” from a Labour Party activist.

It said: “Dan Neidle, an independent tax expert, says the number of actual farms affected is likely to be below 500 per year.”

The Country Land and Business Association (CLBA) has produced a much higher figure, which Mr Neidle dismissed on X as “hyperbolic fake stats”.

Mr Neidle, a former partner with the City law firm Clifford Chance, is a Labour member who helps with appeals hearings on the party’s national constitutional committee.

Earlier this year, he told The New Statesman that he did not regard himself as an activist “unless it’s possible to be a centrist activist” and insisted he was not partisan, saying: “If I had reason to think Rachel Reeves had avoided tax, if anyone thinks I wouldn’t be on to that, they haven’t met me!”

Neidle then conducted his own costing of the policy, after public criticism, and found Reeves’ numbers were wrong:

After expensive analysis, he has concluded that the few hundred mega rich people who have bought farm estates to take advantage of the current tax relief will be “unaffected by the Budget changes”, while the 125 estates worth more than £1.5 million will only be “somewhat affected” and are “not being hit hard enough”.

Jus like the Soviet Politburo, the mouthpieces of the socialist state never admit when they were wrong: they simply revise, erase, and ignore their errors, or use them as the pretext to pursue even more punitive policies against class enemies.

And that’s what this is: a Marxist land-grab to punish farmers for being too male, pale, and stale — as well as self-sufficient and conservative.

Some have been honest enough to say such a thing:

Resentful socialist Will Hutton wrote fever-dreamed fan-ficiton for The Guardian, saying

One of the baleful dimensions of our times is the way that the conversation about what constitutes the good society is framed by the rich and their interests. A conception of the common good withers; instead it is replaced by the existential importance of private wealth, private interests and private ownership to societal health.’

Yet ever since, the National Farmers Union, Historic Houses, the Tory party, the rightwing media and, inevitably, Elon Musk have behaved as if the move represents a new communist dictatorship.

According to the lobby, a new age of Jacobin terror has been unleashed – production will collapse, rural Britain will be devastated, and all for a trivial amount of money. Rarely have 500 very privileged people got so hysterical – and commanded so much attention.

Young farmers, now increasingly crowded out of the market, will get a chance to buy land: there is the prospect of a levelling off, even a fall, in farm rents. New life and ideas will be brought to the rural economy as innovative, energetic farmers enter the market – and production even increases.

But these tactically-Libertarian arguments about enabling greater market competition are simply window-dressing for the true purpose of the policy: an ideological levelling to state-mandate egalitarianism.

Whether ancient Rome or feudal Europe, societies have taken the view that just because an individual got lucky and came out of the right womb, they are not entitled to inherit everything without paying some levy or tribute on their inherited wealth.

Far from a death tax, it is a life tax on undeserved good luck.

Former Tony Blair advisor, John Mcternan, was even bolder: saying small farming “is an industry we could do without.”

They intend to liquidate British farmers as an enemy class, after years of calling the countryside racist, and livestock farming the chief cause of apocalyptic climate change.

The UK is quickly resembling a Soviet state.

Is there hope on the horizon?

This week on Deprogrammed, we discussed the prospect of Starmer’s record unpopularity — producing petitions with millions of signatures — leading to such a crisis of legitimacy that an early election is called before 2029.

Well, as we discussed in this episode, and as I have this week for The Critic, that requires a viable political alternative with the courage to make the hard decisions required to reverse our misfortunes.

As of yet, none exist.