An
article, titled "Anti-western ideology is infecting public sector: King’s
College counterterrorism course, on contract to MoD, dangerously downplays
extremism", written by Melanie Phillips and published in the Times on
16/01/2024 has caused me to reflect on the Identities involved in the War in
Gaza, and how they affect me in my role as a mental health nurse in the UK.
Phillips
quotes another writer referred to as Anna Stanley in the article, but I have to
assume that Phillips has filtered the meaning of Stanley's article to meet her
own needs. The Times is supposed to be a non-partisan newspaper, but I would
say that Phillips is quoting from a Trumpian perspective - i.e. from a sort of
proto-fascist populist Nationalist perspective.
"King’s
College London is the academic centre of Britain’s military and
counterterrorism training. Its counterterrorism course, under contract to the
Ministry of Defence, has been designed for civil servants and other
professionals involved in this work from a number of government departments.
Now,
questions have been asked in parliament after an account of the course written
by a former civil servant, Anna Stanley, who participated in it a few months
ago and who until this month was an open-source intelligence analyst at the
Foreign Office.
In
Fathom, the journal of a pro-Israel research group, Stanley wrote that although
the lecturers included a previous defence minister and former senior officials
at the Foreign Office, Home Office and GCHQ, some of them spouted “typical
postmodern identity politics”.
Those
on the course were told that labelling an organisation “terrorist” was a
problem because it “implies a moral judgment”. Lecturers showed slides that
stated: “Condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the
weak”, and, “terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are
terrorist”.
The
course, wrote Stanley, was a “deeply, existentially depressing"
experience. Extremism and terrorism, she said, were being misunderstood to the
point of creating a national security risk. She found herself surrounded by
civil servants who “hate the concept of the state”. Their unchallenged
assumption was that Israel was a terrorist state and Hamas’s atrocities should
be “contextualised”.
They
accepted without demur an argument mounted by one civil service participant,
whose brother had fought for Isis, that Britain’s anti-radicalisation
programme, Prevent, was inherently racist because it focused on Islamist
extremism — mere mention of which made Muslims “feel uncomfortable”.
While
lecturers gave right-wing extremism disproportionate weight, wrote Stanley, the
overriding emphasis was that Islamist extremism was exaggerated. This directly
contradicts the conclusion reached by Sir William Shawcross in his review last
February of Prevent, which he found was dangerously underestimating Islamist
extremism while exaggerating right-wing threats."
It
struck me how Phillips' article focuses on the sort of post-colonial identity
conflicts that I have seen playing out at work. It is fascinating to see how
they are playing out at the heart of the British establishment.
Phillips
cleverly positions herself in binary opposition to the process she claims to
promote, e.g. outside of the democratic debate and superior to it. She accuses
others of doing the same, so she is quite clearly admitting some familiarity
with this sort of splitting as a technique, as do I.
This mutually inclusive exclusivity
then sets the scene for a metaphorical battle between an evil invasive
virus and the heroic immune system of the unsuspecting host, which is
where she positions us, the Times reader, viz. the Nation State.
Thus, my initial impression was that Phillips was using Stanley's voice to:
a)
devalue the rights of minorities to express their voice within what is supposed
to be a permissive learning environment;
b)
adopt a tone of xenophic fear, demonising any opinion that corrupts her own
ideal, covert, and therefore imaginary, vision of what the National identity
actually is; and
c)
conclude that the inability of the State to develop a coherent narrative in the
face of several competing perspectives is a weakness, rather than a strength,
of our multi-cultural political democracy.
As
a mental health nurse and public servant working in the NHS I recognise the
sort of identity work that Phillips is doing as being very familiar, but the
reference to 'Israel' makes it particularly relevant to the current war in
Gaza, and the Rishi Sunak's attack on 'anti-semitism' in the ranks of the
Labour Party. This raises some unsettling questions about the sort of racial
insecurities that are going to be driving our National security agenda at the
coming general election.
So
this article tests out my identity along racial fault lines when I am more used
to it being tested out on other fault lines: for example, gender. I am aware
that I have to adopt a non-binary gender identity as I go to work and resume a
more traditional, more gendered, binary identity, as soon as I get home (the
male is the one who has to take the bins out in our household apparently!). I
do this to adapt to the social context I am in.
But
nobody ever accuses me of being in any way less authentic for doing this - or
in any way of being more of a threat; I do not get accused of being a
'double-agent', or of being an 'agent provocateur', or even of being a 'change
agent' anymore. I am simply doing my job, for my patients, and this job
involves some 'identity work'. So if I can cross between the boundaries of one
protected characteristic, i.e. gender, so effortlessly, then why not any
others, i.e. race and/or ethnicity?
Well,
the obvious answer is that it isn't effortless, it actually takes a lot of hard work. Employers may not take account of this labour activity so it comes free of charge to them, but many of us do have to change our identities as we
move between different socio-cultural environments as part of our everyday
lives. This is particularly obvious as we go in and out of work, and less so
perhaps as we go in and out of different domestic households and families, or
in and out of different pubs and clubs. So why is identity agility so hard to
accept when it comes to our racial identities?
Surely,
what this article actually validates is that identity is somehow tied to place
as much as it is tied to our physical characteristics; identity is as complex,
multi-layered, and as malleable as our autobiographies are; identity is
transactional and co-produced, manufactured even, marketed, consumed, and
exchanged - there exists a political-economy of identity but not a financial
market, identities have a currency, a certain value to one person and another
to another.
So
if people still get upset about having to modify their identities to 'fit in'
with their surroundings, what cognitive mechanisms can we suggest they employ
to help them do that? If identity is at least partially about observing the
emotional etiquette of a place or social context, then the dual process theory
of emotional regulation can help us understand it. As the name suggests, there
are essentially two parts to this process:
a)
the 'threat avoidance' part that seeks to suppress all other possible
identities, through a slavish ritualistic addiction to an 'alpha identity' that
must prevail above all others, or succumb to a primordial fear that the whole
structural edifice will come crashing to the ground; and
b)
the 'reward seeking' part that seeks to predict the changes that are needed to
successfully adapt the current identity to meet the demands of a changing
social and emotional environment, by constantly reading any alternative
narratives available to it in any social situation.
Both
mechanisms are present in all of us but may be weighted one way or the other,
depending on the biological inheritance and environmental habitat involved. The
first process is probably higher in people on the autistic,
obsessive-compulsive, and schizophrenic spectrum, while the second is probably higher
in people with more resources for emotional intelligence. The combination
effectively equates to a lower and higher capacity for empathy and
socialisation, and a more or less significant trauma history, respectively.
Within
a social network the two processes will be in constant opposition and their
relative strength may lead to the sort of dynamics observed in the cohort of
students referred to in Phillips' article. So I turned to the original article
to evidence this: "Scandalous Indoctrination: Inside a Kings College
Counter-Terrorism Course for UK Civil Servants" (Stanley, 2024). And true
enough, in it Stanley attempts to prioritise the 'threat avoidance' of the
Israeli's over any others, whilst ignoring any mutual 'reward seeking' that
could be found between the different parties involved.
Apart
from some egocentrism, there is nothing inherently wrong with her argument. For
example, Stanley claims a moral and cultural superiority for the Israel State
and legitimises this position as a valid form of collectivist politics. From a
psychiatric perspective, I agree that there is a legitimate need for a culture
to defend itself based on its learning from a collective trauma history. This
principle is effectively written into the definition of a delusion by the World
Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases version 11:
Delusion
MB26.0:
A belief that is demonstrably untrue or
not shared by others, usually based on incorrect inference about external
reality.
The belief is firmly held with
conviction and is not, or is only briefly, susceptible to modification by
experience or evidence that contradicts it.
The belief is not ordinarily accepted by
other members or the person's culture or subculture (i.e., it is not an article
of religious faith).
To
all intents and purposes, this means that Stanley's fear that Israelis have
been/ are being/ will be being: “anally raped at a peace festival by someone
shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’” is neither a persecutory nor a religious delusion, at
least as long as there are enough Israeli’s who believe that this remains a
possibility, which would also rule out personality disoder.
Persecutory
delusion MB26.07:
A delusion in which the central theme is
that one (or someone to whom one is close) is being attacked, mocked, harassed,
cheated, conspired against, or persecuted.
Religious
delusion MB26.08:
A delusion involving religious or
spiritual themes or subject matter that other members of the person's religious
group do not accept as possible.
However, such a fear would probably meet the criteria for being
considered a ‘paranoid ideation' within the context of a more or less historic, or more or less vicariously experienced, 'post-traumatic stress disorder', with or without 'specific phobia', although not necessarily needing any further
treatment, depending on its duration, complexity and severity:
Paranoid
ideation MB26.7:
Ideation, not held with delusional
intensity, involving suspiciousness or beliefs of being harassed, persecuted,
or unfairly treated by others.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 6B40:
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop following exposure to an extremely threatening or horrific event or series of events. It is characterised by all of the following: 1) re-experiencing the traumatic event or events in the present in the form of vivid intrusive memories, flashbacks, or nightmares. Re-experiencing may occur via one or multiple sensory modalities and is typically accompanied by strong or overwhelming emotions, particularly fear or horror, and strong physical sensations; 2) avoidance of thoughts and memories of the event or events, or avoidance of activities, situations, or people reminiscent of the event(s); and 3) persistent perceptions of heightened current threat, for example as indicated by hypervigilance or an enhanced startle reaction to stimuli such as unexpected noises. The symptoms persist for at least several weeks and cause significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Specific Phobia 6B03:
Specific phobia is characterised by a marked and excessive fear or anxiety that consistently occurs upon exposure or anticipation of exposure to one or more specific objects or situations (e.g., proximity to certain animals, flying, heights, closed spaces, sight of blood or injury) that is out of proportion to actual danger. The phobic objects or situations are avoided or else endured with intense fear or anxiety. Symptoms persist for at least several months and are sufficiently severe to result in significant distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.Specific phobia is characterised by a marked and excessive fear or anxiety that consistently occurs upon exposure or anticipation of exposure to one or more specific objects or situations (e.g., proximity to certain animals, flying, heights, closed spaces, sight of blood or injury) that is out of proportion to actual danger. The phobic objects or situations are avoided or else endured with intense fear or anxiety. Symptoms persist for at least several months and are sufficiently severe to result in significant distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
The counter-argument would be that the politics of cultural superiority can
easily become a racially divisive ideology, and Stanley's argument comes close to
this. This can occur when membership of a collective is predicated purely on
owning a racial heritage (as per the concept of “Aliyah”), rather than being
drawn towards a moral or religious affiliation or signing up to a nationalist
identity (as per the politics of the “United Arab List”). But in the end, it is
not really clear to me which of these alternative definitions of cultural
identity Stanley is actually trying to defend?
Stanley
attacks “typical post-modern identity politics” which I would argue is
synonymous with most post-structuralist forms of any post-Freudian psychiatry.
“Surely we can acknowledge subjectivity while being able to come up with a
collective understanding of what terrorism is?” she says. Here I think she is
referring to the split between structuralist and post-structuralist
interpretations of the cultural lexicon that emerged in the 1960s. But I would
argue this split is resolved through viewing the self as both an objective “Me”
and subjective “I” as characterised by the Chicago School of Sociology. The “I”
may involve some form of innate cognitive capacity to use language, but the
“Me” is any and all the social identities that we construct when we use
it.
Ironically,
the post-modern identity politics that Stanley rails against probably support
her position. The post-structuralist argument a scholar of Foucault might make
is that the structure of a cultural lexicon is based on asymmetric power
relations, and the cultural lexicon can quickly lose its clarity in a conflict
zone; this is exactly what Stanley appears to be complaining about, if I
understand the authors concern over the ambiguous and/or ambivalent use of the
term “terrorism” correctly; but she misses the point that Prevent’s focus on
Islamic extremism is racist because it excludes all the moderate views caught
up in the conflict, which again, is part of the catastrophe that we are now
witnessing unfold in Gaza; and what I'm afraid to say is so evident in the
polarised position that she takes.
In summary, Stanley is justified in feeling the way she does because her identity positions her in a collective history that has a moral perspective on the current conflict. This position is supported by others who have the privilege of being able to be an external observer. However, this remains one position in a whole theatre of other positions, with different perspectives on the conflict, with different histories, different objectives, and different beliefs. We are thus, all equally justified in taking a position, whether or not it is consistent with the majority or minority view, as long as the collective that we belong to can endorse it. What is not possible though, is to resolve the conflict while the two main protagonists prioritise 'threat avoidance' over any 'reward seeking' positions. It is only when the balance of these cognitive mechanisms is able to change, that we will be able to see an end to the War in Gaza.
Footnotes - click on names to see video links for events of the day: Rishi Sunak ; George Galloway ; Keir Starmer
