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Whistleblower: Class ‘confirmed my fears,’ overemphasized ‘right-wing extremism’

A British university course for government employees on “Countering Terrorism” included a call for the suppression of popular podcast host Joe Rogan and journalist Douglas Murray while lecturers downplayed Islamist extremism, a whistleblower said this week.

Anna Stanley, who recently left the UK Foreign Office, said she attended the three-day “Issues in Countering Terrorism” course last year at King’s College London along with other staff from the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence, and Home Office, Fathom Journal reported this week.

“The course was a deeply, existentially depressing experience,” Stanley wrote in the journal.

Professors and researchers who lectured the class, some former government officials, emphasized that “Islamist extremism is exaggerated” and gave “right-wing extremism … more weight than is proportionate,” she said.

Stanley remembered one lecturer suggesting that they should find creative ways to suppress popular, “far right” figures Murray, a British author and journalist, and Rogan, an American podcast host.

She said:

‘To what extent should Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray be suppressed?’ he asked. ‘They have millions of followers. To de-platform them would cause issues.’

Concluding his talk, the lecturer told a room full of government professionals, ‘so, society needs to find other ways to suppress them.’

In an X post Thursday, Murray said the lecturer was Peter Neumann, a professor of security studies at King’s College London.

The academic who slandered the government’s own Prevent reviewer and called for ⁦@joerogan⁩ and me to be ‘suppressed’ is one Peter Neumann (⁦@PeterRNeumann⁩). What do ⁦@KingsCollegeLon⁩ and ⁦@ukhomeoffice⁩ have to say? https://t.co/LbJj7osDhG

— Douglas Murray (@DouglasKMurray) January 11, 2024

Murray told Talk TV in an interview Thursday that the college should suspend Neumann and conduct an “urgent” investigation. He also said his lawyers are looking into the situation.

What’s more, Murray said the college has accepted large amounts of money from the government of Qatar in recent years. According to Politico, Qatar is “Hamas’ biggest financial supporter.”

In Stanley’s article at Fathom Journal, she said she found a number of things about the class concerning, including how some lecturers portrayed the situation in Israel.

One lecturer whom she did not name presented a slide to the class that read, “Condemning terrorism is to endorse the power of the strong over the weak,” according to her article.

“In this perspective, Israel is seen as a powerful aggressor and the Palestinians militarily disadvantaged in asymmetric warfare,” Stanley said. “Thus, the Palestinians are inherently oppressed, an axiom that fuels the view that Israel is a terrorist state and Hamas’ atrocities are justifiably ‘contextualised.”

Stanley said the course was held last year prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli citizens.

She said she is concerned that “prestigious” colleges are providing “politically biased, anti-government training” that is basically indoctrination.

“It confirmed my fears – that extremism and terrorism are misunderstood by civil servants to the point of being a national security risk,” she said.

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IMAGE: Joe Rogan/YouTube

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