Description
This paper explores the relationship between Britain's counter-radicalization programme Prevent and the testimony of those convicted of terrorism offences in Northern Ireland. It highlights the striking contradiction that exists within the United Kingdom, whereby Northern Ireland does not implement radicalization pre-emption despite its active dissident groups and notorious history of conflict, yet the rest of the UK does. Utilizing primary interviews with 17 Prevent officials (including Channel's hard-to-reach ‘de-radicalization’ mentors) and over 30 Northern Irish former combatants, the discussion analyses the two fundamentally different ways of considering terrorism risk in the UK. It asks how ‘pre-crime risk’ is observed and intervened upon only on one side of the border (mainland Britain), when a fragile ceasefire best describes post-conflict reality on the other (Northern Ireland). We find that the discourse of radicalization subjugates the history of political insurgency in Northern Ireland, rendering invisible any explanations for (and structural causes of) violence. The discussion points to the invention of ‘the (de)radicalizable subject’, an invention which silences the history of insurgency in Northern Ireland and the voices of its perpetrators. Ex-militants staunchly rebut any narrative that they were ‘vulnerable’ to radicalization, but rather were heroes who actively chose armed rebellion. Yet Prevent would assert these individuals were exploited, in need only of more rigorous personal resilience. This paper brings the disjuncture of UK terrorism knowledge to the forefront, exposing how the discourse of risk, vulnerability, and pre-emption necessarily silences militant testimonies – inventing a world without referring to its inhabitants.
