the times | Friday March 18 2022 25
News
Middle-class, educated young white
men are being increasingly drawn into
extreme-right terrorism by radicals
who exploit their interest in gaming,
according to the national head of
counterterrorism.
Matt Jukes, an assistant commission-
er at the Metropolitan Police, said sus-
pects as young as 13 were sharing illegal
material but did not realise they were
Far right lures middle-class young into terror
Fiona Hamilton
Crime and Security Editor
committing terrorist offences. Of the
20 children arrested for such offences
last year, 19 were on suspicion of being
connected to extreme-right ideologies.
Jukes said that they were often rela-
tively well educated and came from
middle-class backgrounds. “If you were
imagining they are aligned to disen-
franchised, disengaged white commu-
nities, it’s a much more complex picture
than that,” he said.
They were being incited by online
propaganda and often radicalised intheir bedrooms, he said. “Some of the
videos produced by the extreme right-
wing groups pick up the tropes of the
presentation of first-person shooter
games,” he continued. “They are
presenting something which is very
attractive, potentially, to a vulnerable
young person, a young boy who spends
a lot of time gaming.”
Some were spending considerable
time discussing material online before
shifting to terrorist plotting. He added:
“One thing we see is young people whodo not understand that researching and
sharing some of the material which
they encounter is a terrorist offence.”
Counterterrorism detectives are
increasingly seeing examples of the
extreme right-wing threat, which can
include antisemitic and Islamophobic
rhetoric as well as “violent misogyny”.
The perpetrators are “substantially
younger” than before, Jukes said.
In the last financial year one in four
people who were referred to Prevent,
the government’s counter-extremismprogramme, were identified as having
an extreme-right ideology, he said.
Jukes said there had been 32 late-
stage terrorist plots foiled since 2017, 12
of which related to extreme right-wing
ideologies, 18 Islamist and the other
two of mixed and unclear ideology. The
majority were self-initiated, meaning
that while they might be inspired by
online material, they are not directed.
Jukes said that since 2015, 350,000
pieces of extremist and terrorist con-
tent online had been removed.A
rediscovered
marble statue
of Mary
Magdalene,
carved for a
prime minister, has been
described as a
masterpiece (David
Sanderson writes).
In 1822 Lord Liverpool
received the work, one of
the last made by the
renowned scupltor
Antonio Canova.
It came under the
ownership of the Earl ofDudley then was sold by
his son in the 1920s,
along with the family’s
house, Witley Court in
Worcestershire, after a
devastating fire.
The sculpture’s
provenance was lost and
it was sold as a “classical
figure” in 1938 and
placed in the Kensington
garden of Violet Van der
Elst, a campaigner
against the death
penalty. It ended up in a
sale of statuary in 2002,
and was bought for
£5,200 by owners who
contacted art advisers to
establish its identify. T
Recumbent Magdalene
will be sold at Christies
in July, when it is
expected to fetch up to
£8 million.£8m for
garden
sculpture
The statue of Mary
Magdalene, made in
1822, was bought in
2002 for £5,200JONATHAN BRADY/PA