There to Prevent terror – or free speech? Kenan Malik

If you believe that immigration has destroyed western civilisation, I might think you've become too drunk on Robert Jenrick and Allison Pearson, Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips. The British state, though, may well mark you down as being on the path to terrorism.

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According to an online training course for Prevent, the government's anti-radicalisation programme, "cultural nationalism" defined as the belief that "'western culture' is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups" - is one of "the three most common subcategories of extreme rightwing terrorist ideologies", the others being "white/ethno-nationalism" and "white supremacism".

The claim inevitably drew outrage from rightwing commentators. Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), wrote to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, pointing out that Prevent's definitions of "extremism" and "terrorist ideologies" expand "the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial", and that "right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect".

Prevent, the FSU's Freddie Attenborough wrote in The Critic magazine, "has shifted from focusing on conduct (acquiring weapons, making threats, inciting violence) to treating political ideologies as indicators of risk - the problem being that 'risky' ideologies are both vaguely defined and culturally loaded".