Raheem Kassam

Raheem Kassam is the National Director of Student Rights - Tackling Extremism on Campus. He is also Campaigns Director at the Henry Jackson Societyand Research Fellow - Homeland Security and Transatlantic Affairs at the Bow Group think tank.

Education

Kassam attended Bishopsholt School and then Westminster University where he studied politics. His Student Rights bio also says he worked for a time at Lehman Brothers.

Activities

Conservative Party

Kassam was the vice chairman of the Hillingdon branch of Conservative Future in 2008-2009. He served on the Conservative Future national executive in 2009.

From February to June 2010, Kassam was Campaign Director of "Elect Michelle for Wentworth and Dearne."

Governetz Limited

From August 2008 to November 2009, Kassam worked as a researcher for Governetz Limited.

KeepRightOnline

From May 2009 to June 2010, Kassam was Chief Executive of the political campaigning and PR organisation KeepRightOnline.

TaxPayers' Alliance

From June to October 2010, Kassam was Manager of the Coalition Against Hate Education. Kassam's Linkedin profile describes this role as follows:

Managing the Coalition Against Hate Education, my role entails forging international alliances with think-tanks in an effort to affect public policy globally with the hope of ending 'hate education' which is often taxpayer funded. I am responsible for the development of the campaign as well as seeking international partners and managing our combined efforts.

British Tea Party

According to the Daily Telegraph, Kassam was also one of the organisers of the Tea Party UK, launched in 2010 by the Freedom Association. He told the paper that members 'want to counter what we believe is a Left-wing bias in our culture'

The group was reportedly being advised by low-tax libertarian activists from the US but Kassam tried to distance the British tea party from the socially conservative stances of its US counterpart, saying 'We are less concerned with "God, guns and gays"'.

Students Rights

According to his Linkedin profile, Kassam became manager of Student Rights in October 2009:

In this role I oversee the entire operation of the Student Rights organisation, across the Events, New Media, Research and Campaign workflows.

From inception to construction and delivery, I am tasked with liaising with the Universities across the UK to deliver the manifesto pledge of Student Rights, to ensure freedom of speech and freedom from political oppression for students on campuses.

NUS condemns Student Rights for fueling Islamophobia

In May 2014 the National Union of Students (NUS) voted to condemn Student Rights saying its activities 'fuel Islamophobia'. The motion passed was very similar to one passed by a number of other students unions which also criticised the organisation for its lack of engagement with students, lack of transparency about its relationship with the Henry Jackson Society and its record of generating 'sensationalist' media coverage.

Conservative Political Action Conference

Kassam describes the following incident in a post at Standpoint:

I am reminded specifically of an occasion — ironically at a pub in Washington D.C. during the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2010 — when I had to distinguish in child-like terms the difference between Islam and Islamism. After a good half an hour, many of the 10-strong audience still hadn't grasped that there was a difference, let alone acknowledged any of the subtleties I was trying to explicate.

Henry Jackson Society

According to his Linkedin profile, Kassam has been Campaigns Director at the Henry Jackson Society since September 2010.

The Commentator

On his Twitter feed Kassam described himself as an 'executive editor' of the neoconservative website The Commentator. However in July 2013 blogger Iain Dale reported that Kassam had a falling out with the owner of The Commentator, Robin Shepherd and had left to set up a new multi-contributor website called Trending Central.

GreenCEASE

In April and May 2012 Kassam wrote several articles for the Huffington Post with a byline describing him as director the 'Green Centre for Economic Analysis and Sustainable Environment'. However, the link at the bottom of his articles now redirects to a wedding website.

So what is, or was, the 'Green Centre for Economic Analysis and Sustainable Environment'? Its name seems to have been chosen to accommodate the snappy acronym 'GreenCEASE', intended to parody Greenpeace, an NGO it spent much of its time attacking. GreenCEASE launched a website on 5 April 2012 which can still be viewed and its Twitter account is also still live.

According to its founding principles, GreenCEASE existed to 'analyse the economic impact of global environmental concerns, adopting a "growth first" approach to carbon-neutrality' and to 'ensure that those who are not actively willing participants in environmental endeavours are not coerced or conscripted into any movement against their will'. Gallingly, it even framed its activities in terms of apparent concern for the poor of the global south and even for the environment, saying its "growth first" approach would enable 'developing nations to flourish and encouraging more rapid poverty alleviation around the world’ and that it would highlight ‘hypocrisy, waste, corruption and counter-intuitive measures which could actually further harm the environment'.

In practice GreenCEASE was engaged in spreading doubts about the science of climate change and attempting to attack and undermine environmental campaigners, scientists conducting research on global warming - and even government-sponsored initiatives to combat climate change.

Its Twitter account history reads like a who’s who of the climate denial movement, featuring the Heartland Institute, described by the Economist as 'the world’s most prominent think tank promoting skepticism about man-made climate change' and the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), former chancellor Nigel Lawson’s think tank, responsible for spreading 'demonstrably inaccurate' information about climate science. GreenCEASE also tweeted its output at, or retweeted the content of users called @globalwarminghoax, @skepticscience, @ClimateScam, @AGW_IS_A_HOAX and a host of other users describing themselves as 'AGW skeptics' (where AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming and skeptic is, arguably, a euphemism for denier).

Since GreenCEASE seems to have been a side project of the libertarian-right blog The Commentator (of which Kassam is executive editor) it’s no surprise that it also tweeted links to climate-sceptic articles by its contributing editor Peter C. Glover. Glover is described as a 'climate science expert' by The Commentator, which has itself published articles bashing the Green Party and suggesting wind turbines may pose a health hazard. But his co-authored book Energy and Climate Wars: How Naïve Politicians, Green Ideologues, and Media Elites are Undermining the Truth About Energy and Climate is included on a list of ‘books espousing climate change denial’ in an article exploring the links between climate denial books and think tanks in the journal American Behavioural Scientist.

GreenCEASE produced an amusing film entitled [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NL3KNFOJ3Y 'Inside the Anti-Growth Lobby'] attempting to portray the 2012 sustainability conference 'Planet Under Pressure' in London as somehow sinister, as well as a 'movie trailer' called 'Green Imperialism' featuring clips from the Forest Stewardship Council's 2012 conference in Dusseldorf. But most hilarious is a short called 'World Domination' in which Kassam claims the WWF and other groups are restraining the development of poor countries - complete with visuals of a plastic panda running rampage across a map of the world. While it lasted, GreenCEASE railed against 'climate alarmists', advocating instead what it called 'climate realism' and, most damningly, opposed pursuing what it called 'anti-growth' environmental policies, in its words, 'before the science is settled'.

The project, however, was short-lived and seems to have had little impact. Its Twitter activity petered out slowly, grinding to an apparent halt in March 2013. Kassam did not respond to questions about his own views on anthropogenic climate change, or on whether GreenCEASE had any other members, continues to exist or why it stopped. But it seems likely that it proved difficult and unrewarding to propagate such discredited doubt-mongering ideas anywhere but on the fringes and within the pre-existing denial movement.

TrendingCentral.com

In July 2013 Kassam launched a new blog news website called Trending Central, which '..was conceived with a view to bring fast-paced, interesting news items and blogs to the English speaking world'. Run by a voluntary staff of writers and analysts:

The site is geared towards serving the Anglo-sphere content that is of a political or cultural nature, though we’re totally open to things like book or restaurant reviews, as well as anything else interesting you might be able to muster up. Please do consider that the site is pro-free markets, pro-democracy, pro-Western and pro-Israel in its outlook, so if any of that bothers you, perhaps you should look elsewhere!

Contributing editors as of September 2013 included: Peter C. Glover (Energy, Markets, Geopolitics and Environment) Fernando Menendez (North America, Central America and Latin America, Economics), Benjamin Harris-Quinney (British and European Politics) Andrew Ian Dodge, US Politics, Nathalie Tamam (Middle East, British Politics), Simon Miller (Finance, Civil Liberties).

Breitbart London

In February 2014 the Guardian reported that Kassam would join 'green-baiter' James Dellingpole as part of the team working for a new London outlet of the right wing U.S.-based news and opinion website Breitbart.

Views

Neoconservatism

According to the Evening Standard, Kassam calls himself 'a Michael Gove Conservative' and cites his school reforms and his 'staunch and unapologetic' views on foreign policy as the reason. He also stated that Margaret Thatcher is one of his idols but called himself 'a bigger fan' of former US senator and Republican Barry Goldwater'.

Kassam is also strongly Atlanticist and has said: 'I want to see an unbreakable bond with the US. It has led the way, showing how a country can flourish unashamedly in favour of democracy, free markets and the live-and-let-live attitude.'

Pro-Israel

Kassam has publicly supported Israel in both print and television media, including criticising Stephen Hawking for choosing to boycott a scientific conference in the country and claiming on BBC News that Jerusalem is 'the capital of Israel'.

Support for racial profiling

In September 2011, Kassam wrote an article entitled 'Profile Me' for the Commentator, arguing in favour of racial profiling. The piece was subtitled 'Once people who look like me stop blowing themselves up – then I’ll get upset at being profiled. Not before.'

Criticism

In November 2012 Kassam tweeted a link to an article by Nick Gray of Christian Middle East Watch published by The Commentator called 'Why There Are No Bomb Shelters in Israel'.

It received a negative response even from figures who might be considered neoconservative political allies of Kassam. Shiraz Maher of the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation said the article was 'essentialising Muslims' and called it 'ridiculous'. Aymenn J Al-Tamimi of the Middle East Forum tweeted at Kassam: 'the fact that you put this piece up illustrates how you flirt with anti-Muslim bigotry'. Kassam responded: 'I'm a flirtatious kind of guy'.

Publications

• So we gave £19m to the Palestinian Territories - but where does it go?, The TaxPayers' Alliance, 7 June 2010.
• An Important Distinction, Standpoint (Online Only), September 2010.

Affiliations

• Taxpayers' Alliance
• Henry Jackson Society
• Student Rights
• Bow Group
• Conservative Party
• The Commentator
• Tea Party UK
• GreenCEASE
• Media Intelligence Partners - client.

Resources

• Hilary Aked, Student Rights ‘Campus Extremism’ study: dishonest pseudo-science in support of a toxic narrative, 16 May 2013, Huffington Post, reposted on Spinwatch, 30 May 2013
• Hilary Aked, The extreme anti-extremist: Raheem Kassam’s climate-sceptic ‘GreenCEASE’ project, Spinwatch, New Left Project, 8 June 2013
• BBC misrepresents BRICUP's SOAS meeting, British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, 26 January 2010.
• Charlie Pottins, BBC twice bitten, but still not shy, RandomPottins, 9 October 2010.
• Sunny Hundal, Who is Raheem Kassam? A Wikipedia mystery, Liberal Conspiracy, 1 June 2012.

Contact

• Twitter RaheemJKassam
• Linkedin Raheem Kassam