Secret Home Office Propaganda Unit Attack on 5pillars are an attack on Press Freedom

London - CAGE International rejects the politicised and Islamophobic targeting of 5Pillars, a Muslim led independent journalism platform, following leaked Home Office documents in which its secretive propaganda unit, Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), categorised the news organisation as being of “Islamist Extremist Concern”.  

The leaks draw attention to the clandestine operations of RICU, a unit engaged in producing state-sponsored propaganda to manufacture public consent for the government’s draconian counter-terrorism policies. 

The listing of 5Pillars in documentation suggests that a decade from the CAGE exposé  of the inner workings of RICU, it still continues to operate with impunity, targeting Muslim groups and generating propaganda to silence voices that challenge authoritarian state over reach.

It again exposes the structural and systemic Islamophobia of the state and how counter-terrorism policies are engineered primarily to target and vilify Muslim communities, and this instance, Muslim media.

5Pillars have consistently challenged state narratives and thus their mention is an acknowledgement of their effectiveness.

If reporting discrimination, raising uncomfortable and challenging questions, scrutinising double standards and covering politically contentious events are grounds for suspicion, then the implications for press freedom are profound. 

Had this been any other media outlet, there would have been by now public uproar about the assault on press freedom by a state propaganda unit. 

CAGE’s concerns about RICU are longstanding. Our reports, Blacklisted: The Secretive Home Office Unit Silencing Voices of Dissent and We are Completely Independent: The Home Office, Breakthrough Media and the PREVENT Counter Narrative Industry, exposed the opaque workings of government counter-extremism units and the use of publicly funded propaganda initiatives to engineer the thoughts of citizens, as well as the influence of far right organisations in the process of designating individuals as ‘extremists’. 

Anas Mustapha, Head of Public Advocacy at CAGE International, said:

“RICU operates secretively and without accountability for the harm its propaganda causes. Its attempts to covertly shape Muslim public discourse betrays how the state systematically discriminates against Muslims. Its targeting of 5Pillars is not simply an attack on one outlet; but an attack on press freedoms and a veiled threat to anyone that challenges the state’s preferred narratives.”