By Giorgos Charalambous

Is today’s left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

London: Pluto Press, 2022. 369p.

By Christian Kaunert, Alex MacKenzie, and Sarah Léonard

After the death of Osama Bin Laden and the demise of Al Qaeda, the EU is increasingly threatened by new jihadi terrorist groups such as ISIS, as exemplified by recent terror attacks on Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin and Manchester. This book investigates the role of the EU in dealing with such groups as part of its counter-terrorism efforts, by outlining the increasing role of the EU as an external counter-terrorism actor.

Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022. 192p.

Edited by Diego Muro

Building resilience to violent extremism has become a matter of great concern for European cities that have experienced attacks or that fear experiencing them in the future. Mayors, municipal leaders and other local authority representatives are leading efforts to empower city governments across the EU and develop pragmatic and non-ideological policies. As increasing numbers of citizens rank violent extremism as one of their top worries, urban centres have effectively become the front line of the fight against radicalisation. It is in European cities where transnational extremist threats take shape in the forms of hate speech, recruitment networks, radical cells and terrorist attacks, and it is also in European cities where evidence-based plans to counter and prevent violent extremism at local level need urgently to be devised. Cities are obvious settings in which to implement the motto “think globally and act locally”.

Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, 2017. 118p.

By Kacper Rekawek, Alexander Ritzmann, and Hans-Jakob Schindler

This study titled “Violent Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism – Transnational Connectivity, Definitions, Incidents, Structures and Countermeasures” focuses on the transnational connections of the violent extreme right-wing milieus in six countries: Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. It was commissioned by the German Federal Foreign Office, Division “International Cooperation against Terrorism, Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime and Corruption”, in 2020. CEP is grateful for the constructive support and critical feedback received throughout the process by the Federal Foreign Office. We would also like to thank the renowned external project experts engaged in the production of this study, without whom this work could not have been as comprehensive. The positions presented in this study only reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily correspond with the positions of the German Federal Foreign Office.

New York; London;Germany: Counter Extremism Project, 2020. 158p.

By Bart Schuurman.

A Multilevel Analysis of Involvement in the Dutch Hofstad group, 2002-2005. How and why do people become involved in European homegrown jihadism? This book addresses this question through an in-depth study of the Dutch Hofstadgroup, infamous for containing the murderer of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed in November 2004 in Amsterdam, and for plotting numerous other terrorist attacks. The Hofstadgroup offers a window into the broader phenomenon of homegrown jihadism that arose in Europe in 2004 and is still with us today. Utilizing interviews with former Hofstadgroup participants and the extensive police files on the group, Becoming a European Homegrown Jihadist overcomes the scarcity of high-quality data that has hampered the study of terrorism for decades. The book advances a multicausal and multilevel understanding of involvement in European homegrown jihadism that is critical of the currently prevalent 'radicalization'-based explanatory frameworks. It stresses that the factors that initiate involvement are separate from those that sustain it, which in turn are again likely to differ from those that bring some individuals to actual acts of terrorism. This is a key resource for scholars of terrorism and all those interested in understanding the pathways that can lead to involvement in European homegrown jihadism.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2-18. 267p.