The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2

This handbook provides a broad overview of left-wing extremism and its associated key issues and themes. It breaks new ground by assembling a comparative analysis of the phenomenon that is both multidimensional and multidisciplinary. Gathering a wide range of influential scholars who have worked at length in the field of extremism studies from different perspectives, backgrounds, and geographical settings, the Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism presents an array of thought-provoking and innovative as well as informative analyses and discussions – both historical and contemporary - about the phenomenon of left-wing extremism and of how researchers conceive of and approach it in their study. The Handbook is designed to be, for the foreseeable future, the reference work for all students, researchers, and general readers interested in achieving a comprehensive understanding of left-wing extremism in all its manifestations, subtleties, and dynamics, and both itscurrent and its potential directions.

“A first full-scale, remarkably broad conceptual and historical study of left-wing extremism. Bringing together some thirty scholars, the book combines perspectives from social psychology, political sociology and history and covers a variety of aspects and regions from the nineteenth century to the present. An indispensable reading in the field”. 

Azar Gat, Ezer Weitzman Professorial Chair, School of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Israel 

“Until now, remarkably, there has been no serious academic handbook of research on left-wing extremism. This ambitious, international and research-led 'two-volume set’ not only fills this glaring gap but pushes the frontiers of knowledge. It pulls together a deeply impressive list of academics who are at the cutting edge of research on left-wing extremism. It should be essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners who are serious about understanding the contemporary challenges faced by liberal representative democracy”.

Matt Goodwin, Professor of Politics, University of Kent, UK

While right-wing extremism has been the subject of a great deal of academic work, left-wing extremism, in all its aspects, has been strangely neglected by scholars of political extremism. We must therefore welcome the publication of this Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, which breaks with the underestimation of a polymorphic phenomenon that can now be observed all over the world.

This underestimation derives from the perceived asymmetry between the far right and the far left, a legacy of Soviet anti-fascism that has remained uncriticized, which postulates that the right tends to turn right, and therefore to extremize itself to the point of fascism, which embodies the only existing threat. From then on, left-wing extremism is supposed not to exist or to be reduced to a negligible phenomenon. In a scientific approach aiming for objectivity and a consequent anti-totalitarian perspective, left-wing extremism must be approached as a phenomenon as important and dangerous as right-wing extremism. Its main features are the legitimization of violence as a method of solving political problems, the intolerance associated with sectarianism, and fanaticism, which involves intransigence, Manichaeism and diehardism. Left-wing extremism places the defense of the Cause above all else, which amounts to postulating that "the end justifies the means", the end being defined either as the liberation or the emancipation of the human race, or as the realization of the utopia of the perfect society, without inequalities or discrimination. This is why the field explored in this Handbook is as vast as it is diverse: it ranges from revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist or anarchist ideologies and movements, advocating violence as a method of salvation, to the punitive hyper-moralism of "Wokism". and cancel culture as well as the purifying utopias of radical environmentalism, which, throughactions of sabotage, can lead to eco-terrorism. He also does not forget to point out the violence of the “antifas”.

The main ideological invariant of left-wing extremisms is a radical anti-liberalism, whose project is to destroy capitalist society and eliminate the liberal-pluralist democracy supposed to be at the service of the globalized financial oligarchies. Left-wing extremist movements often find support in certain autocracies (Russia, China, etc.) or Islamist groups hostile to Western democracies and their allies.

This Handbook, which gives an overview of left-wing extremism, is promised to become an indispensable working tool and a precious source of reflection on the new world disorder.

Pierre-André Taguieff, Director of the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po, Paris

José Pedro Zúquete is Research Fellow at the Social Sciences Institute of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. He is the author of Missionary Politics in Contemporary Europe (2007), The Struggle for the World (co-authored with Charles Lindholm, 2010), and The Identitarians (2018).