Description
The globalisation of Preventing and/or Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies is the most significant development in modern counterterrorism. There is a broad consensus among governments, unthinkable 20 years prior, on the necessity of developing new approaches to security, preventive rather than punitive. At both European and national levels, authorities are increasingly engaging with P/CVE strategies to counter growing extremist messaging and violence. A growing concern has been the rise in extreme right wing online activities, namely propaganda and recruitment, furthermore with several high profile right wing attacks in Europe having been perpetrated by individual "radicalised online". My paper aims at exploring the role of the European Union preventing online extremism, and how online preventive actions fits in a pre-existing P/CVE regime long promoted by the EU.
My paper will start with a theoretical assessment of how projects targeting online extremist content, concretely right wing extremism, can or cannot fit within the current EU P/CVE policy infrastructure. To do so, this paper will firstly collect policy and qualitative interview data in order to strip down EU action on online Preventive counter-terrorism policy priorities and instruments. Secondly, I will move from the policy general level to the concrete implementation goals by then collecting the same type of data on the conceptualisations of P/CVE underpinning several EU funded projects targeting violent and non-violent right wing extremism online.
Once the underlying concepts in these projects is establish, my paper will be able to establish how initiatives targeting online right wing extremism fit in with the larger European counter-terrorism (CT) architecture: to which of the four pillars, Pursue, Prosecute, Protect and Prevent, does online Prevention belong? How do these initiatives tie in with other EU bodies, such as the EU Internet Forum, or the Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP)? The IF and the CSEP are both EU funded networks seeking to mobilise expertise and civil society groups to target online violent extremist content and recruitment? Additionally, my research will look at the cooperation, or lack thereof, between said projects targeting the extreme right in Europe and the implementation of the Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation, which came into force over a year ago and has the explicit purpose of targeting online violent extremism and terrorism.
