A terrifying, deeply compulsive investigative account of the rise in the use of technology and social media by extremist groups
Julia Ebner is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, where she leads projects on online extremism, disinformation and hate speech. She has given evidence to numerous governments and parliamentary working groups, and has acted as a consultant for the UN, NATO, and the World Bank. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Independent, Prospect and Newsweek, among many other publications, and she was a key contributor to a documentary for ITV on militant responses to Brexit, and a Radio 4 piece on women in the far right. Her first book, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, was a Spiegel bestseller, shortlisted for the NDR Kultur Sachbuchpreis and won the 2018 Bruno Kreisky award. She lives in London. @julie_renbe
Ebner has done some gutsy, thought-provoking research ****
*Sunday Telegraph*
Engaging and visceral ... At times, Ebner’s undercover work reads
like a thriller ... Going Dark pulls back the facade of
invulnerability and remorselessness that extremists promote with
glossy propaganda, to understand those they recruit
*Financial Times*
Riveting and often deeply disturbing ... Her aim is to expose the
way extremist groups manipulate their members in the hope that this
will prevent others from being radicalised by them. Her book is a
call, too, for policy-makers to rethink their response to extremism
... A punch to the stomach
*The Sunday Times*
Fascinating and important ... Going Dark shows how diverse groups
feed off each other, using similar tactics to create social bubbles
while exploiting the weakness — or reluctance — of social media
firms to control their hate-filled content. It underlines the
dangers of ignoring the threat of far-right terror, the
normalisation of violence-inciting ideologies and the fearsome
power of technology to inspire copycat attacks
*Spectator*
A chilling, compulsive investigation into online extremist
groups
*Standpoint*
A thorough and shocking exploration of how the internet has
facilitated the spread of extremism ... Ebner depicts the vast and
rapid spread of online extremism, and the challenge we face in
fighting it
*City AM*
Julia Ebner advises governments and organisations on online
extremism and hate speech. To complete her investigations of online
fanatics, she assumes a variety of identities and goes undercover
in a dozen tech-savvy extremist groups ... Absorbing and
intelligent ... Ebner doesn't just analyse these things, she takes
real risks to witness them up close. The result is a work that is
terrifying because it is non-fiction.
*Irish News*
Julia Ebner's description of infiltrating extremist groups – and
her first hand account of how their ideology is turned into violent
action – is chilling ... [she] deserves a medal
*Lord Harris of Haringey, House Magazine*
Julia Ebner has not only teased out and explained the common
denominator in extremist movements, she has done so in a way that
is humanising, engrossing and alarming. Going Dark is not just an
overdue, almost exhaustive journey of research into the lives of
extremists, it is a public service
*Nesrine Malik, author of We Need New Stories*
A scintillating journey into a secret world that is impacting our
everyday lives in ways we are only just starting to grasp.
Simultaneously immersive and analytical, Ebner’s adventures in the
dark crevasses of the internet shows how fascism works today – and
what needs to be done to stop it
*Peter Pomerantsev, author of This is Not Propaganda*
Going Dark makes for terrifying reading, but it’s all the more
essential for that, exposing just how closely we’re surrounded by
fanatical ideology every day of our lives, and how that ideology is
being countered
*Stylist*
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