Dr Julia Ebner is an award-winning and internationally bestselling author of several books. Her first book The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) won the Bruno Kreisky Award for the 2018 Political Book of the Year. Her second book Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists (Bloomsbury, 2020) was an international bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. It won the award ‘Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2020’ (Science Book of the Year 2020), as well as the Dr Caspar Einem prize and was long listed for the Gold Dagger Award. Her latest book Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over (Ithaka Press, 2023) is out now.
Going DarkThe Secret Social Lives of Extremists
By day, Julia Ebner works at a counter-extremism think tank, monitoring radical groups from the outside. But two years ago, she began to feel she was only seeing half the picture; she needed to get inside the groups to truly understand them. She decided to go undercover in her spare hours - late nights, holidays, weekends - adopting five different identities, and joining a dozen extremist groups from across the ideological spectrum.
Her journey would take her from a Generation Identity global strategy meeting in a pub in Mayfair, to a Neo-Nazi Music Festival on the border of Germany and Poland. She would get relationship advice from 'Trad Wives' and Jihadi Brides and hacking lessons from ISIS. She was in the channels when the alt-right began planning the lethal Charlottesville rally, and spent time in the networks that would radicalise the Christchurch terrorist.
In Going Dark, Ebner takes the reader on a deeply compulsive journey into the darkest recesses of extremist thinking, exposing how closely we are surrounded by their fanatical ideology every day, the changing nature and practice of these groups, and what is being done to counter them.
To read reviews and purchase in different languages visit:
A Telegraph Book of the Year 2020
Guardian, New Scientist, Bustle, Stylist pick for 2020
Waterstones' pick of Best Books of 2020
Winner of the Austrian Science Book of the Year 2020 – Austrian Ministry of Education
Praise for Going Dark
'Engaging and visceral ... Reads like a thriller' ― Financial Times
'Riveting and often deeply disturbing ... A punch to the stomach' ― The Sunday Times
'Fascinating and important' ― Spectator
'Ebner has done some gutsy, thought-provoking research' ― Sunday Telegraph
‘A scintillating journey into a secret world that is impacting our everyday lives in ways we are only just starting to grasp’ ― Peter Pomerantsev, author of This is Not Propaganda
‘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 troubling visit to online places of radicalisation’ — Times Literary Supplement
‘Ebner regales us with beyond-satire reports of her encounters with the web’s wilder-eyed’ — Daily Telegraph
‘Going Dark makes for terrifying reading, but it’s all the more essential for that’ — Stylist
‘A chilling, compulsive investigation’ — Standpoint
‘Going Dark deserves a wide readership. It offers an accessible and engaging introduction to some of the most dangerous com- munities online – and to the methods that enable them to grow’ — Sydney Morning Herald
‘Ebner draws on her theoretical and practical expertise to explain how online extremist groups recruit and radicalise members and then employ various highly effective tactics to further their strategic goals…. What renders this book unique … are the author’s detailed accounts of going deep undercover. ’ —The Journal of Forensic Psychology and Psychiatry