Going Dark

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.

“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”

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' Sunday Times 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 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 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 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 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 Stylist *

Julia Ebner is a Resident Research Fellow at ISD, specializing in far-right extremism, reciprocal radicalization and European terrorism prevention initiatives.

She is the author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism as well as several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and policy briefings. On the basis of her research, Julia advises parliamentary working groups, frontline workers and tech firms, speaks at international conferences and delivers workshops in schools and universities. She regularly writes for the Guardian and the Independent and gives interviews in English, German and French on the BBC, CNN, ZDF, ARD, France24, Al Jazeera, LBC and others.

Before joining ISD, Julia worked as a Senior Researcher at the counter-extremism organisation Quilliam, where she led research projects on terrorism prevention for the European Commission and the Kofi Annan Foundation and gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on far-right extremism. Among other publications, she co-authored the report ‘The EU and Terrorism: Is Britain Safer In or Out?’ as well as a chapter in the Routledge volume Education and Extremisms. In her role as the coordinator of the pan-European network Families Against Terrorism and Extremism (FATE), she carried out radicalization prevention projects across Europe and North Africa.

Julia holds an MSc (Dist) in International History from London School of Economics and an MSc (Dist) in International Relations from Peking University. She completed her undergraduate studies with a BA (Hons) in Philosophy and a BSc in International Business.

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