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Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists
Deep Insights

Julia Ebner

London et al.: Bloomsbury (2020), viii, 348 pp.

"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 ... more

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Radikalisierungsmaschinen: Wie Extremisten die neuen Technologien nutzen und uns manipulieren
Deep Insights

Julia Ebner

Berlin: Suhrkamp (2019), 334 pp.

"Julia Ebner verfolgt hauptberuflich Extremisten. Undercover mischt sie sich unter Hacker, Terroristen, Trolle, Fundamentalisten und Verschwörer, sie kennt die Szenen von innen, von der Alt-Right-Bewegung bis zum Islamischen Staat, online wie offline. Ihr Buch macht Radikalisierung fassbar, es ist ... more

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Loving Hate: Anti-Muslim Extremism, Radical Islamism and the Spiral of Polarization

Maik Fielitz, Julia Ebner, Jakob Guhl, Matthias Quent

Jena (DE); London; Berlin: Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ); Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) (2018), 75 pp.

"This report focuses on the interactional dynamics between anti-Muslim extremists and radical Islamists in Germany and beyond. It reveals ideological underpinnings, approaches to mobilization and communication patterns, which all prove to be analogous on both sides, and it places emphasis on the rec ... iprocity of hate that may serve to intensify processes of individual and group radicalization. Our study presents the first systematic analysis of the interplay between both forms of extremism that plays out on different places on the Internet. It provides direct evidence showing that Islamist and far-right movements converge at different levels and mutually amplify one another. The analysis focuses on measuring the online interaction between extremist content, individuals and events. Overall, over 10,000 Islamist and far-right Facebook posts and over one million German anti-Muslim tweets between 1 January 2013 and 30 November 2017 were analyzed for this study. Additionally, we conducted three months of ethnographic research into encrypted pro-IS and pro-Al-Qaeda groups on Telegram as well as into far-right chat groups. Key Findings Radical Islamism and anti-Muslim racism, which manifest themselves in the form of far-right extremism and right-wing populism exhibit a symbiotic relationship. In the context of glocal interaction patterns, the far right operates as a national sphere of resonance for international jihadism. Both negate and dismantle basic democratic values such as the inviolability of human dignity and religious freedom. What’s more, racism against Muslims paves the way for radicalization through Islamic fundamentalists. We identified three key patterns that reveal common worldviews and argumentative resemblance: First, the demonization of enemies based on a clear distinction between friend and foe. Second, the victimization of one’s own group as both sides take advantage of the alleged discrimination of their own group and the constructed dominance of the other. Third, conspiracy, which is the basic explanation provided for why the respective milieus do not share their exclusionary claim to truth. The alleged systematic blindness caused by the Jews or fake news are needed to balance the dissonance between claims and reality as well as to contribute to demonizing other groups." (Executive summary) more

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists Deep Insights

Radikalisierungsmaschinen: Wie Extremisten die neuen Technologien nutzen und uns manipulieren Deep Insights

Loving Hate: Anti-Muslim Extremism, Radical Islamism and the Spiral of Polarization

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists
Deep Insights

Radikalisierungsmaschinen: Wie Extremisten die neuen Technologien nutzen und uns manipulieren
Deep Insights