Episode description

On this week's episode, we have an extended interview with author and researcher, Julia Ebner. Julia is a Senior Resident Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and has written a series of books exploring the social dynamics of extremist networks, including The Rage: the Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, Going Dark: the Secret Social Lives of Extremists, and most recently Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over.

Julia also recently completed her DPhil at Oxford's Centre for Studies of Social Cohesion and has been developing novel linguistic analyses to help identify the psychological indicators of violence in extremist material and manifestos. She has also endured publishing some papers with our resident cognitive anthropologist.

In the podcast, we cover a range of topics from the factors impacting radicalisation, Julia's time working for Maajid Nawaz's organisation, the psychology of conspiracy theories, and her experiences as an undercover investigator.

Also on this week's episode, we dive into a recent episode of the DarkHorse to explore the Alex Jones' level conspiracies that Bret and Heather have recently been promoting about the horrific events in Israel. You might imagine it would be difficult to make such a tragic event about COVID dissidents and vaccines but if so you are underestimating the InfoHorse hosts.

For a palette cleanser enjoy an extended review-of-reviews and some marathon shoutouts.

Links

• The Guardian: The Big Idea- is it too late to stop extremism taking over politics?
• Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists | Julia Ebner | Talks at Google
• Julia's Recent Book- Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over
• Regressive Left Media: Tommy Robinson and Maajid Nawaz: Sleeping with the Enemy
• Bad Stats thread with DarkHorse clips from episode 195
• Andy Last's Beyond Synth Podcast
• DTG Shedding Light on the DarkHorse: A Mini Review
• Ebner, J., Kavanagh, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2023). Measuring socio-psychological drivers of extreme violence in online terrorist manifestos: an alternative linguistic risk assessment model. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 1-19.
• Ebner, J., Kavanagh, C., & Whitehouse, H. (2022). Is there a language of terrorists? a comparative manifesto analysis. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1-27.