? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

What pushes someone to the extreme? Julia Ebner explores the answer to that question in Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists. By day, she works at a counter-extremism think tank, but by night, she goes undercover to infiltrate extremist groups online.

In her down time, Ebner has five different identities that she created to join a dozen extremist groups with varying ideologies.

On her secret adventures, she goes from a Neo-Nazi Music Festival on the border between Germany and Poland, to getting relationship advice from “Trad Wives,” to channels that planned the Alt-Right, deadly Charlottesville rally.

This is not fiction: Ebner immerses herself to uncover how close fanatical ideology is to us. It’s easy to dismiss indoctrination, but as the Financial Times said, she does a great job exposing the sense of community that is common across extremist groups.

She also exposes how members can sometimes struggle with their identity within the groups, like when a white supremacist has their non-white ancestry exposed and still somehow justifies his ties to the ideology. Ebner’s unique hobby delivers a deep dive on the indoctrination of real people using her expertise as a researcher of extremism.

Get your hands on this book from Amazon.

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