People are driven to radicalism by very human needs

A researcher who has entered many violent radical communities. She went undercover to their meetings, learned their ideology, made friendships and contacts. She got very close to understand what makes people to join groups that are full of hate, violence, extremism and conspiracy. She writes, lectures, speaks about various aspects of radicalisation of men and women in Europe. At the same time, her expertise is shaped by empathy, will to understand and courage to see humans beyond the labels of radicals. A fascinating interview.Julia Ebner is Senior Research Fellow at Institute for Strategic Dialogue, specialising in far-right extremism, reciprocal radicalisation, viral disinformation, conspiracy myths and terrorism prevention. Julia advises parliamentary working groups, security agencies and tech firms, and delivers lectures in schools and universities. She acted as a consultant on counter-terrorism for the United Nations. She is the author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, which won the Bruno Kreisky Award for the Political Book of the Year 2018. Her second book Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists was an international bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. Now it is available also in Slovak under the title: Do tmy. Tajný život extrémistov.Learn more about her work here: https://www.isdglobal.org/isd_team/julia-ebner/. In the podcast we refer also to her TED talk Why We No Longer Get Along from April 2022. This podcast series is supported by The Rights Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Union funded project European Observatory of Online HateDirector: Ľubica StanekProduction: Marek Vaňous