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The Language of Terrorists: Distinguishing Trolls from Violent Extremists
Not yet published
Expected 18 Aug 26232 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication August 18, 2026
About the author
Julia Ebner
9 books89 followersJulia Ebner, geboren 1991 in Wien, forscht am Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London zu Online-Extremismus. Sie arbeitet mit zahlreichen Regierungsorganisationen und Polizeiorganen zusammen, sie ist Online-Extremismus-Beraterin der UN, NATO und der Weltbank. Sie schreibt regelmäßig für den Guardian und die Süddeutsche Zeitung, war unter anderem bei Markus Lanz, den Tagesthemen und dem heute-journal zur Gast. Ihr Buch Wut. Was Islamisten und Rechtsextreme mit uns machen war ein SPIEGEL-Bestseller.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 11, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for access to this book in exchange for an honest review.
Let me start off by saying I love linguistics. I majored in it; my specialty was sociolinguistics in particular. That being said, language is detrimental to how we view the world and share our thoughts.
I love that this book highlighted language usage in between to similar (but vastly different groups): terrorists and trolls. I think it is important to highlight the difference between the two while acknowledging that there are extremely similar features.
This book is very accessible to the everyday person who might be curious about terrorism and language and how the two intersect.
Overall, I think this book was fascinating and left me curious for learning more about the relationship between languages and terrorism.
Let me start off by saying I love linguistics. I majored in it; my specialty was sociolinguistics in particular. That being said, language is detrimental to how we view the world and share our thoughts.
I love that this book highlighted language usage in between to similar (but vastly different groups): terrorists and trolls. I think it is important to highlight the difference between the two while acknowledging that there are extremely similar features.
This book is very accessible to the everyday person who might be curious about terrorism and language and how the two intersect.
Overall, I think this book was fascinating and left me curious for learning more about the relationship between languages and terrorism.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Language nerds, gather around, this book is for us.
By studying manifestos and online data, the author tries to explain the differences (and similarities) between potential terrorists and annoying trolls. Not everyone being incredibly offensive (and annoying) online will actually turn into a terrorist, when you study their writing, terrorists will have a few things in common : identity fusion that leads to a lot of us versus them kind of talk, calls to violence… That part of the book was really interesting but I found the second part even more important. Once we know how to identify potential terrorists, what do we do? It’s very difficult to find a balance between protecting the public from potential violence and protecting people’s individual rights. How do we force Tech companies to be accountable for what is going on on their platforms while still protecting free speech and privacy rights? The author also reminds us that law enforcement (just like pretty much any institution) is biased and tends to over police certain groups (and under police others), you can really that in the way so many people downplay far right terrorism. We have no problem labelling Isis a terrorist group, but when it’s a a guy like Dylan Roof well we need to think about it you see. Over relying on AI to do the monitoring job is not going to help since AI training is done with police data and what we’ll get in the end is biased risk predictions.
By studying manifestos and online data, the author tries to explain the differences (and similarities) between potential terrorists and annoying trolls. Not everyone being incredibly offensive (and annoying) online will actually turn into a terrorist, when you study their writing, terrorists will have a few things in common : identity fusion that leads to a lot of us versus them kind of talk, calls to violence… That part of the book was really interesting but I found the second part even more important. Once we know how to identify potential terrorists, what do we do? It’s very difficult to find a balance between protecting the public from potential violence and protecting people’s individual rights. How do we force Tech companies to be accountable for what is going on on their platforms while still protecting free speech and privacy rights? The author also reminds us that law enforcement (just like pretty much any institution) is biased and tends to over police certain groups (and under police others), you can really that in the way so many people downplay far right terrorism. We have no problem labelling Isis a terrorist group, but when it’s a a guy like Dylan Roof well we need to think about it you see. Over relying on AI to do the monitoring job is not going to help since AI training is done with police data and what we’ll get in the end is biased risk predictions.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews