Full Description
If someone posts a death threat or a violent manifesto online, will they cross over from words to deeds? Explicit threats, intimidation campaigns, and incitements to violence are no rarity among white nationalists, incels, and other racist and misogynist extremists. Yet it is often difficult to determine whether they pose genuine risks, since the boundaries between trolling and true violent intent can be blurry. How can we tell the difference between online bluster and terrorist threats?
Julia Ebner—an internationally acclaimed expert on online radicalization—offers a fresh approach, showing how language patterns reveal the potential for political violence. She investigates the psychological underpinnings of texts by terrorists such as Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof, Elliot Rodger, and Brenton Tarrant, offering statistical and qualitative contrasts with nonviolent political writing. Ebner finds striking similarities among their manifestos, including the fusion of personal identity with the group, visceral othering of outgroups, narratives of existential conflict, and the glorification of violence. Following these trails, she demonstrates that perpetrators of extremist violence inadvertently give away their intentions in what they say. Featuring vivid writing and actionable conclusions, The Language of Terrorists presents a new model of violent threat detection that can address pressing challenges faced by the international security and intelligence communities.
Contents
Introduction
Part I. Trends and Challenges
1. Eris: When Is Someone a Terrorist?
2. Loki: When Is Someone a Troll?
3. Ceridwen: Understanding Shape-Shifting
4. Kek: Understanding Gamification
5. Sisyphus: Finding the Needle in the Haystack
Part II. Drivers and Detection
6. Of Pyramids and Staircases: The Evolution of Radicalization Theories
7. Fusion Effect: An Emerging Explanation of Violent Extremism
8. Guided Judgment: The Evolution of Professional Threat Assessment
9. Freudian Slip: Detecting Psychological Phenomena in Language
10. Verbal Leakage: Identifying Would-Be Attackers Via Language
Part III. Patterns and Prediction
11. Decoding Terrorist Manifestos
12. The Terrorist Mindset
13. Detecting Credible Threats
14 Case Study: Far-Right Groups
15. Case Study: QAnon Groups
Part IV. Solutions and Outlook
16. Lessons for Policy, Security, and Tech
17. Ethical Limits and Lessons from the Past
18. The Future of Threat Assessment
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Methods Appendix
Notes
Index
