Julia Ebner’s ‘The Rage’, provides an extremely interesting insight into the inner workings of Islamist and Far-Right extremist groups, and the mind of the extremist themselves. She combines on the ground experience of such groups, with an outside online and statistical view in order to gather a multi-dimensional perspective of how these groups work, both within the UK and internationally.
The main point of this work is to show that there is a circle of ‘rage’ between both Islamist and Far-Right extremists; when one group acts in some way, it has an effect on the other, causing a kind of reaction from them. The reaction, Ebner argues, can be sometimes violent or non-violent but still extreme, in a way, they both rely on each other for their continued existence, Far-Right groups will use examples of Islamist extremism to claim all Muslims are at war with the west; whereas Islamist extremists will use examples of Far-Right extremism to claim the west is at war with Islam, both sides use the other as a form of justification for their beliefs. She also puts forward the idea that Islamist and Far-Right extremists are two side of the same coin, in that they both have similar desires for a future conflict between Muslims and Non-Muslims, believing that the two are somehow incompatible with each other. Continue reading “What We’re Reading: ‘The Rage’ by Julia Ebner”