Book Review: The Language of Terrorists

This review examines Julia Ebner's The Language of Terrorists (2026), which addresses the low base-rate problem in preventing and countering violent extremism by developing linguistic markers to identify genuine violence risk. The book argues that intentions to carry out mass violence leave subconscious linguistic traces: markers rooted in sociopsychological drivers such as identity fusion, ingroup-outgroup dynamics, and the normalisation of violence, that persist even in coded language. Drawing on manifestos, social media forums, and case studies, the author proposes and evaluates the Violence Risk Index, a computational text-analysis tool designed to distinguish "talkers" who condone violence from "doers" who pose an actual risk. The book situates this model within existing P/CVE literature and explores its potential applications across a range of policy contexts.