'Terrorgram Collective' leaders indicted on charges of soliciting hate crimes and assassinations

(CN) — Two leaders of the “Terrorgram Collective,” a decentralized online network that promotes white nationalist violence around the world, have been indicted on charges of soliciting hate crimes and soliciting the murder of federal officials. Their propaganda is believed to have directly inspired at least two mass-casualty attacks abroad, and one attempted bombing in New Jersey.

“The defendants’ goal was to ignite a race war and accelerate the collapse of the government and the rise of a white ethnostate,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a press conference Monday after the indictment was unsealed,

Matthew Allison, a 37-year-old living in Boise, Idaho, and Dallas Humber, a 34-year-old woman living in Elk Grove, California, joined Terrorgram in 2019, according to the indictment. By 2022 they became leaders of the group after a previous leader was arrested on terrorism charges. They ran the Terrorgram channels and group chats using the online social media and messaging platform Telegram, and helped produce and spread various videos and publications including “The Hard Reset,” “White Terror,” and “The List.”

The Terrorgram belief system recalls that of Islamic jihadists. Its members celebrate “saints” — white supremacists who died while carrying out attacks against people of color and LGBTQ people, an ethos used to inspire future attacks.

“The canonization of mass shooters and amplification of their messages creates an environment where aspiring attackers are increasingly willing to perpetrate violence as a way to honor previous ‘saints,’ attain sainthood themselves, and inspire future attacks,” Humber explained in a Telegram post in 2022.

Launched in 2013, Telegram has become the most popular instant messaging app in many parts of the world, with more than 950 million active users. It has also, according to the New York Times, become a “playground for criminals, extremists and terrorists.” Last month, its co-founder and CEO, the Russian-born Pavel Durov, was arrested in France on charges of allowing a wide range of illegal activity to take place on his platform. People use the app to sell drugs, guns and stolen checks. White nationalists use it to plan rallies. Hamas used Telegram to broadcast its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“As hate groups turn to these online platforms, the federal government is adapting,” Clarke said. “You can’t escape accountability by hiding behind a computer screen.”

Federal prosecutors say that Allison and Humber used their own channels on Telegram to spread their white supremacist ideology and encourage people to commit violence against Black people, Jewish people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ and others. “The Hard Reset” included instructions for how to make napalm, pipe bombs and dirty bombs, according to the indictment. It instructed readers on “how to effectively run a terror cell,” and it identified targets to attack.

“The List” was, according to the indictment, a list of “high value targets for assassination,” including a U.S. senator, a federal judge, a former U.S. prosecutor, state and city officials and leaders of private companies. It included not just names but photographs, home addresses, and the reason for being targeted. The senator was described as “an anti-white, anti-gun, Jewish senator;” the judge was called “an invader” from a foreign country.

Allison posted the “The List,” along with a comment predicted that it would “do for killing what the printing press had done for literacy,” prosecutors say in the indictment.

Humber and Allison also encouraged followers to attack government infrastructure, including federal buildings and energy facilities, according to the indictment, and gave them tips on how to do so. In July 2024, an 18-year-old who’d been active on Terrorgram group chat was arrested in a plot to attack an energy substation in New Jersey. The arrest was made with the help of an undercover FBI agent.

Most U.S. white supremacists are focused on their own country. But Terrogram had international ambitions. In July 2023, as protests raged in France in the wake of a police shooting of a 17-year-old son of immigrants, Humber posted a photograph of a sniper aiming a rifle with the caption, “A MESSAGE TO ARMED AND POTENTIALLY LETAHL FRENCH BROS: Don’t cower in your rooms, waiting for the n—– riots to stop. Instead, load your magazines and get cozy…. Don’t second-guess your Racial Duty. Don’t breathe a word of what you’re planning to anyone, and make every shot count.”

Prosecutors say that at least two Terrorgram users have carried out brutal attacks abroad. In 2022, 19-year-old Juraj Krajčík hot three people, killing two of them a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia. Before turning the gun on himself, he sent his manifesto to Allison, thanking him for his inspiration and guidance. According to the indictment, Krajčík had been active on Terrorgram in the year leading up to his rampage; afterward, he was celebrated by Humber and Allison as “Terrogram’s first Saint.”

On Aug. 12, an 18-year-old from Turkey stabbed five people outside a mosque in Eskişehir. According to the indictment, on the morning before the attack, the man wrote on a Terrorgram group chat, “Come see how much humans I can cleanse,” and added a link to what would be a livestream video of the attack, broadcast over X, under the username “@HolyTerrorist1.” Along with his manifesto, he shared key Terrorgram books and materials, and cited previous Terrorgram “Saints.”

After the attack, Humber crowed, “He was 100% our guy. But he’s not white so I can’t give him an honorary title. We still celebrating his attack tho, he did it for Terrorgram.”

Authorities arrested Humber and Allison on Friday. They face 15 criminal counts, including solicitation of hate crimes, solicatoin of the murder of federal officials, doxing federal officials and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of 220 years in federal prison.

“Today’s indictment charges the defendants with leading a transnational terrorist group dedicated to attacking America’s critical infrastructure, targeting a hit list of our country’s public officials, and carrying out deadly hate crimes — all in the name of violent white supremacist ideology," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

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