With arrests of alleged members in Canada, Slovakia, and two “leaders” in the US, law enforcement is cracking down on the network that has been connected to at least two terror attacks and one plot.
Peter Smith
Canadian Anti-Hate Network
An image taken from the Terrorgram book "Hard Reset." Source: Telegram
On September 9, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Matthew Allison of Boise, Idaho, and Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, California. The pair have been charged with 15 counts for soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
Humber and Allison are both alleged to be part of the Terrorgram Collective, a transnational network of neo-Nazi content creators who produce works focused on inspiring and instructing radicalized individuals to carry out attacks against people and infrastructure.
Several arrests have occurred over the past year related to the network, including in Canada.
Terrogram is a collective of mostly anonymous individuals who post materials on Telegram that support and encourage terrorist attacks, like mass shootings, that target non-white individuals and communities. Two attacks and one terror plot have been attributed to Terrorgram supporters, including the recent stabbing of nine people outside of a Turkish mosque in August, a plan to attack power stations in New Jersey, and the 2022 fatal shooting of two people at an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Last month, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that three Telegram channels, which collectively have over 70,000 subscribers, promote Terrorgram content and serve as a gateway to other associated channels within the Terrorgram network. Tracing the extent and reach of the network is difficult, as many of its channels have been banned by Telegram. Additionally, many supporting channels will not directly identify as such, but still share the network’s content.
Primarily, Terrorgram is known for producing long and short-form publications and videos that serve as both inspiration and guides to committing acts of violence and perpetrating attacks against the public. They have produced manuals like “Militant Accelerationism” or “Do It For The ‘Gram” that not only tell individuals to carry out violence but also help them tailor their messaging, manifestos, and after the fact, lionize the perpetrators as heroes.
Calling the attacker behind these actions “Saints,” the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has observed an account attributed to Humber promoting a calendar that marks the days that mass casualty events have taken place that Terrorgram views as aligned with their cause. The saints are a pantheon made up of terrorists, school shooters, and killers viewed in life or death as champions of the white supremacist cause.
These events include killers like Payton Gendron who murdered 10 people in a Buffalo, New York grocery store in 2022; Brenton Tarrant who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019; and Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Oslo in 2011.
Requirements for sainthood include, according to images released via Terrorgram, “be white…obviously,” having committed a deliberate act, being “racial, political, or religious,” killing at least one person (“no exceptions”), and having a “pro-white … [right-wing] and anti-system” worldview.
Terrorgram is a portmanteau of the words terrorism and Telegram, an encrypted one-to-one and one-to-many messaging application, known primarily for offering enhanced privacy and little moderation. Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France in August. Authorities claim the app has facilitated the spread of illicit and illegal activity, ranging from child sexual abuse material to drug sales and terrorism material, while moderators failed to adequately address the problem. Durov has called the arrest “misguided.”
Members of the network run dozens of Telegram channels, which release a variety of propaganda. Expressing a militant accelerationist ideology, adherents believe that through violent action the tensions in Western society can be increased, leading to an acceleration of the inevitable collapse of society. Militant accelerationists who are also white supremacists, like those who make up Terrorgram, typically believe this will result in the creation of a National Socialist state or another type of society based on a strict racial homogeneity, like that of Germany under the Nazis.
The Collective cemented its reputation among the extreme far-right with the production of four manuals designed to promote and inspire terrorist attacks, and one long-form “documentary” made up of footage of multiple shootings and mass casualty events attributed to killers they feel fall in line with their cause.
Part of the work of the collective included the operation of a channel called “The List,” which offered detailed insights and information on potential targets for supporters. These individuals were made up of individuals considered to be high-value targets, typically based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, industry leaders, advocates, and/or holding public office.
The network also became a vector for the organizing and promotion of other militant accelerationist groups. This includes groups like the Injekt Division, whose leader was arrested for plotting to shoot up a Texas Walmart and the Feuerkrieg Division, an organization likely behind an attempt to set off a bomb in Lithuania and whose founder eventually was revealed to be a 13-year-old boy from Estonia.
The United Kingdom added the Terrorgram Collective to its list of proscribed terrorist groups in April 2024.
Two Canadians with former ties to the Atomwaffen Division—a neo-Nazi group designated as a terrorist organization by the Government of Canada—were arrested for their involvement with the group.
The charges, according to the RCMP, say that Matthew Althorpe and Kristopher Nippak of Ontario are alleged to have participated in the creation of manifestos for the Terrorgram Collective.
Althorpe is facing three counts of commissioning hate crimes offences for a terrorist group, two counts of participation in the activities of a terrorist group, one count of facilitating terrorist activity, one count of instructing a person to carry out terrorist activity, and one count of counselling the commission of a terrorism offence.
Nippak is being charged with one count of participation in the activities of a terrorist group.
Both men are alleged to have been participants in the Active Club Canada, the national chapter of an international collective of white-only neo-Nazi workout clubs. An investigation by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network in 2021 revealed that the ACC was being used as a recruiting tool for the Vinland Hammerskins, the Canadian branch of a global white nationalist gang connected to numerous hate crimes, acts of violence, and murder.
Nippak has been released on bail while Althorpe awaits trial in custody. The contents of their bail hearings remain covered by a publication ban.
The two individuals arrested, Matthew Allison and Dallas Humber, are both significant figures within the Terrorgram Collective.
Humber, a California woman who sells sex toys, was exposed as being the voice behind the “Right Wing Book Club,” a project that created audiobooks of manifestos and writing of far-right mass shooters and killers. She also narrated an audio version of the Terrorgram book “The Hard Reset,” which provided details about target selection, bomb-making, and advice on running an independent terrorist cell.
Humber also played a role in managing the “Saint’s Calendar.” While online she used multiple different screennames including Miss Gore, Gorehound, Ryder, and finally Ryder Returns, before being arrested last week. Her identity was exposed by a group of antifascist researchers in 2023. The article, written by the SoCal Research Club and Michael Boorman, not only exposed Humber for her role in Terrorgram, but also traced her online history of radicalization.
According to the unsealed indictment, the pair joined Terrorgram in 2019, and became leaders of the collective in 2022, after the previous leaders were either arrested for terrorism offences or stepped away after becoming aware of investigations by law enforcement.
Pavol Beňadik, better known by his online screen name Slovakbro, was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to six years in a Slovakian prison after confessing for his contribution to Terrorgram. The Bratislava shooter, Zámocká Street, pointed to Beňadik and Terrorgram as his inspiration.
Allison’s identity has been a long sought-after secret. Known as BTC, which initially stood for “Ban This Channel,” Allison adopted the identity of “Big Titty Chica” or other iterations of the BTC acronym on Telegram.
Allison was responsible for running multiple channels, and they typically all endorsed violence and far-right extremist ideologies. Even channels primarily dedicated to subjects like hedgehogs, “tits” and/or kittens, all contained endorsements of violent action and extremism.
“When Defendant [Matthew] Allison was arrested, he was wearing a backpack containing zip ties, duct tape, a gun, ammunition, a knife, lock-picking equipment, two phones, and a thumb drive," the indictment reads.
The indictment also reveals the existence of an unreleased book, “The Saint Encyclopedia,” made up of mugshots of white supremacist mass murderers and was dedicated to “our ever-expanding Pantheon of Saints.” Pushing on others to carry out more attacks, the book reportedly contained details about each killer and quotes from their manifestos.
The indictment alleges that both the accused offered support for an individual in a Terrorgram chat who implied he would be carrying out an attack. When the unnamed individual wrote the “high score will be defeated”—a reference to the number killed during the Christchurch massacre, the attack with the highest number of victims—and asked that their account be removed from the chats after a week of inactivity, Allison allegedly responded “love ya bro. You’re a fuckn [sic] OG. Wish you the best in everything, homie.”
The $44 million lawsuit against the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, the government, and banks failed to show any evidence of CAHN involvement in a (non-existent) wide-ranging conspiracy.
Bubba Pollock is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of criminal harassment against a member of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, after he taunted her with photos he took of her sleeping father in a hospital room.
