A significant blow befell the transnational network of neo-nazi accelerationists when two leaders of the so-called Terrorgram Collective were arrested. On 6 September, US federal law enforcement arrested a former sex-toy salesperson in California and, 450 miles away, a video editor who went by the pseudonym “DJ Couchplant” in Idaho. Devin Burghardt reports.

Terrorgram is a decentralised network of neo-nazi accelerationist groups, influencers and meme channels on the social networking platform Telegram. Terrorgram is vanguardist in orientation, promoting stochastic terror to “accelerate” the collapse of today’s liberal democracies and replace them with all-white ethnostates. The Terrorgram Collective has become one of the most influential and dangerous conglomerations in the Terrorgram network.

“Using the Telegram platform,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in a statement, “the two advanced their heinous white supremacist ideology, solicited hate crimes, and provided guidance and instructions for terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure and assassinations of government officials.”

Federal prosecutors charged two leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, with a long list of felonies, including one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxing federal officials, one count of threatening communications, two counts of distributing bombmaking instructions, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. If convicted, they could each face a sentence of up to 220 years in prison.

Incitement to crime

Humber and Allison are alleged to have operated Terrorgram channels and group chats, where they solicited users to commit attacks. The indictment also alleges that the two “provided instructions and guidance to equip Terrorgram users to carry out those attacks”.

As leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, Humber and Allison allegedly contributed to and disseminated Terrorgram videos and publications that “provide specific advice for carrying out crimes, celebrate white supremacist attacks, and provide a hit list of ‘high-value targets’ for assassination”.

The hit list included US federal, state and local officials, as well as leaders of companies and non-governmental organisations, many of whom were targeted because of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity. The murder of “high-value targets”, Terrorgram extolled, “would sow chaos and further accelerate the government’s downfall”.

Although hiding behind online pseudonyms, the identities of the two Terrorgram Collective leaders were first exposed by antifascist researchers more than one year before the arrest.

From sex toys to neo-nazi terror manuals

First identified by antifascist researchers at Left Coast Right Watch, 34-year-old Dallas Humber, of Elk Grove, California, once reviewed sex toys online but was drawn into the online world of hardcore racist terror.

Online, Humber was known by many names, including “Miss Gorehound”. She became “the Narrator” of Terrorgram, gaining online notoriety for narrating audiobooks of terror manifestos and white supremacist propaganda. Humber also published the “Saint Calendar”, a compilation of white supremacist terror attack anniversaries that followers were encouraged to celebrate.

Before her arrest, she had been in communication with Dylann Roof, the white nationalist who murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and Brandon Russell, founder of a neo-nazi accelerationist group Atomwaffen Division, convicted on charges of possessing explosive materials and later indicted for plotting to attack electric substations in Baltimore.

The Terrorgram Collective published an audiobook in which Humber read aloud text imploring neo-nazis to attack power grids. “Peppered all over the country are power distribution substations that keep electricity flowing,” she narrated. “Sitting ducks. Worthy prey. They are largely unprotected and often in remote locations. They can be struck at with ease, and it can be done without getting caught, allowing for multiple to be hit in a spree.”

Such attacks on the power grid, Humber read, were “unquestionably more effective than shooting up random n****rs” because “with the power off, when the lights don’t come back on, all hell will break loose, making conditions desirable for our race to once again take back what is ours”.

When Humber was arrested, federal authorities found white nationalist patches, Nazi paraphernalia, 3D printed firearms, ammunition, trigger extenders, SIM cards and flash drives, according to court documents.

The white revolution will be Telegrammed

Matthew Robert Allison, who is aged 37, grew up in Southern California and Utah. In 2008, he moved to Boise, Idaho. In addition to being a video editor and failed artist “DJ Couchplant,” he had tried to become a right-wing influencer for years. As Left Coast Right Watch noted when they identified his role in the Terrorgram Collective, before taking on a role with the network, Allison had been involved in numerous efforts to promote online white nationalism, including White Lives Matter and White American Media.

He was the Terrorgram Collective’s video editor, manager of the network’s channels and publisher.

According to a detention motion, when he 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”. Among the items found in Allison’s apartment were a rifle and more ammunition, an “Atomwaffen mask”, a “go bag” with $1,500 cash, “baggies of pills”, a passport, SIM cards and a black balaclava.

Transnational bigoted bloodshed

The indictment further specifies three international incidents where Terrorgram users were incited to commit acts “in furtherance of white supremacist accelerationism”.

The first listed was an attack on an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia on 12 October 2022. Juraj Krajčík, aged 19 years, opened fire outside a popular LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, killing two people and wounding a third. Before killing himself, he tweeted a link to a 65‑page manifesto he had authored advocating the extermination of LGBTQ people, Jews and Black people. Krajčík cited the texts of other white supremacist mass shooters, whom he called “saints”.

He gave “special thanks” to the online community that had radicalised him. “Terrorgram Collective,” he wrote. “You know who you are … Building the future of the White revolution, one publication at a time.” As with the writings of other racist mass murderers, the Terrorgram Collective turned Krajčík’s genocide manifesto into an audiobook to inspire others.

The second incident cited was a planned infrastructure attack on energy facilities in New Jersey. Andrew Takhistov was arrested in July for allegedly recruiting someone to attack an electrical substation.

According to the authorities, he unsuspectingly made contact with an undercover agent, with whom he discussed a plan to attack an electrical substation. The two drove to a power substation, and Takhistov provided information on how to construct Molotov cocktails and avoid detection. He also discussed various “strategies for terrorist attacks, including rocket and explosives attacks against synagogues”.

The third incident involved a knife attack at a mosque in Turkey on 12 August. Wearing a skull mask and a tactical vest with a sonnenrad patch, a symbol used by nazis and white supremacists, an 18-year-old armed with a hatchet and two knives livestreamed himself stabbing multiple people near a mosque in Eskişehir, in northern Turkey. He wounded at least five people and was later detained by police. The attacker had shared copies of his manifesto, the manifesto of the Slovakian mass murderer, and publications of the Terrorgram Collective as documents “useful” to those planning attacks.

Humber wrote of the attacker online: “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.” Humber added in a separate post: “We can’t add him to the Pantheon, but yeah, it’s a great development regardless, inspiring more attacks is the goal and anyone claiming to be an Accelerationist should support them.”

What with the arrests of Humber and Allison in the USA and the August arrest of the Russian-born founder of Telegram Pavel Durov in Paris for failing to curb illegal content on the platform, Terrorgram activists are panicked that their days of free reign on the platform could be over.         

Pictures:

Hate symbol The neo‑nazi Terrorgram Collective’s logo combines the SS Panzer Division insignia with the Telegram logo

Hate agitators
Among other incitements, Dallas Humber (far left) and Matthew Allison (left) called on neo-nazis to attack power grids, leading an undercover agent to detain one of their followers, who also included Slovakian Juraj Krajčík (bottom left), who killed two people and injured one, and an unnamed Turkish convert (bottom right), who wore a skull mask as he attacked and injured five people. The Terrorgram Collective also published white supremacists propaganda (centre), a selection of which was audio recorded by Humber

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Searchlight