Alleged leaders of White supremacist group charged in effort to encourage terrorism and hate crimes
CNN- A federal grand jury in California has handed up charges unsealed on Monday against two men who allegedly led an online group that pushed others to attack politicians or commit hate crimes as part of an effort to bring down the US government.
The men, 37-year-old Matthew Allison and 34-year-old Dallas Humber, are the leaders of an online White supremacist group called the Terrorgram Collective, prosecutors say. The collective subscribes to White supremacist accelerationism, meaning they allegedly believe violence and terrorism are necessary to start a race war, ignite the collapse of the government and prompt the rise of a White ethnostate.
To that end, prosecutors allege that Allison and Humber pushed their followers to attack minority communities, government infrastructure, politicians, government officials and the leaders of private companies – some of whom, including a US senator and a federal judge, were included in a detailed list of “high value targets” for assassination.
Allison and Humber are facing 15 charges, including soliciting the murder of federal officials, distributing bomb-making instructions, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. No lawyers are listed for the defendants in court records.
Their strategy to encourage others to commit violence was effective, Kristen Clarke, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a news conference Monday. One Terrorgram user livestreamed himself stabbing five people outside of a mosque in Turkey, she said, and a 19-year-old Slovakian man praised the group in a manifesto before killing two people at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
“Make no mistake – as hate groups turn to these online platforms, the federal government is adapting and responding to protect vulnerable communities,” Clarke said Monday. “You can’t escape accountability by hiding behind a computer screen.”
The group used Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform, to communicate, prosecutors say. From descriptions of the group in court documents, it appears to have followers both within the United States and from other countries.
According to court documents, Allison and Humber drafted a digital publication called “The Hard Reset” that laid out the Terrorgram ideology. The writings allegedly gave detailed instructions on how to run a terror cell as well as instructions on how to carry out bias-motivated hate crimes, attack critical infrastructure, make bombs and identify targets.
They also allegedly produced several videos and instructional manuals on how to carry out the most lethal attacks possible, including one with instructions on how to make and detonate a dirty bomb – or a bomb with radioactive materials – to “fumigate the cities” of minority groups.
