Crime & Safety
Californian Used White Supremacist Terrorist Organization To Solicit Murder: Authorities
Two people, one from California, ran the Terrorgram Collective on Telegram, promoting white supremacist accelerationism, authorities said.
ELK GROVE, CA — Two people — one from California and the other from Idaho — led a transnational white supremacist terrorist group online, soliciting hate crimes and the murder of federal officials, authorities said.
Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, led the Terrorgram Collective and are charged in a 15-count indictment, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday, adding the pair were arrested Friday.
“Today’s arrests are a warning that committing hate-fueled crimes in the darkest corners of the internet will not hide you, and soliciting terrorist attacks from behind a screen will not protect you,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release.
Humber and Allison’s organization operated on the digital messaging platform Telegram, promoting white supremacist accelerationism, an ideology that includes the belief that violence is needed to ignite a race war after which the government will be replaced by a white ethnostate, according to the department.
The pair spread videos and publications with advice on how to carry out crimes and provided a hit list of “high-value” assassination targets, including U.S. federal, state and local officials as well as business leaders, authorities said. The two people solicited users to make attacks and gave instructions to help users commit the crimes, according to the department.
These included attacks against those deemed enemies of the white race, attacks on government buildings and energy facilities, and attacks on “high-value targets,” authorities said.
“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the justice department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a news release.
“This indictment charges the leaders of a transnational terrorist group with several civil rights violations, including soliciting others to engage in hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Black, immigrant, LGBT, and Jewish people.”
Humber, Allison and other members of the group inspired or guided attacks, including incidents involving three people shot, two of whom died, outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia; a planned attack on New Jersey energy facilities; and five people stabbed near a mosque in Turkey, according to the department.
The indictment charges Humber and Allison with 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, authorities said.
If convicted, they each face a maximum of 220 years in prison, according to the department.
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