How Terrorgram Collective Influencers Groomed a Killer — ProPublica

The teenager entered the chat with a pleasant greeting.

“Hey lads,” he typed.

“Sup,” got here a reply, together with a graphic that learn “KILL JEWS.” One other poster shared a GIF of Adolf Hitler shaking fingers with Benito Mussolini. Another person added a brief video of a homosexual delight flag being set on hearth. Finally, the discuss within the group turned to mass shootings and bombings.

And so in August 2019, Juraj Krajčík, then a soft-faced 16-year-old with a dense pile of brown hair, immersed himself in a unfastened assortment of extremist discussion groups and channels on the huge social media and messaging platform Telegram. This on-line group, which was dubbed Terrorgram, had a singular focus: inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism.

Over the following three years, Krajčík made a whole lot — probably hundreds — of posts in Terrorgram chats and channels, the place a handful of influential content material creators steered the dialog towards violence. Day after day, put up after put up, these influencers cultivated Krajčík, who lived along with his household in a snug condominium in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. They strengthened his hatreds, fine-tuned his beliefs and fed him suggestions, encouraging him to assault homosexual and Jewish individuals and political leaders and change into, of their parlance, a “saint.”

On Oct. 12, 2022, Krajčík, armed along with his father’s .45-caliber handgun, opened hearth on three individuals sitting exterior an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, killing two and wounding the third earlier than fleeing the scene.

That evening, as police hunted for him, Krajčík spoke on the cellphone with Marek Madro, a Bratislava psychologist who runs a suicide hotline and psychological well being disaster crew. “He hoped that what he had completed would shake up society,” recalled Madro in an interview, including that the teenager was “very scared.”

Throughout the name, Krajčík saved repeating phrases from his manifesto, in response to Madro. The 65-page doc, written in crisp English and illustrated with graphics and images, provided an in depth justification for his deadly actions. “Destroy the degenerates!” he wrote, earlier than encouraging individuals to assault delight parades, homosexual and lesbian activists, and LGBTQ+ bars.

Finally Krajčík, standing in a small grove of bushes alongside a busy roadway, put a gun to his head and pulled the set off.

The subsequent day, Terrorgram influencers have been praising the killer and circulating a PDF of his manifesto on Telegram.

“We thank him from the underside of our hearts and can always remember his sacrifice,” said one put up written by a Terrorgram chief in California. “FUCKING HAIL, BROTHER!!!”

The story of Krajčík’s march to violence exhibits the murderous attain of the net extremists, who operated exterior the view of native legislation enforcement. To police on the time, the killings appeared just like the act of a lone gunman reasonably than what they have been: the fruits of a coordinated recruiting effort that spanned two continents.

ProPublica and the PBS collection FRONTLINE, together with the Slovakian newsroom Investigative Middle of Jan Kuciak, pieced collectively the story behind Krajčík’s evolution from a troubled teenager to mass shooter. We recognized his consumer identify on Telegram, which allowed us to sift by way of tens of hundreds of now-deleted Telegram posts that had not beforehand been linked to him. Our crew retraced his closing hours, interviewing investigators, specialists and victims in Slovakia, and mapped the hyperlinks between Krajčík and the extremists in Europe and the U.S. who helped to form him.

The Terrorgram community has been gutted in current months by the arrests of its leaders in North America and Europe. Telegram declined repeated requests to make its executives accessible for interviews however in an announcement mentioned, “Requires violence from any group should not tolerated on our platform.” The corporate additionally mentioned that since 2023 it has stepped up moderation practices.

Nonetheless, at a time when different mainstream social media corporations resembling X and Meta are chopping again on policing their on-line content material, specialists say the violent neo-Nazis that populated Telegram’s chats and channels will possible discover an internet residence elsewhere.

At first, Krajčík didn’t slot in with the Terrorgrammers. In a single early put up in 2019, he argued that the white nationalist motion would profit from giant public protests. The thought wasn’t nicely obtained.

“Rallies gained’t do shit,” replied one poster.

One other informed the teenager that as an alternative of organizing a rally, he ought to begin murdering politicians, journalists and drag performers. “You want a mafia way of thinking,” the individual wrote.

Krajčík had discovered his strategy to the Terrorgram group after hanging out on 8chan, an enormous and nameless discussion board that had lengthy been an internet haven for extremists; he would later say that he was “redpilled” — or radicalized — on the positioning.

On 8chan, individuals posted racist memes and made loads of vile feedback. However the Terrorgram scene was completely different. Within the Terrorgram chats individuals mentioned, intimately, the very best methods for finishing up spectacular acts of violence aimed toward toppling Western democracies and changing them with all-white ethno-states.

The chats Krajčík joined that summer time of 2019 have been administered by Pavol Beňadik, then a 20-year-old Slovakian school scholar who had helped create the Terrorgram group and was one in all its main personalities.

A hybrid of a messaging service like WhatsApp and a social media platform like X or Fb, Telegram provided options that appealed to extremists like Beňadik. They may have interaction in non-public encrypted discussions, begin massive discussion groups or create public channels to broadcast their messages. Importantly, Telegram additionally allowed them to put up big PDF paperwork and prolonged video information.

In his Terrorgram chats, Beňadik, who used the deal with Slovakbro, relentlessly pressed for violent actions — though he by no means took any himself. Over two days in August, he posted directions for making Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, inspired individuals to construct radioactive soiled bombs and set them off in main cities, and known as for the execution of law enforcement officials and different legislation enforcement brokers. “TOTAL PIG DEATH,” he wrote.

On the time, the chats have been drawing a whole lot of contributors from around the globe, together with numerous Individuals.

Beňadik, who was from a small village in western Slovakia, took a particular curiosity in Krajčík, chatting with him within the Slovak language, discussing life of their nation, and making him really feel appreciated and revered.

For Krajčík, this was a change. In his day by day life exterior of Terrorgram, he “felt fully unnoticed, unheard,” mentioned Madro, who spoke with a number of of Krajčík’s classmates. “He usually talked about his personal emotions and ideas publicly and felt like nobody took him significantly.”

Krajčík began spending large quantities of time within the chat. On a single day, he posted 117 instances over the span of 10 hours. The teenager’s concepts started to carefully echo these of Beňadik.

In late September, two regulars had a pleasant blended martial arts bout and streamed it on YouTube. Krajčík shared the hyperlink with the remainder of the chat group, who cheered and heckled as their on-line associates brawled. Beňadik inspired Krajčík to take part in an identical bout sooner or later.

“Porozmýšlam,” replied Krajčík: “I’ll give it some thought.”

For Beňadik, the combatants have been offering a great instance. He wished Terrorgrammers to remodel themselves into Aryan warriors, onerous males able to doing critical bodily hurt to others.

In actuality, Krajčík was something however a troublesome man. A “severely bullied scholar,” Krajčík had transferred to a highschool for academically gifted college students, a college official informed the Slovak newspaper Pravda. Two therapists “labored intensively with him for 2 years till the pandemic broke out and colleges closed,” the official mentioned.

Beňadik created at the least 5 neo-Nazi channels and two discussion groups on Telegram, one in all which ultimately attracted practically 5,000 subscribers. He crafted an internet persona as a sage chief, providing suggestions and steerage for finishing up efficient assaults. He usually posted sensible supplies, resembling information for 3D-printing rifle components, together with auto sears, which rework a semiautomatic gun into a completely automated weapon. “Learn helpful literature, get helpful abilities,” he mentioned in an interview with a podcast. “You’re the revolutionary, so act prefer it.”

It was solely a month after becoming a member of Beňadik’s Terrorgram chats that Krajčík first talked about Tepláreň, the LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava he ultimately attacked. On Sept. 18, 2019, he shared a hyperlink to a web site known as Queer Slovakia that featured an article on the bar.

Beňadik responded instantly, writing that he was having a “copeland second” — a reference to David Copeland, a British neo-Nazi who planted a nail bomb at an LGBTQ+ pub in London in 1999. The explosion killed three individuals and wounded practically 80 others.

“I DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO NAIL BOMB THAT JOINT,” Beňadik continued. He wished to do one thing far worse. “Hell,” Beňadik wrote, can be much less brutal than what he had in thoughts.

One other Terrorgrammer provided a suggestion: What a couple of bomb loaded with “Nails + ricin + chemical substances?”

Krajčík sounded a observe of warning. “Simply saying it’s going to immediately make a squad of federal brokers seem behind you and arrest you,” he wrote. Beňadik responded by complaining that Slovakia wasn’t producing sufficient “saints,” implicitly encouraging his mentee to realize sainthood by committing a deadly act of terror.

Two days later, Krajčík posted images of individuals holding homosexual delight flags in downtown Bratislava. They have been “degenerates,” he wrote, repeatedly utilizing anti-gay slurs.

One chat member informed Krajčík he ought to’ve rounded up a gaggle of Nazi skinheads and assaulted the demonstrators.

Then Krajčík posted a photograph of Tepláreň.

Beňadik responded that “airborne paving stones make nice presents for such companies.”

Within the chat, Beňadik repeatedly posted a PDF copy of the self-published memoirs of Eric Rudolph, the American terrorist who bombed the 1996 Olympic Video games in Atlanta and several other different websites earlier than happening the run. The autobiography accommodates an in depth description of Rudolph’s bombing of a lesbian bar, which wounded 5 individuals.

Urging Krajčík to learn the e book, Beňadik described it as “AMAZING” and a “nice learn.” Rudolph, he wrote, had created the “archetype” for the “lone wolf” terrorist.

Finally, Krajčík joined at the least 49 extremist Telegram chats, a lot of them nodes within the Terrorgram community, in response to evaluation by Pierre Vaux, a researcher who investigates threats to democracy and human rights abuses.

Whereas Terrorgram began as a unfastened assortment of accounts, by 2021 Beňadik and a few of his fellow influencers had created a extra formal group, which they known as the Terrorgram Collective, in response to interviews with specialists and court docket data from Slovakia, the U.S. and Canada.

The group started producing extra subtle content material — books, movies and a roster of potential assassination targets — and distributing the fabric to hundreds of followers.

Krajčík was a fan of the collective’s books, that are loaded with extremely pixelated black-and-white graphics and supply a raft of particular recommendation for anybody planning a terror assault.

By the summer time of 2022, Krajčík had change into a daily poster in a Terrorgram chat run by one other alleged chief of the collective, Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, California, a quiet suburb of Sacramento.

Humber glided by a collection of usernames however was ultimately publicly uncovered by a gaggle of activists, and later arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. ProPublica and FRONTLINE reviewed chat logs — supplied by the anti-facist Australian analysis group The White Rose Society — and different on-line supplies, in addition to court docket data, to independently verify her identification.

Beňadik was arrested in Slovakia and charged with greater than 200 terrorism offenses. He pleaded responsible and can be sentenced to 6 years in jail.

In his absence, Humber rapidly slipped in as mentor and coach to Krajčík.

She was express about her intentions, continually encouraging followers in her chats and channels to exit and kill their perceived enemies — together with Jewish and Muslim individuals, members of the queer group and anyone who wasn’t white. Her job, she wrote in a single put up, was to embrace disaffected younger white males and information them “by way of the tip of the radicalization course of.”

On Aug. 2, 2022, Humber and Krajčík mentioned a grisly incident that had occurred a number of days earlier: A white man had crushed to demise a Nigerian immigrant on a metropolis avenue in northern Italy.

The killing, which was documented on video, was “fucking wonderful,” wrote Humber, utilizing a racial slur to explain the sufferer. “Please ship any extra pics, articles, data to the chat as extra particulars come out,” she posted.

Krajčík wrote that he didn’t know a lot concerning the circumstances surrounding the crime however was nonetheless satisfied the assassin had chosen “the best path.”

The killer, wrote Humber, would make an “best” boyfriend. “Each lady desires a person who would kill a [racial expletive] for her 🥰 how romantic.”

Three days later, Humber’s chat was alive with tributes to and reward for one more killer. Wade Web page, a Nazi skinhead and former U.S. Military soldier, had murdered six Sikh worshippers at a temple exterior of Milwaukee a decade earlier. (A seventh would later die of their accidents.)

When police confronted Web page, he started capturing at them, hitting one officer 15 instances earlier than killing himself.

Humber was a giant fan of the killer. Web page, she wrote, deliberate the assault completely and selected his targets fastidiously. “He even made some extent to desocialize and reduce ties with these near him,” Humber famous. “No likelihood of them disrupting his plans.”

“Web page did his responsibility,” Krajčík wrote.

Throughout the identical time interval, Krajčík began doing reconnaissance on potential targets in his metropolis, staking out the condominium of then-Prime Minister Eduard Heger, a Jewish group heart and Tepláreň, the bar.

He posted images of the places on his non-public Twitter account. And in a collection of cryptic tweets, Krajčík hinted on the violence to return:

“I don’t count on to make it. In all likelyhood I’ll die in the middle of the operation.”

“Earlier than an operation, you’ll have to mentally take care of a number of vital questions. You’ll have to take care of them alone, to not jeopardize your mission by leaking it.”

“I need to harm the System to the very best of my skills.”

Then, on Oct. 11, 2022, he wrote:

“I’ve made my resolution.”

The subsequent night, after spending a half-hour exterior the prime minister’s condominium, Krajčík made his strategy to Tepláreň. The bar sat on a steep, winding avenue lined with cafes, clothes boutiques and different small companies. For about 40 minutes he lurked in a shadowy doorway up the hill. Then, at about 7 p.m., he approached a small group of individuals sitting in entrance of the bar and started capturing.

He killed Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič and wounded Radka Trokšiarová, capturing her twice within the leg.

Krajčík, then 19, fled the scene. He had simply dedicated a terrorist assault that may shock the nation.

In court docket data, U.S. prosecutors have linked each Humber and one other alleged Terrorgram chief, Matthew Allison of Boise, Idaho, to Krajčík’s crime. The pair have been charged final fall with a raft of felonies associated to their Terrorgram posts and propaganda, together with conspiring to offer materials help to terrorists and soliciting the homicide of federal officers.

Krajčík “was energetic on Terrorgram and had frequent conversations with ALLISON, HUMBER, and different members of the Terrorgram Collective,” prosecutors allege within the indictment. In one other transient, they are saying Krajčík shared his manifesto with Allison earlier than the assault. Then, instantly after the murders, he allegedly despatched Allison direct messages saying, “undecided how a lot time I’ve nevertheless it’s occurring,” and “simply delete all messages about this convo.”

The Terrorgram posts cited in court docket paperwork corroborate our crew’s reporting.

Allison spoke with one in all our reporters from jail towards his lawyer’s recommendation. He mentioned he didn’t incite anybody to violence and that prosecutors had misconstrued the communications with Krajčík. He has pleaded not responsible to all expenses, and in a movement, his authorized crew indicated it could argue that each one of his posts are protected by the First Modification. Humber additionally pleaded not responsible. She declined to be interviewed and to remark by way of her lawyer.

Whereas Krajčík was at giant, Slovakian authorities tapped Madro, the psychologist, to attempt to talk with the younger man. “After 12 textual content messages, he lastly picked up the cellphone,” Madro recalled.

The transient dialog ended with Krajčík killing himself. “The shot rang out and there was silence,” Madro mentioned.

Inside hours, Humber was making celebratory posts. Krajčík, she exclaimed, had achieved sainthood. “Saint Krajčík’s place within the Pantheon is undisputed, as is our enthusiastic help for his work,” she wrote on a Terrorgram channel the place she posted an image of the victims on the bottom, blood streaking the pavement.

She and Allison additionally circulated his manifesto.

In it, Krajčík praised the Terrorgram Collective for its “unimaginable writing and artwork,” “political texts” and “sensible guides.” And he thanked Beňadik: “Your work was among the first that I encountered after making the change to Telegram, and stays among the best on the platform.”

Whereas they have been spreading Krajčík’s propaganda, the proprietor of Tepláreň, Roman Samotný, was mourning.

The bar “was type of like a protected island for queer individuals right here in Slovakia,” he recalled in an interview. “It was simply the place the place all people felt welcomed and simply accepted and relaxed.”

Earlier than the assault, Samotný’s main concern was that some homophobe would smash the bar’s home windows. After the murders, he mentioned, “the most important change is the conclusion that we aren’t anymore protected right here. … I used to be by no means pondering that we may be killed due to our identification.”

Samotný has closed the bar.

The survivor, Trokšiarová, was left with lingering bodily ache and emotional misery. “I used to be deeply confused,” she mentioned. “Why would anybody do it?”