As the presidential election approaches, a recently designated neo-Nazi terrorist group is covertly seeding violent propaganda on to mainstream social media channels – exposing tens of thousands of unknowing followers to radicalizing messages – according to background research and a report provided to the Guardian by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
One of those channels on Telegram purports to be associated with Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, with an administrator claiming in group chats discovered by ISD to have had direct contact with the longtime Trump ally who is well-known for playing footsie with extremists and admitting to fomenting revolution.
The UK government listed the Terrogram collective as an official terrorist entity in April. The move spiked public interest in the shadowy network of violent neo-Nazi propagandists on Telegram that preaches accelerationism, which demands followers hasten the collapse of society through acts of terrorism.
Terrorgram has already had success inspiring adherents. The Bratislava shooter who killed two people outside of a gay bar in 2022 cited it in his manifesto. Just last week, a teenage suspected supporter in Turkey carried out a mass stabbing at a mosque. Followers of Terrorgram in Canada and in the US have already been subject to terrorism-related charges in recent years.
“The Terrorgram’s use of non-overt spaces serves to expose a wider audience to terrorist content, which risks drawing unsuspecting subscribers of these larger channels into more overtly violent extremist communities,” wrote Steven Rai, an analyst who monitors the far right and authored the report at the extremist watchdog, in the report.
Rai says there are three channels masquerading under the guise of acceptable rightwing content, sharing clips from CNN and MSNBC, but then occasionally sharing conspiratorial content and racist or violent memes.
But the administrators of the channels, who he suggests are alleged Terrorgram operatives looking to indoctrinate people, then tell followers to go further down the propaganda rabbit hole and join the chaotic group chats that push harsher ideas.
“All three push subscribers to join associated group chats where content supporting mass violence and societal collapse is rife,” he writes.
In total, all three “gateway” channels count more than 70,000 subscribers. Rai estimates that far exceeds the combined viewership of all the channels overtly identifying as Terrorgram.
But the biggest coup for Terrorgram appears to be co-opting a Bannon War Room channel, which claims it is the official “home of the War Room Posse”. Rai reports that one of the administrators of the channel admits mainstream sources should “be used to win people over” and that Bannon was “involved” when asked by a follower in a group chat text message shared with the Guardian.
“In its corresponding discussion group, the administrator claimed that Bannon himself was involved with the channel,” Rai says in the report, but hedges that there’s no other public evidence suggesting that’s true. “Nevertheless, the administrator of this channel has amassed over 63,000 subscribers, just a few hundred shy of the legitimate War Room channel.”
The War Room did not respond to multiple inquiries about its association with that same Telegram channel or if Bannon ever had any contact with its administrators.
Rai also reported that fellow Maga acolyte Charlie Kirk, who is known to funnel racist tropes into the mainstream, has reposted several times from the Terrorgram-backed Bannon channel to his more than 169,000 subscribers.
Rai points out that infiltrating less politically radical spaces to supply the everyman with extremist notions of violence, matches up with Terrorgram tradecraft. In fact, it is a pronounced tactic the collective has openly endorsed in manuals published to its followers asking them to be “covert infiltrators” and to “propagandize the system against itself”.
After a “thorough” examination of the accounts, ISD found evidence in all three group chats suggesting the quiet hand of Terrorgram operatives. Users ominously claimed the collective was “everywhere” while others spoke in another about direct knowledge of the inner workings of Terrorgram operations. They also found the same unique bot account, an automated user created by administrators to post content, in all three channels and in known Terrorgram channels.
Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst at the Counter Extremism Project who specializes in monitoring the far right, confirmed he had seen the same Terrorgram-linked channel, the War Room Posse.
“It is still a bit early to tell what Terrorgram channels will say specifically before the election,” said Fisher-Birch, adding that the “channels are also continuing to share manuals that promote lone actor attacks on people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, government officials and others, as well as encourage attacks on infrastructure”.
That one of the most infectious propagandist groups on the far right is poisoning mainstream vectors of rightwing politics, shows a continued blurring of the line between GOP talking points and violent extremism.
For law enforcement, it represents a broader threat as the election season, which already featured the attempted assassination of one presidential candidate, heads into the final stretch.
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, has made it clear his agency is preparing for the prospect of violence as pre-voting and the November poll date approach.
“When it comes to threats of violence,” said Wray in a statement earlier this year about election security, “we’re committed to vigorously investigating and pursuing violations of federal law and to making sure all calls and reports of threats get to the right place.”
The results of how successful Terrorgram and its attempts at radicalizing the unsuspecting thousands on Telegram isn’t yet clear, As Rai put it in his concluding lines of the report, it “remains to be seen”.
