Matthew Allison, a 37-year-old convenience store worker and Saturday-night DJ, seemed to like everyone he met in Boise, Idaho’s small electronic dance music scene. Most people seemed to like him back. He was “a little goofy,” a former friend, Tyler Whitt, recalled. “But bro goofy.” That lovable persona hid a more sinister core. When he was behind his computer screen, Allison used the handle BTC, short for BanThisChannel, ProPublica reports. On the social media and messaging platform Telegram, authorities say, Allison was a key figure in a network of white supremacist and neo-Nazi chat groups and channels known as Terrorgram.
There, Allison held court, promoting himself as “the most infamous and prolific propagandist of our time.”
Extremism researchers in the U.S. and in Europe studied his posts but did not know who he was. Leftist activists sought to expose him. Law enforcement authorities tried to identify and jail him. Last September, he was finally arrested. Prosecutors allege that Allison was one of the leaders in the Terrorgram Collective, a secretive group that produced propaganda and instructions for terrorists, and disseminated that information through the Terrorgram ecosystem. They say he used Telegram to solicit "attacks on government infrastructure, such as government buildings and energy facilities" to encourage the assassination of “‘high-value targets’ — like politicians and government officials” with a “hit list,” and to help produce and distribute a Terrorgram Collective publication that featured instructions for making “Napalm, thermite, chlorine gas, pipe bombs, and dirty bombs.” Authorities contend in court filings that Allison had fantasies about committing gruesome violence and sexual assault, and that he may have been planning to act on them. For about five years, the Terrorgram network operated largely unchallenged on Telegram, which has nearly one billion users. The Dubai-based company did little to prevent influencers like Allison from circulating their propaganda and encouraging isolated young men to kill.
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