Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
ELK GROVE, CA – The U.S. Dept. of Justice Monday announced the charging of two people – one from Elk Grove and the other from Boise – for their involvement in a “transnational terrorist group called the Terrorgram Collective on 15 criminal counts” involving “hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Black, immigrant, LGBT and Jewish people.”
The white supremacist collective, added DOJ, also targets white people sympathizing with those people, calling them “race traitors.”
The DOJ said a California federal grand jury in California charged two “leaders” of the group – Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, ID, and Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, CA of “conspiracy, soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, transmitting interstate threatening communications, distributing bombmaking instructions and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.”
Humber was arraignment Monday in U.S. Federal Court in Sacramento; Allison is expected to be arraigned Tuesday.
The indictment, according to Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, also alleges the accused of soliciting attacks on “government infrastructure and to target politicians and government officials, as well as leaders of private companies and non-governmental organizations.”
The goal of the group, said Clarke, is to “ignite a race war, ‘accelerate’ the collapse of what they viewed as an irreparably corrupt government and bring about a white ethnostate. As the indictment lays out, defendants used the internet platform Telegram to post messages promoting their white supremacist ‘accelerationism.’”
“This indictment reflects the department’s response to the new technological face of white supremacist violence — as those seeking mass violence expand their online reach to encourage, solicit and facilitate terrorist activities. These charges reveal that the department will come after violent white supremacists with every legitimate means at our disposal,” Clarke added.
Clarke detailed the motives and actions of the accused’s use of “Terrorgram to solicit others to commit bias-motivated attacks targeting victims because of their race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.
”The indictment charges that (accused) identified targets for attack, urged followers to kill those targets, explained how to do so and celebrated the perpetrators of past terrorist attacks by developing a so-called ‘saint’ culture.”
Elk Grove’s Humber, the DOJ said, explained the “canonization of mass shooters” made “aspiring attackers more willing to perpetrate violence to attain ‘sainthood’ and inspire future attacks.”
The indictment noted the strategy proved effective, citing a “Terrorgram user who livestreamed himself stabbing five people outside a mosque in Turkey (and stating) he wanted to be recognized as a saint.”
Clarke, in a Monday statement, made a point of noting the accused are “charged with actually soliciting hate crimes, not abstract advocacy or wishful thinking.”
The group took, said DOJ, took credit “for inspiring and guiding a 19-year-old Slovakian man who sent a violent manifesto to the defendants before shooting three people — killing two of them — at an LGBT Bar in Bratislava, and then killing himself while being pursued by the police.”
The accused, the DOJ added, “conspired among themselves and with other people to solicit hate crimes, to dox federal employees and to convey threats in interstate or foreign commerce.”
Other counts include soliciting other to commit bias-motivated attacks against Jewish people, cause “bodily injury to people because of their race, specifically, because they were Black or were whites who associated with Black people and therefore were, according to (the accused), ‘race traitors.’”
Those charged also allegedly solicited attacks against immigrants and against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The indictment documented “The Terrorgram Collective” – formed after the group’s previous leader was arrested – had a book called “The Hard Reset” that gave instructions to how to make explosives using napalm, thermite, chlorine gas, pipe bombs and dirty bombs.
Elk Grove’s Humber, the indictment said, asked “What’s more impactful — boycotting Target, or getting dozens of targets in your sights and taking them out permanently?” and citing examples of mass casualty shootings in Florida and other areas.
In a documentary that praised 105 white supremacist attacks, the accused, said the indictment, state, “To the Saints of tomorrow watching this today, know that when you succeed you will be celebrated with reverence and your sacrifice will not be in vain. Hail the Saints and hail our glorious and bloody legacy of white terror.’”
DOJ’s Clarke said, “In 1790, George Washington stated the aspiration that the new nation should ‘give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.’” That remains a fundamental tenet of our democracy.
“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. Everyone has the right to live without fear of violence based on who they are, where they are from, how they worship or who they love.”
