The UK wants to be the first state to ban Terrorgram. The British Home Office announced on Monday April 22 its intention to ban and place on its list of terrorist organizations this far-right online group, which it describes as “a network of neofascist terrorists.”
“The far-right terrorist threat is growing and evolving, particularly through the radicalization of increasingly young individuals on the Internet,” warns the Home Office in a press release, specifying that Terrorgram will be the “first online terrorist network to be banned” in the country.
This network “glorifies attacks committed by neofascist terrorists, whom they take for “saints,” and encourages the reproduction of these hateful attacks, in particular by disseminating instructions to help prepare acts of terrorism,” explains the ministry. It seeks “the collapse of the Western world and a ‘race war’ through violent terrorist acts, and often seeks to target young people to adopt its ideology,” he continues.
“Despicable propaganda”
This group “spreads vile propaganda and aims to radicalize young people into committing heinous terrorist acts,” the statement quoted Home Secretary James Cleverly as saying. Terrorgram has already published “propaganda material intended to incite violence against ethnic and religious communities, with calls for anti-Semitic violence,” details the ministry.
Still according to the Home Office, a 19-year-old young man who killed two men in October 2022 in a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, before committing suicide, had cited this group and its publications in his text of demand.
Terrorgram takes its name from the Telegram platform: it is on this very unmoderated messaging application that its members coordinate and broadcast racist messages or messages advocating Nazism. The group is part of the so-called “accelerationist” movement, which considers that a “racial war” is imminent in the West and that it is its duty to accelerate its advent, in particular by committing attacks. According to investigations by the American press, all of the Telegram channels linked to the movement are run by an American living in Sacramento.
Following parliamentary approval, expected this week, Terrorgram will become the sixth far-right group to be banned in the UK. Becoming a member of this group or calling for support could thus be punishable by up to fourteen years in prison.
It will be the 81st group to be included in the list of banned terrorist organizations. Radical Islamist groups still pose “the most significant terrorist threat” to British interests, according to the Home Office.
