Premieres Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS app
In September 2024, the federal government charged two Americans with a slew of felonies, including soliciting the murder of government officials on the messaging app Telegram. As a new investigative collaboration from FRONTLINE and ProPublica explores, those Americans, Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, were two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective — a transnational online network of extremists accused of inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism.
Related Article: "How the Terrorgram Collective’s Neo-Nazi Influencers Groomed a Teen to Kill"
How did Terrorgram grow and operate — and what does the collective’s rise and fall tell us about the evolution of far-right extremism on loosely-moderated tech platforms in a rapidly changing digital age?
From an award-winning team led by reporters A.C. Thompson and James Bandler and acclaimed filmmakers Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong, "The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram" premieres Tuesday, March 25. More than a year in the making, the 90-minute documentary is part of a collaborative, multi-platform effort that also will include text stories from ProPublica co-published on FRONTLINE’s website in the runup to the premiere.
Filmmaker Quotes:
“Drawing on a trove of archived posts, our reporting shows how Telegram and other lightly regulated platforms became a gathering place for ‘militant accelerationists’ — neo-Nazis who want to use terror and violence to bring down governments and create new, white ethnostates,” says Thompson, who has been reporting on the evolution of violent extremism in the U.S. for years and, with this project, expands his focus worldwide.
“These people on the messaging and social media app Telegram were trying to stir other people to commit acts of incredible violence and to spark a race war,” says Bandler. “What we've seen through the Terrorgram story is that there are consequences to unfettered free speech, to having influencers out there advocating violence or mass murder.”
With never-before-published details, the documentary and related stories trace how various loosely-moderated platforms have become havens for extremist ideas and for radicalization, from 4Chan to 8Chan to eventually Telegram. The investigation shows how a number of attackers around the world, from Bratislava to New Zealand to California, used these various platforms and were encouraged by them.
"The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram" also probes how authorities in several countries would eventually arrest around a dozen people allegedly tied to the Terrorgram Collective — including Humber and Allison, who have pleaded not guilty.
Separately, French authorities last year arrested the CEO of Telegram for allegedly failing to stop illegal activity on the platform, charges he called misguided for trying to hold a CEO personally responsible for crimes committed by a third party. The company says it has always screened postings for problematic content and that “calls for violence from any group are not tolerated.”
“Are these arrests the end of Terrorgram? You may have a collapse specifically of this particular network, but is that the end? Absolutely not,” sociologist Pete Simi says in the documentary. “There will be new Terrorgrams that take its place by another name, and we will continue to see this kind of extremism propagated through platforms of various sorts, not just Telegram.”
Watch On Your Schedule: "The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram" will be available to stream at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS app starting March 25, 2025, at 7/6c. Also available at propublica.org and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c.
Credits: A FRONTLINE production with 2over10 Media in association with ProPublica. The directors are Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong. The producers are Annie Wong, Thomas Jennings and A.C. Thompson. The writers are Thomas Jennings & A.C. Thompson. The co-producers are Karina Meier and Fanny Lee. The correspondents are A.C. Thompson and James Bandler. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
