This story comprises references to homophobia, antisemitism and racism, in addition to mass shootings and different violence.
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“The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” is a part of a collaborative investigation from FRONTLINE and ProPublica. The documentary premieres March 25 at 10 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CDT on PBS stations (test native listings) and shall be out there to stream on YouTube, the PBS App and FRONTLINE’s web site.
Reporting Highlights
Extremist Influencers: Neo-Nazi influencers on the social media platform Telegram created a community of chats and channels the place they stoked racist, antisemitic and homophobic hate.
Focused Teen: The influencers, generally known as the Terrorgram Collective, focused a teen in Slovakia and groomed him for 3 years to kill.
Terrorgram Community: Juraj Krajčík subscribed to not less than 49 extremist Telegram chats and channels, a lot of them nodes within the Terrorgram community, earlier than he killed two folks at an LGBTQ+ bar.
These highlights have been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
The teenager entered the chat with a pleasant greeting.
“Hiya lads,” he typed.
“Sup,” got here a reply, together with a graphic that learn “KILL JEWS.” One other poster shared a GIF of Adolf Hitler shaking fingers with Benito Mussolini. Another person added a brief video of a homosexual delight flag being set on fireplace. Ultimately, the discuss within the group turned to mass shootings and bombings.
And so in August 2019, Juraj Krajčík, then a soft-faced 16-year-old with a dense pile of brown hair, immersed himself in a unfastened assortment of extremist discussion groups and channels on the huge social media and messaging platform Telegram. This on-line group, which was dubbed Terrorgram, had a singular focus: inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism.
Over the following three years, Krajčík made lots of — presumably 1000’s — of posts in Terrorgram chats and channels, the place a handful of influential content material creators steered the dialog towards violence. Day after day, put up after put up, these influencers cultivated Krajčík, who lived along with his household in a snug residence in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. They bolstered his hatreds, fine-tuned his beliefs and fed him ideas, encouraging him to assault homosexual and Jewish folks and political leaders and turn into, of their parlance, a “saint.”
On Oct. 12, 2022, Krajčík, armed along with his father’s .45-caliber handgun, opened fireplace on three folks sitting outdoors an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, killing two and wounding the third earlier than fleeing the scene.
That night time, as police hunted for him, Krajčík spoke on the cellphone with Marek Madro, a Bratislava psychologist who runs a suicide hotline and psychological well being disaster workforce. “He hoped that what he had accomplished would shake up society,” recalled Madro in an interview, including that the teenager was “very scared.”
Throughout the name, Krajčík stored repeating phrases from his manifesto, in accordance with Madro. The 65-page doc, written in crisp English and illustrated with graphics and photographs, supplied an in depth justification for his deadly actions. “Destroy the degenerates!” he wrote, earlier than encouraging folks to assault delight parades, homosexual and lesbian activists, and LGBTQ+ bars.
Ultimately Krajčík, standing in a small grove of bushes alongside a busy roadway, put a gun to his head and pulled the set off.
The subsequent day, Terrorgram influencers have been praising the killer and circulating a PDF of his manifesto on Telegram.
About This Partnership
This story is a part of a collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that features an upcoming documentary.
“We thank him from the underside of our hearts and can always remember his sacrifice,” acknowledged one put up written by a Terrorgram chief in California. “FUCKING HAIL, BROTHER!!!”
The story of Krajčík’s march to violence exhibits the murderous attain of the net extremists, who operated outdoors the view of native legislation enforcement. To police on the time, the killings appeared just like the act of a lone gunman relatively than what they have been: the fruits of a coordinated recruiting effort that spanned two continents.
ProPublica and the PBS collection FRONTLINE, together with the Slovakian newsroom Investigative Heart of Jan Kuciak, pieced collectively the story behind Krajčík’s evolution from a troubled teenager to mass shooter. We recognized his person identify on Telegram, which allowed us to sift by tens of 1000’s of now-deleted Telegram posts that had not beforehand been linked to him. Our workforce retraced his closing hours, interviewing investigators, consultants and victims in Slovakia, and mapped the hyperlinks between Krajčík and the extremists in Europe and the U.S. who helped to form him.
“The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram,” a part of a collaborative investigation from FRONTLINE and ProPublica, premieres March 25.
The Terrorgram community has been gutted in latest months by the arrests of its leaders in North America and Europe. Telegram declined repeated requests to make its executives out there for interviews however in an announcement stated, “Requires violence from any group should not tolerated on our platform.” The corporate additionally stated that since 2023 it has stepped up moderation practices.
Nonetheless, at a time when different mainstream social media corporations similar to X and Meta are reducing again on policing their on-line content material, consultants say the violent neo-Nazis that populated Telegram’s chats and channels will doubtless discover an internet house elsewhere.
At first, Krajčík didn’t slot in with the Terrorgrammers. In a single early put up in 2019, he argued that the white nationalist motion would profit from massive public protests. The concept wasn’t properly obtained.
“Rallies gained’t do shit,” replied one poster.
One other advised the teenager that as an alternative of organizing a rally, he ought to begin murdering politicians, journalists and drag performers. “You want a mafia way of thinking,” the particular person wrote.
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Krajčík had discovered his solution to the Terrorgram group after hanging out on 8chan, a large and nameless discussion board that had lengthy been an internet haven for extremists; he would later say that he was “redpilled” — or radicalized — on the positioning.
On 8chan, folks posted racist memes and made loads of vile feedback. However the Terrorgram scene was totally different. Within the Terrorgram chats folks mentioned, intimately, one of the best methods for finishing up spectacular acts of violence aimed toward toppling Western democracies and changing them with all-white ethno-states.
The chats Krajčík joined that summer time of 2019 have been administered by Pavol Beňadik, then a 20-year-old Slovakian faculty pupil who had helped create the Terrorgram group and was one in every of its main personalities.
A hybrid of a messaging service like WhatsApp and a social media platform like X or Fb, Telegram supplied options that appealed to extremists like Beňadik. They might have interaction in personal encrypted discussions, begin massive discussion groups or create public channels to broadcast their messages. Importantly, Telegram additionally allowed them to put up big PDF paperwork and prolonged video recordsdata.
In his Terrorgram chats, Beňadik, who used the deal with Slovakbro, relentlessly pressed for violent actions — though he by no means took any himself. Over two days in August, he posted directions for making Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, inspired folks to construct radioactive soiled bombs and set them off in main cities, and referred to as for the execution of cops and different legislation enforcement brokers. “TOTAL PIG DEATH,” he wrote.
On the time, the chats have been drawing lots of of members from world wide, together with a lot of People.
Beňadik, who was from a small village in western Slovakia, took a particular curiosity in Krajčík, chatting with him within the Slovak language, discussing life of their nation, and making him really feel appreciated and revered.
For Krajčík, this was a change. In his each day life outdoors of Terrorgram, he “felt utterly unnoticed, unheard,” stated Madro, who spoke with a number of of Krajčík’s classmates. “He typically talked about his personal emotions and ideas publicly and felt like nobody took him critically.”
Krajčík began spending huge quantities of time within the chat. On a single day, he posted 117 instances over the span of 10 hours. The teenager’s concepts started to intently echo these of Beňadik.
In late September, two regulars had a pleasant combined martial arts bout and streamed it on YouTube. Krajčík shared the hyperlink with the remainder of the chat group, who cheered and heckled as their on-line mates brawled. Beňadik inspired Krajčík to take part in the same bout sooner or later.
“Porozmýšlam,” replied Krajčík: “I’ll give it some thought.”
For Beňadik, the combatants have been offering a very good instance. He needed Terrorgrammers to remodel themselves into Aryan warriors, onerous males able to doing critical bodily hurt to others.
In actuality, Krajčík was something however a troublesome man. A “severely bullied pupil,” Krajčík had transferred to a highschool for academically gifted college students, a college official advised the Slovak newspaper Pravda. Two therapists “labored intensively with him for 2 years till the pandemic broke out and colleges closed,” the official stated.
Juraj Krajčík posted this selfie on Twitter, which was later circulated on Terrorgram channels, accompanied by propaganda.
Credit score:
Obtained by Investigative Heart of Jan Kuciak
Beňadik created not less than 5 neo-Nazi channels and two discussion groups on Telegram, one in every of which finally attracted practically 5,000 subscribers. He crafted an internet persona as a sage chief, providing ideas and steerage for finishing up efficient assaults. He typically posted sensible supplies, similar to recordsdata for 3D-printing rifle components, together with auto sears, which remodel a semiautomatic gun into a totally automated weapon. “Learn helpful literature, get helpful abilities,” he stated in an interview with a podcast. “You’re the revolutionary, so act prefer it.”
It was solely a month after becoming a member of Beňadik’s Terrorgram chats that Krajčík first talked about Tepláreň, the LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava he finally attacked. On Sept. 18, 2019, he shared a hyperlink to an internet site referred to as Queer Slovakia that featured an article on the bar.
Beňadik responded instantly, writing that he was having a “copeland second” — a reference to David Copeland, a British neo-Nazi who planted a nail bomb at an LGBTQ+ pub in London in 1999. The explosion killed three folks and wounded practically 80 others.
“I DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO NAIL BOMB THAT JOINT,” Beňadik continued. He needed to do one thing far worse. “Hell,” Beňadik wrote, can be much less brutal than what he had in thoughts.
One other Terrorgrammer supplied a suggestion: What a couple of bomb loaded with “Nails + ricin + chemical compounds?”
Krajčík sounded a notice of warning. “Simply saying it would immediately make a squad of federal brokers seem behind you and arrest you,” he wrote. Beňadik responded by complaining that Slovakia wasn’t producing sufficient “saints,” implicitly encouraging his mentee to attain sainthood by committing a deadly act of terror.
Two days later, Krajčík posted photographs of individuals holding homosexual delight flags in downtown Bratislava. They have been “degenerates,” he wrote, repeatedly utilizing anti-gay slurs.
One chat member advised Krajčík he ought to’ve rounded up a bunch of Nazi skinheads and assaulted the demonstrators.
Then Krajčík posted a photograph of Tepláreň.
Beňadik responded that “airborne paving stones make nice presents for such companies.”
Within the chat, Beňadik repeatedly posted a PDF copy of the self-published memoirs of Eric Rudolph, the American terrorist who bombed the 1996 Olympic Video games in Atlanta and several other different websites earlier than happening the run. The autobiography comprises an in depth description of Rudolph’s bombing of a lesbian bar, which wounded 5 folks.
Urging Krajčík to learn the guide, Beňadik described it as “AMAZING” and a “nice learn.” Rudolph, he wrote, had created the “archetype” for the “lone wolf” terrorist.
Ultimately, Krajčík joined not less than 49 extremist Telegram chats, a lot of them nodes within the Terrorgram community, in accordance with evaluation by Pierre Vaux, a researcher who investigates threats to democracy and human rights abuses.
Whereas Terrorgram began as a unfastened assortment of accounts, by 2021 Beňadik and a few of his fellow influencers had created a extra formal group, which they referred to as the Terrorgram Collective, in accordance with interviews with consultants and court docket information from Slovakia, the U.S. and Canada.
The group started producing extra subtle content material — books, movies and a roster of potential assassination targets — and distributing the fabric to 1000’s of followers.
Krajčík was a fan of the collective’s books, that are loaded with extremely pixelated black-and-white graphics and provide a raft of particular recommendation for anybody planning a terror assault.
By the summer time of 2022, Krajčík had turn into a daily poster in a Terrorgram chat run by one other alleged chief of the collective, Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, California, a quiet suburb of Sacramento.
Humber glided by a collection of usernames however was finally publicly uncovered by a bunch of activists, and later arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. ProPublica and FRONTLINE reviewed chat logs — supplied by the anti-facist Australian analysis group The White Rose Society — and different on-line supplies, in addition to court docket information, to independently verify her id.
Beňadik was arrested in Slovakia and charged with greater than 200 terrorism offenses. He pleaded responsible and can be sentenced to 6 years in jail.
In his absence, Humber rapidly slipped in as mentor and coach to Krajčík.
She was express about her intentions, continually encouraging followers in her chats and channels to exit and kill their perceived enemies — together with Jewish and Muslim folks, members of the queer group and anyone who wasn’t white. Her job, she wrote in a single put up, was to embrace disaffected younger white males and information them “by the tip of the radicalization course of.”
On Aug. 2, 2022, Humber and Krajčík mentioned a grisly incident that had occurred a number of days earlier: A white man had overwhelmed to demise a Nigerian immigrant on a metropolis avenue in northern Italy.
The killing, which was documented on video, was “fucking wonderful,” wrote Humber, utilizing a racial slur to explain the sufferer. “Please ship any extra pics, articles, information to the chat as extra particulars come out,” she posted.
Krajčík wrote that he didn’t know a lot in regards to the circumstances surrounding the crime however was nonetheless satisfied the assassin had chosen “the correct path.”
The killer, wrote Humber, would make an “superb” boyfriend. “Each woman desires a person who would kill a (racial expletive) for her 🥰 how romantic.”
Three days later, Humber’s chat was alive with tributes to and reward for one more killer. Wade Web page, a Nazi skinhead and former U.S. Military soldier, had murdered six Sikh worshippers at a temple outdoors of Milwaukee a decade earlier. (A seventh would later die of their accidents.)
When police confronted Web page, he started taking pictures at them, hitting one officer 15 instances earlier than killing himself.
Humber was a giant fan of the killer. Web page, she wrote, deliberate the assault completely and selected his targets rigorously. “He even made a degree to desocialize and reduce ties with these near him,” Humber famous. “No probability of them disrupting his plans.”
“Web page did his obligation,” Krajčík wrote.
Throughout the identical time interval, Krajčík began doing reconnaissance on potential targets in his metropolis, staking out the residence of then-Prime Minister Eduard Heger, a Jewish group middle and Tepláreň, the bar.
He posted photographs of the places on his personal Twitter account. And in a collection of cryptic tweets, Krajčík hinted on the violence to come back:
“I don’t count on to make it. In all likelyhood I’ll die in the middle of the operation.”
“Earlier than an operation, you’ll have to mentally take care of a number of essential questions. You’ll have to take care of them alone, to not jeopardize your mission by leaking it.”
“I need to harm the System to one of the best of my talents.”
Then, on Oct. 11, 2022, he wrote:
“I’ve made my determination.”
The subsequent night, after spending a half-hour outdoors the prime minister’s residence, Krajčík made his solution to Tepláreň. The bar sat on a steep, winding avenue lined with cafes, clothes boutiques and different small companies. For about 40 minutes he lurked in a shadowy doorway up the hill. Then, at about 7 p.m., he approached a small group of individuals sitting in entrance of the bar and commenced taking pictures.
He killed Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič and wounded Radka Trokšiarová, taking pictures her twice within the leg.
Krajčík, then 19, fled the scene. He had simply dedicated a terrorist assault that might shock the nation.
In court docket information, U.S. prosecutors have linked each Humber and one other alleged Terrorgram chief, Matthew Allison of Boise, Idaho, to Krajčík’s crime. The pair have been charged final fall with a raft of felonies associated to their Terrorgram posts and propaganda, together with conspiring to offer materials assist to terrorists and soliciting the homicide of federal officers.
Krajčík “was energetic on Terrorgram and had frequent conversations with ALLISON, HUMBER, and different members of the Terrorgram Collective,” prosecutors allege within the indictment. In one other temporary, they are saying Krajčík shared his manifesto with Allison earlier than the assault. Then, instantly after the murders, he allegedly despatched Allison direct messages saying, “unsure how a lot time I’ve however it’s taking place,” and “simply delete all messages about this convo.”
The Terrorgram posts cited in court docket paperwork corroborate our workforce’s reporting.
Allison spoke with one in every of our reporters from jail towards his lawyer’s recommendation. He stated he didn’t incite anybody to violence and that prosecutors had misconstrued the communications with Krajčík. He has pleaded not responsible to all expenses, and in a movement, his authorized workforce indicated it could argue that each one of his posts are protected by the First Modification. Humber additionally pleaded not responsible. She declined to be interviewed and to remark by her lawyer.
Whereas Krajčík was at massive, Slovakian authorities tapped Madro, the psychologist, to attempt to talk with the younger man. “After 12 textual content messages, he lastly picked up the cellphone,” Madro recalled.
The temporary dialog ended with Krajčík killing himself. “The shot rang out and there was silence,” Madro stated.
Inside hours, Humber was making celebratory posts. Krajčík, she exclaimed, had achieved sainthood. “Saint Krajčík’s place within the Pantheon is undisputed, as is our enthusiastic assist for his work,” she wrote on a Terrorgram channel the place she posted an image of the victims on the bottom, blood streaking the pavement.
She and Allison additionally circulated his manifesto.
In it, Krajčík praised the Terrorgram Collective for its “unimaginable writing and artwork,” “political texts” and “sensible guides.” And he thanked Beňadik: “Your work was among the first that I encountered after making the change to Telegram, and stays among the biggest on the platform.”
Whereas they have been spreading Krajčík’s propaganda, the proprietor of Tepláreň, Roman Samotný, was mourning.
The bar “was sort of like a protected island for queer folks right here in Slovakia,” he recalled in an interview. “It was simply the place the place all people felt welcomed and simply accepted and relaxed.”
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Earlier than the assault, Samotný’s main concern was that some homophobe would smash the bar’s home windows. After the murders, he stated, “the largest change is the belief that we aren’t anymore protected right here. … I used to be by no means pondering that we could be killed due to our id.”
Samotný has closed the bar.
The survivor, Trokšiarová, was left with lingering bodily ache and emotional misery. “I used to be deeply confused,” she stated. “Why would anybody do it?”
