The Accelerationists’ App: How Telegram Became the “Center of Gravity” for a New Breed of Domestic Terrorists

From attempting to incite racially motivated violence to encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, the alleged crimes planned and advertised by extremists on Telegram go far beyond the charges facing CEO Pavel Durov.

by James Bandler, ProPublica, A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, and Karina Meier, FRONTLINE
Sept. 3, 6 a.m. EDT

This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.

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Telegram’s ease of use, its huge public channels and the ability to encrypt private conversations have helped fuel its global appeal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the app to rally his compatriots to repel the Russian invasion. Activists in Hong Kong turned to Telegram to organize demonstrations against a repressive law. In Belarus, pro-democracy forces used the platform to fight back against election fraud.

But the platform has also served as the online home of the Russian mercenary company Wagner Group, which has posted gruesome videos of extrajudicial killings. In April, the British government targeted the Terrorgram Collective, a subset of Telegram users who promote racially and ethnically motivated terrorism to people like Lightner, making it a crime to support or belong to the group. And more recently, the service played a key role in fomenting the anti-immigrant riots that swept across the United Kingdom.

ProPublica and FRONTLINE have been investigating Telegram’s role in a string of recent alleged far-right acts of sabotage and murder, and how the company’s inaction allowed extremists to plan and even advertise their crimes. Researchers have long warned that Telegram routinely allows extremists to share propaganda aimed at inciting violence, noting that the Islamic State group and al-Qaida were able to use the service for years with little interference.

“Telegram plays a key role in the perpetuation of militant accelerationism,” said Michael Loadenthal, a research professor at the University of Cincinnati and director of the Prosecution Project, which tracks felony cases involving political violence in the U.S. The company, he said, “has shown that deplatforming violent and hateful content is not its priority.”

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