On 20 April 2026, a Danish‑French man named Jérémy Meilhac (J.M.) was convicted in a Danish court for his affiliation with the extremist network known as Terrorgram. His involvement centred on producing and circulating extreme right material as a way to promote the terrorist network and its activities. This Insight examines the trial findings, including J.M.’s involvement in supporting terrorism via Terrorgram, as well as the network’s underlying characteristics. The proceedings revealed an online practice in which extremist material glorifying terrorists was produced collaboratively, and they indicate that the network cannot be regarded as definitively defunct. While J.M.’s online activities were saturated with racist and hateful material, this was not the main focus of the trial. Denmark does have provisions criminalising racist speech, but the court chose to treat the case as a terrorism matter — legally more serious and carrying significantly harsher penalties.
The online network known as Terrorgram (a contraction of ‘terror’ and ‘Telegram’) is one of the most significant networks in the dissemination of saints culture, militant accelerationism, and white supremacist ideology. Extreme right lone actors who have been linked to the Terrorgram Collective include the 2022 Bratislava shooter, who targeted a local LGBTQ+ bar, and the perpetrator who conducted a mass stabbing in Turkey a month later. The Bratislava shooter frequented the Terrorgram network regularly for three years leading up to his attack.
Two of Terrorgrams leading figures, Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, were arrested in September 2024 by the U.S. Department of Justice. In the indictment, they are described as leaders of a transnational terrorist group and are accused of having “conspired to provide material support to terrorists”. U.S. prosecutors even linked Humber and Allison to the perpetrator behind the Bratislava attack. The Bratislava shooter and Humber frequently communicated online, and less than an hour after the attack, Humber praised it on Terrorgram channels. Both she and Allison subsequently shared the Bratislava shooter’s manifesto. Humber has since been sentenced to 30 years in prison. Allison has pleaded not guilty, and the case is still ongoing. However, in the absence of Humber and Allison, another figure emerged within the network. An already highly active Danish member of the organisation stepped up and became, as the witness from Europol described, “the main voice” of the network. It is this man who has now been convicted.
This is the second major terrorism trial involving an internationally organised neo-Nazi network to take place in Denmark in recent years. The first concerned a teenager convicted in 2025 for his involvement with the Feuerkrieg Division. Like the Terrorgram case, the investigation began after the accused came to police attention for making online threats. Those initial investigations were later dropped, but evidence recovered from electronic devices led to terrorism charges instead. As an observer, I attended both trials.
This Insight is a synthesis of the information that emerged during the proceedings concerning the Terrorgram case. J.M. was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison. In addition, as a dual citizen of France, under Danish law, he is subject to expulsion and barred from reentering Denmark after serving the sentence. It should be noted that J.M. appealed immediately, in the hope of acquittal or a reduced sentence. The case has not yet been reopened.
The Danish Terrorgram-Case
From the outset, the trial unfolded in a highly charged atmosphere — J.M. maintained his innocence throughout the trial and characterised the proceedings as a form of political persecution and as an attack on his freedom of expression. Rather than viewing himself as part of Terrorgram, he argued that he was merely disseminating news online. Both J.M. and the defence counsel presented it as a principled free‑speech case. However, the court rejected this account and did not find it credible that J.M.’s online activities constituted neutral news reporting. Instead, the court regarded it as political propaganda for a terrorist network, and J.M. was ultimately convicted. Instead of the image of a man who merely wished to share news stories online, one was left with the impression of a highly active participant on Terrorgram and a firm believer in white supremacist ideology.
When arrested, J.M. was in possession of a switchblade, a credit‑card knife, and pepper spray. In addition, he had a USB drive in his backpack containing a number of files with extremist material. Among these were the manifestos written by the perpetrators of the attacks in Norway in 2011 and Christchurch in 2019. There were also digital copies of an activist handbook from the Nordic Resistance Movement, as well as material associated with Siege Culture. Siege Culture draws on the antisemitic and racist writings of James Mason from the 1980s and has experienced a revival since 2015, particularly on the now‑defunct neo‑Nazi forum Iron March. Even though the forum has ceased to exist, Siege Culture continues to be one of the most central inspirations in contemporary neo-nazi culture. Among the culture’s key characteristics is a rejection of traditional Nazi organisations in favour of individual actors and small cells working to intensify the social antagonisms embedded in society, with the aim of accelerating societal collapse. Last but not least, the USB drive contained several bomb manuals. J.M. denied having any interest in making bombs. Instead, he insisted it should be understood as mere curiosity.
In a Danish context, J.M. is a known figure on the extreme right and has been linked to several of the most hard‑line extremist organisations, both online and offline. Already in 2023, Danish left‑wing media linked his online activities to the threat of terrorism and highlighted the ways in which he interacted with various far‑right organisations.
Participatory Extremism
As noted, J.M.’s activities on Terrorgram rested on two central pillars: first, he disseminated violent extremist material, and second, he produced such content himself. From a legal perspective, the issue was not primarily the hateful nature of the political content, but rather that the court regarded it as material in support of terrorist activity.
For his dissemination, he used multiple Telegram channels and sought visibility through frequent posting and engagement with other users. During the proceedings, the J.M. was described as highly active on Terrorgram, being online at all hours of the day, which was linked to his night‑shift work and consequent irregular sleep patterns.
With regard to J.M.’s own creation of propaganda for Terrorgram, the proceedings shed light on a part of extremist practice that is not always easily accessible. It was clear how he was engaged in creating and co-creating cultural products such as saint cards and recording audiobooks. J.M.’s online practices align closely with those practices identified by Line Nybro Pedersen and Mikkel Bækby Johannesen. Pedersen and Johannesen highlight how what they term Spaces of Hybridised Prefatory Extremism (HYPE) can function as online spaces where extremists disseminate narratives “through collaborative, cross‑mediated, playful, and forensic practices”. It may seem counterintuitive to describe J.M.’s actions as playful, given their gravity, yet many of his practices closely resemble the ways in which non-extremist fans produce material about their idols. This comparison has also been made by others, who have shown how violent perpetrators, for example, the Abundant Life Christian School shooter and the Antioch High School attacker, were part of an online mass‑shooter admiration fandom. The fact that saint cards strikingly resemble collectable trading cards has likewise been noted. As the two aforementioned cases underscore, this creative, co‑creational process of making extremist cultural artefacts can easily be connected to real‑world violence.
Prior to their arrest, Humber and Allison were among the users with whom J.M. had been in contact. During the trial, it emerged that a substantial part of J.M.’s online activity consisted of producing saint cards. The proceedings conveyed the impression of a work routine in which J.M. would message Humber’s former profile, Ryder Returns, to request data on various perpetrators, after which he would create saint cards on the basis of that information. Another example of this participatory activity is J.M. recording the manifesto of the perpetrator behind the Eskişehir stabbing as an audiobook. This act was praised by Dallas Humber’s profile Ryder Returns, who herself had recorded audiobooks of target violence manifestos.
Europol’s Assessment of Terrorgam and the Convicted’s Role
A representative from Europol was invited to speak as a key expert witness at the trial. The representative assessed that J.M. had been managing two of the 40 most active Terrorgram profiles. It was evident that the Europol witness was reluctant to state outright that J.M. was the “leader” after Humber and Allison’s arrest. Instead, the representative from Europol settled on describing him as “the main voice” of Terrorgram. According to evidence presented in court by the expert witness from Europol, activity levels on Terrorgram dropped by 70% following the arrests of Humber and Allison — a decline the court took as an indication of the magnitude of the blow their arrests dealt to the network. Moreover, activity levels fell to almost zero after J.M.’s arrest, which the court likewise regarded as evidence of how crucial he had been to sustaining activity in the subsequent period.
Although Terrorgram activities on Telegram are currently close to zero, the expert testimony in court stressed that this does not mean the network has ceased to exist. The official case description from Europol likewise suggests that Terrorgram may still be active. However, if Terrorgram persists, it has almost certainly moved to other platforms — a possibility the expert also raised during the trial. According to ProPublica and FRONTLINE 35 crimes can be linked directly to Terrorgram, including “bomb plots, stabbings and shootings”. Most recently, the manifesto published by the perpetrators of the attack on a mosque in San Diego drew directly on the network and its publications.
The trial highlighted several interesting points:
- It was clear that a central part of Terrorgram’s activity was participatory in nature and resembled non-extremist fan cultures, except that the purpose was to disseminate cultural artefacts that glorify terrorist attacks.
- The Bratislava case underscores that while extreme right lone actors may plan and carry out attacks on their own, they often have a network that supports them. J.M. was deeply embedded in an online community and can not be characterised as acting alone in any meaningful sense: He formed something akin to friendships, chatted amicably, and collaboratively developed political materials.
- The witness from Europol stated during the trial that Terrorgram no longer exists on Telegram, though he did not rule out that members may have migrated to other platforms.
- Given that Denmark’s two most recent terrorism prosecutions involving the extreme right both began with the identification of online threats, this highlights the need to treat such online conduct with due seriousness — even if the threat turns out to be empty, it may indicate other extremist activity.
- The case also illustrates how extreme right terror networks migrate from platform to platform as media companies or law enforcement agencies shut down their activities. In this instance, it was the series of arrests that ultimately caused Terrorgram to collapse on Telegram — a development that also highlights the platform’s lack of proactive action. A stronger effort from tech companies, ideally coordinated across platforms to address how such networks move from one space to another, would be highly beneficial.
–
Daniel Nikolaj Madsen is a PhD student at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. Madsen’s PhD thesis is centred on extreme right lone-actor manifestos from a rhetorical genre perspective (RGS). This insight is inspired by Madsen’s current research, which will be included in the PhD thesis in 2027.
–
Are you a tech company interested in strengthening your capacity to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online? Apply for GIFCT membership to join over 30 other tech platforms working together to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting online platforms by leveraging technology, expertise, and cross-sector partnerships.