Dozens of neo-Nazis are fleeing Telegram and migrating to a relatively unknown secret chat app that has received funding from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
In a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted on friday morningResearchers have found that following the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov and charges against leaders of the so-called Terrorgram Collective, dozens of extremist groups have moved to the SimpleX Chat app in recent weeks over fears that privacy policies of Telegram expose them to being arrested. The Terrorgram Collective is a neo-Nazi propaganda network that summons acolytes to attack government officials, attack power plants, and murder people of color.
While ISD stopped short of naming SimpleX in its report, researchers note that the app promotes itself as “having a different email or phone recorder for each contact, and no hassle managing them.” This is exactly how SimpleX refers to itself on your website.
Last month, an accelerationist group linked to the now-defunct neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Divisionwith more than 13,000 subscribers on Telegram, he began migrating to SimpleX. The channel’s administrators warned subscribers that “while it is not as simple as Telegram, it appears to be far ahead in terms of privacy and security.”
The group now has 1,000 members on SimpleX and, according to ISD, is “part of a broader network built by neo-Nazi accelerationists consisting of nearly 30 channels and group chats,” which includes other accelerationist groups known as the base. Accelerationists seek to accelerate the fall of Western society by unleashing a race war to rebuild civilization based on their own white Christian values.
The network of groups on SimpleX also shares extremist content, including Al Qaeda training manuals, Hamas rocket development guides, neo-Nazi accelerationist manuals, and militant anarchist literature. And on their new secure channels on SimpleX, members of the groups immediately made direct calls for violence.
“During a 24-hour period on September 25, analysts observed three cases of users calling for the assassination of Vice President Kamala Harris, and one case calling for the assassination of former President Donald Trump,” ISD researchers wrote. “Likewise, numerous users called for a race war that would accelerate the downfall of society, allow them to take over the United States by force, and institute the desired system of white supremacy.”
SimpleX Chat is an app founded by British developer Evgeny Poberezkin. It was initially released in 2021 and a blog post in August announced that it had surpassed 100,000 downloads on Google’s Play store. The same blog post announced that Dorsey had led a $1.3 million investment roundhaving previously praised the app on other social media platforms. Dorsey did not respond to a request for comment.
For years, neo-Nazi groups have flourished on Telegram, many under the assumption that Telegram was a fully encrypted platform that provided a higher level of security than it actually did. These groups used Telegram to build their networks, share propaganda, and plan attacks. However, two of the Terrorgram Collective’s leaders were arrested and charged last month, which was a key factor in triggering the migration to SimpleX, ISD analysts wrote. The group used Telegram to encourage acts of terrorism in the United States and abroad.
