Shocking indictment of Boise terror suspect is a reminder we must stay vigilant | Opinion

If there’s any indication that the Idaho Legislature needs to increase its pressure on extremist groups — not go soft on them — it’s the shocking indictment of a Boise man accused of leading an international online white supremacist terrorism group.

According to the indictment that was unsealed Monday, Matthew Allison, 37, led “Terrorgram Collective,” a multinational terrorist community, along with 34-year-old Dallas Humber, of Elk Grove, California.

Officials said Allison and Humber used the social media site Telegram to solicit and facilitate terrorist attacks motivated by white supremacy and anti-LGBTQ views.

The indictment said the duo played a key role in creating radicalizing materials and inciting others to violence. The court document said the pair helped create a publication detailing instructions on how to build explosives and bombs, find targets for violence, run a terror cell and celebrate terrorist attacks.

They used the phrase “Hail Holy Terror” and groomed impressionable young men, radicalizing them and encouraging them to become “lone wolf white warriors” to carry out their attacks, according to the indictment. The phrase “make it count” encouraged attackers to kill as many people as possible before being killed or captured.

At times, according to the indictment, they sounded like demented life coaches, encouraging would-be killers: “You. Got. This.”

Lest you think this is just freedom of speech, the U.S. Attorney’s Office indictment connects three individuals who were allegedly inspired or guided by Humber, Allison and other members of the Terrorgram Collective to carry out attacks or were planning to do so when they were arrested by law enforcement:

• An individual who shot three people (killing two) outside of an LGBTQI+ bar in Slovakia;

• An individual who planned an attack on energy facilities in New Jersey; and

• An individual accused of stabbing five people near a mosque in Turkey.

It’s chilling.

This is no time to look the other way.

Every Idaho legislator should read the indictment and ask themselves whether now is the time to go soft on these people.

But for three years running now, Idaho’s far-right Republican legislators have tried to get rid of a state law that’s intended to regulate militias and create penalties for such activity.

Even worse, legislators’ actions likely encourage such radicalized hate groups, such as eliminating a ban on groups parading in public with weapons.

And the state’s anti-LGBTQ legislation plays into these hateful attitudes, and anti-immigrant, “build the wall” rhetoric fuels the fire of racial strife.

In other words, some Idaho legislators are playing right into these radicals’ hands.

It should perhaps come as no surprise that one of the accused chose to make his home in Idaho, which has seen more than its fair share of racial strife and LGBTQ animus.

Idaho’s already been through this kind of thing with the Aryan Nations. We don’t want to go back to those days.

But we can’t seem to shake these people.

Our former lieutenant governor used militia members for security and administered the oath of office.

The Legislature failed to approve a simple gesture with a simple message: an Idaho license plate bearing the words “Too Great for Hate.”

Members of the Patriot Front white supremacist group sought to cause a riot at a Coeur d’Alene pride event.

Someone shouted the N-word at a group of basketball players visiting Coeur d’Alene for the NCAA Tournament earlier this year.

White supremacist Kyle Chapman moved to Idaho in search of an ethnic enclave. “Some cry ‘ETHNOSTATE!! I say ‘Idaho,’ ” Chapman wrote in a group he created on — surprise — the messaging app Telegram.

Recall that in June, Randy Scott Vail, 59, of Meridian, was sentenced to five years of probation for destruction of an energy facility.

On June 8-9, 2023, Vail shot at the Hells Canyon Dam hydroelectric power station and the Brownlee Dam hydroelectric power station, causing power loss and substantial damage to both. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Vail attacked the power station based on an anti-government ideology that he developed after watching and reading online propaganda that discussed anti-government conspiracy theories.

In November, an Oregon man was sentenced to three years in prison for trying to run over three people with a car when he went on a three-week anti-LGBTQ crime spree around Boise.

Perhaps the scariest part of the indictment was the repetition that Humber and Allison were working in collaboration with “persons known and unknown.”

It’s the “unknown” part that’s frightening.

The Idaho Legislature should be declaring war on this kind of extremism, in the name of public safety. The party that loves to preach about law and order should be railing against this kind of violence and rhetoric in the name of law and order.

Instead, some Idaho legislators seem to be determined to undo laws meant to protect the public from such evildoers and pass laws that encourage hate.

According to the indictment against Allison and Humber, their goal was to radicalize individuals in the name of white supremacy and then praise them for carrying out violent acts, which is no better than ISIS or Al Qaeda radicalizing young men for the same purpose of terror and murder.

Any form of racial or religious supremacist ideology is anathema to the ideals of the United States and certainly to humanity.

According to the indictment, Allison and Humber said the people who carry out these attacks will be remembered as “saints.”

On that, they are wrong: They will be remembered by normal, sane society as the evil, vile, hate-filled, bigoted cowards that they are.

In the meantime, Idaho’s far-right legislators need to send a clearer message to these kinds of people: Your ideology and hatred are not welcome here.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Greg Lanting, Terri Schorzman and Garry Wenske.