He was, by all accounts, a friendly and easygoing guy in Boise, Idaho. "A little goofy" is how one acquaintance describes Matthew Allison to ProPublica. The 37-year-old worked at a convenience store and tried to pick up gigs as a weekend DJ at parties. But an arrest last year uncovered a stunning hidden life: Under the handle BTC (short for Ban This Channel), Allison allegedly spewed racist hate on the Telegram network. Authorities say he "was a key figure in a network of white supremacist and neo-Nazi chat groups and channels known as Terrorgram," per the story, making slick videos about racist massacres, posting how-to manuals on explosives, and encouraging attacks on infrastructure and assassinations.
Allison and a co-defendant are behind bars charged with 15 felony counts, including soliciting the murder of federal officials and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Prosecutors say their propaganda inspired others and have linked the pair to three mass shootings in which a total of six people were killed, as well as a stabbing incident that injured five. Allison, however, tells ProPublica that the indictment is "bulls--t," and describes himself as a video "artist" who hates nobody. In his two interviews, granted against the advice of his lawyers, he vows to defend himself on First Amendment grounds.
The story digs into all of this, attempting to square the volatile online persona of Allison with his gentler real-life persona. It shows "the propensity that all of us have for leading contradictory lives," says sociology professor Pete Simi of Chapman University in California, who has studied the voluminous online output of BTC. "We have a great capacity for compartmentalizing as humans." (Read the full story.)
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