Britain said on Monday it would proscribe the Terrorgram collective, an extreme right-wing online network, as a terrorist organisation, meaning it would become a criminal offense in the country to belong to or promote the group.
Britain’s interior ministry, or Home Office, described the group as an online network of neo-fascists producing and spreading violent propaganda against ethnic and religious minorities.
“The Terrorgram collective spreads vile propaganda and aims to radicalise young people to conduct heinous terrorist acts,” British Home Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement.
Cleverly said it would become the first online network to be proscribed, placing it in the same category as groups such as Hamas and ISIS.
While Islamist-inspired terrorism still represents the largest terror threat to Britain, the threat from extreme right-wing ideology is growing and evolving through the radicalisation of young people, the Home Office said.
A teenager who shot dead two people outside a well-known gay bar in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava in 2022 credited Terrorgram in his manifesto, and the group’s propaganda contained violent narratives that glorified him, the Home Office added.