Revealed: White supremacist 'Project Mayhem' doxxing campaigns tied to one Telegram influencer

All over the country, people are being bombarded with racist, homophobic harassment — and many of them don't realize it's all coming from one far-right Telegram influencer, USA TODAY reported on Thursday.

"Annie Nygard didn’t know what was happening. The business owner from San Diego, who co-founded Restrained Grace, a company that creates and sells jewelry, gifts and fetish gear − and whose online profile uses the term 'Antifa' − suddenly started getting dozens of hate-filled direct messages on social media. The messages poured in, telling Nygard to kill herself, sending death threats as well as '88,' a white supremacist term that stands for 'Heil Hitler,'" reported Will Carless. "In recent weeks, attacks like this have repeated across the country: A Jewish university student in New Jersey bombarded with anti-Semitic messages; a trans man in Florida attacked for his identity; a Black YouTuber in Kentucky targeted because of his race. All found themselves flooded with racist and homophobic insults, memes, offensive photos and death threats."

It turns out that all of these attacks were orchestrated from one place: a Telegram channel known as "Project Mayhem," which exposes the personal information of targets and directs thousands of fans to engage in "raids" harassing and threatening the victims — usually Black, LGBTQ, or anti-fascist activists.

"'Let’s show this f----- what real white boys are like!' reads a post from April 3. Another from April 2 spewed the N-word and said the targets would 'hang from this theoretical treehouse,'" said the report.

Telegram is a social platform and instant messaging service built off end-to-end encrypted communications, which makes it ideal for confidential messaging, including in authoritarian states that monitor social media — but also makes it an attractive platform for extremists. The platform has hosted everything from information about how to build IEDs ahead of President Joe Biden's inauguration, to neo-Nazi groups that use bodybuilding and fight clubs to radicalize recruits.

The founder of Project Mayhem is reportedly Paul Nicholas Miller, a 34-year-old man from Florida. He served two years in federal prison from 2021-2023 for illegal firearm possession; the "raids" paused while he was in prison, but started again in January after he was given supervised release — even while still technically in Bureau of Prisons custody. One of his targets for "doxxing" was reportedly Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer whose involvement with Bud Light's latest ad campaign triggered a national freakout by Trump supporters.

According to the report, authorities moved Miller back into a secure facility after discovering his extremist activity, and Project Mayhem was removed by Telegram at some point during the USA TODAY investigation.