WARNING: This story contains references to and images of antisemitic graffiti.
A racially and ethnically motivated extremist group police say has been linked to an antisemitic vandalism case in Winnipeg draws its hateful ideology from many sources but is ultimately fuelled by a sense of nihilism, experts say.
Manitoba RCMP said last week they charged 19-year-old Nevin Young with four terrorism-related charges after an investigation found links to online radicalization and a violent extremist group called M.K.Y.
He had previously been charged with spray-painting antisemitic graffiti on buildings, fences and other objects. The letters “M.K.Y.” were also tagged around Winnipeg’s Charleswood area late last year.
The abbreviation “M.K.Y.” comes from the Russian for “Maniac Murder Cult,” according to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology — one of several names the group goes by, along with “Maniacs: Cult of Killing,” “MMC” and “MKU.”
Though it originated in Russia and Ukraine, it now has members around the world, according to a 2024 report published by West Point military academy’s Combating Terrorism Center, which drew from publicly available sources such as court filings and from M.K.Y. posts.
Members purport to believe in an “aggressive form of national socialism,” rooted in among other things, “extreme misanthropy” and “theistic Satanism,” according to the American military academy’s report.
Court documents from the indictment of an alleged M.K.Y. leader in the U.S. last year say the group promotes a “neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology” that encourages violence toward Jewish people and other “undesirables.”
“They’re part of a network [of groups] sort of defined by nihilism,” said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
M.K.Y. is “notable in that they really encourage offline violence,” he said.
‘Mass casualty attack’ planned in NYC: FBI
The July 2024 U.S. indictment accuses Georgia national Michail Chkhikvishvili, a then 20-year-old who went by “Commander Butcher” and other aliases, of planning and recruiting for a “mass casualty attack” that was set to take place in New York City during New Year’s Eve in 2023.
The documents say that on or around Nov. 2 of that year, “Butcher” sent instructions to an FBI agent posing as a potential recruit about a plan to have someone dress up as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to racial minorities, including Jewish children.
Chkhikvishvili was arrested in Moldova on July 6 under an Interpol wanted person alert.
The U.S. Department of Justice said in an email he’s still pending extradition from Moldova, and that it cannot share any further details on the investigation.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
An April 2024 affidavit filed by an FBI agent said Chkhikvishvili is the author of the “Hater’s Handbook,” a text widely circulated among M.K.Y. members calling for ethnic cleansing and encouraging school shootings or using children for bombings and other mass killings.
The West Point report said M.K.Y. “seeks to emulate serial killers and other mass murderers,” like the gunman involved in a 2020 mass killing at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, or Americans like the Zodiac Killer and the Unabomber.
Chkhikvishvili is also alleged to have shared manuals on how to build explosive devices, commit arson, and attack and kill victims with “knives, hammers, screwdrivers and other weapons,” according to the FBI affidavit.
In one message, he told the undercover agent he could “do bigger action than Breivik without getting caught,” referencing the neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.
Members must share videos of violence: report
Groups like M.K.Y. are populated by people who are “disillusioned with society,” said Georgios Samaras, an assistant professor of public policy at King’s College London who specializes in extremism.
“Their goal is to engage in domestic terrorist activities. They spread horror and they’re trying to amplify their hate speech,” he said.
The 2024 FBI agent’s affidavit said M.K.Y. members regularly communicate and recruit through group chats in an “untraceable” social media platform.
Channels in the platform “have been used to share videos depicting and encouraging acts of violence on behalf of M.K.Y., including what appear to be beatings, stabbings and other assaults,” she wrote.
Balgord said M.K.Y. particularly targets vulnerable people for recruitment, and that, as with other online extremist groups, members tend to be young people.
“These are people who deeply hate themselves, deeply hate others,” Balgord said. “They expose themselves to horrific images and videos that sort of desensitises them to violence.”
The West Point report said people must carry out a “violent or criminal attack” to join M.K.Y., and that members are expected to film or livestream the acts.
“We ask people for brutal beating, arson/explosion or murder vids on camera,” Chkhikvishvili told the undercover FBI agent, according to the FBI affidavit.
The West Point report said evidence of “M.K.Y.-style” videos of criminal acts and violence can be found as far back as 2018. By 2019, people using the group’s name were claiming authorship of videos showing attacks on homeless people.
The alleged leader of the group, Yegor Krasnov, was arrested in eastern Ukraine in 2020, and there have also been M.K.Y.-related arrests in Romania and the U.K., the report said.
Balgord said the exchange of images of people getting killed or other kinds of gore is “as old as the internet itself.”
“I hope this doesn’t make sense to a lot of people … but there are people who are attracted to that kind of content because of its transgressive nature,” he said.
“It can go to some very dangerous places after that.”
