In a Brooklyn, New York, courthouse, Georgian national Michail Chkhikvishvili entered his plea before the court. On November 15, 2025, Chkhikvishvili, also known as Commander Butcher, admitted to a 2023 plot he attempted to orchestrate in which a co-conspirator, dressed as Santa Claus, would distribute poisoned candy to “minority children” on New Year’s Eve 2023.
Communicating over the encrypted chat application Telegram, Chkhikvishvili conspired with others to lace the candy with deadly ricin poison on behalf of his group, the violent Maniac Murder Cult (Маньяки: культ убийства in Russian — often abbreviated as “MKY,” “MKU,” or “MMC”). To help the perpetrator in New York, Chkhikvishvili sent manuals that instructed the would-be attacker on how to create poisons and explosives. A common practice inside the extremist spaces that groups like MKY operate, these guides are meant to instruct and inspire followers to commit acts of violence.
After the holidays passed without the plan moving forward, Chkhikvishvili told his man in New York to target the Jewish community, Jewish schools, and Jewish children in Brooklyn with poison. Joking that the attack was going to exceed that of Anders Breivik, a Norwegian mass killer who killed 77 people, many of them children, on July 22, 2011, Chkhikvishvili never saw his plan reach fruition.
An image of Michail Chkhikvishvili shared online by a rival neo-Nazi group, Injekt Division, shortly before his arrest. (Source: Telegram).
The person he had been soliciting to commit violence was actually an undercover informant with the FBI. Chkhikvishvili, a citizen of Georgia, was arrested in July 2024 as he traveled through Moldova and then was extradited to the U.S.
An image shared by Moldovan law enforcement showing Michail Chkhikvishvili after he was detained in Chisinau, Moldova, in 2024. (Source: YouTube).
Chkhikvishvili authored and distributed a book for MKY titled the Hater’s Handbook around 2021. The book began as a basic text document but was updated and “improved” over time. By the third edition, it was filled with illustrations, references to other groups, an alleged biography of MKY’s founder, the imprisoned Yegor Krasnov, and instructions on how to carry out random attacks and violence in the name of a neo-Nazi ideology, spreading terror, and the MKY.
“We must secure the existence of white martyrs and genocide the planet to total perfection,” the text reads. Other sections and images detail the type of gear potential mass attackers should have, provide information on target selection, types of weapons to use, crude methods for creating poisons, and instructions for how to avoid detection by police.
The contents of the Haters Handbook are disturbing, and are a prime example of an increasingly useful tool for groups seeking to do harm. Many individuals and groups from the same social ecosystem as MKY have been producing manuals that provide detailed instructions on everything from specifics on committing acts of random and terroristic violence to stabbings, murder, and poisoning. Other manuals offer hundreds of pages of advice on targeting children, hiding online, doxing others, and committing online fraud and cyber crimes.
Despite their prevalence, the content of the manuals themselves remains woefully underexamined.
Part Instruction, Part Inspiration
There are numerous different guides that circulate in the digital spaces where groups like MKY and others operate, easily accessible to young people and others. Many of the manuals are not affiliated with a specific group or even author, while others make the association clear, serving as both a manifesto and educational guide.
Before the Haters Handbook, MKY released three other publications that were then distributed through online extremist networks including “The Com” and “Terrorgram.” Terrorgram is a network of neo-Nazi accelerationist channels localized on the encrypted application Telegram. The community emerged as a network of connected channels and group chats in the late 2010s that shared violent materials promoting violence in the name of white supremacy. The Com (short for “The Community”) is a spanning digital network of cybercrime and abuse that is made up of primarily young perpetrators who often target children.
Originally published in Russian and translated into English in 2022, MKY’s early manuals are attributed to its founder, Yegor Krasnov of Dnieper, Ukraine. Chkhikvishvili’s Haters Handbook also contains an autobiography allegedly written by Krasnov. Though this claim cannot be substantiated, Krasnov has continued to release music, videos, and messages from prison since his arrest in 2020 for a series of random stabbings and robberies in Dnieper. The Handbook also promotes one of his “anti-musician” projects in its opening pages.
Of the three other MKY books, one offers instructions on conducting “manhunts,” where members select an individual for targeted violence or death, and provides guidance on preparations, how to dispose of evidence, and avenues for creating media content for the group.
“It is important to film a really bloody and cruel video with as many hits and stabs as possible, filming it clearly,” the translated Manhunt booklet reads. “The more horrible it looks, the better.”
These manuals also contained information about how to contact MKY recruiters when the group was still active. While Telegram is one of the most common applications used by a variety of extremists to communicate, MKY primarily used it for propaganda distribution. Other online messaging applications used by the group included Element, Threema, Wire, and Xabber.
The cover of MKY’s “Manhunt Guide,” an instructional booklet on hunting and killing victims for the group. (Source: Provided).
A second manual, Cold Weapons, instructs readers on the use of items like knives, hammers, sharpened screwdrivers, and more. Only four pages long, it is a crude- looking document, especially when compared to the more sophisticated graphic design used by other groups. Regardless, the chaotic aesthetic and symbols cultivated by MKY in its manuals and videos continues to be emulated by other extremists.
The third book, Maniac: A Tale of the Fate of a Right-Wing Terrorist, is a Russian language biography of Krasnov that describes a troubled early life and radicalization into violence. While led by Krasnov, MKY was largely a violent neo-Nazi street gang similar to football hooligans or Russian “Sparrows Crews,” but under the leadership of Chkhikvishvili, they grew closer to groups associated with The Com.
The cover of the book “Maniac: A Tale of the Fate of a Right-Wing Terrorist.” (Source: Telegram).
The practice of cross-group publications emerged as so that members of this ecosystem can signal to their supporters (and enemies) about their alliances. In MKY’s Hater’s Handbook, several essays are attributed to other neo-Nazi occultist groups like Satanic Front and NSO9A. Satanic Front is considered to be a successor organization to the Tempel ov Blood, an abusive cult run by long time FBI-informant and neo-Nazi Joshua Caleb Sutter primarily from his central North Carolina property.
MKY also released several cross publications with another violent and dangerous transnational Com group that went by the name No Lives Matter (NLM).
While ideology is often not the primary motivation for violence within The Com, NLM in particular has adopted the imagery and language of neo-Nazism and the occult belief system of the Order of Nine Angles in its propaganda. The Order of Nine Angles (O9A) was founded in the United Kingdom by extremist David Myatt in the 1960s. The O9A has continued to organize since that time as small cells, called “nexions.” Some of these individual cells have promoted sexual abuse, and possessing and creating child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Members of the O9A have been connected to murders, assaults, child exploitation and sexual abuse material, and sexual crimes against children.
Com groups are participatory in nature, and membership is typically only granted to individuals who are willing to carry out violent actions demanded by the group and then provide evidence of their actions. In the case of NLM, prospective members are asked to commit acts of vandalism, arson, murder, or terrorism.
There have been several iterations of NLM. This is a frequent practice within the Com as groups with significant reputations will spawn copycats, often claiming a connection to the original group or its founding members.
NLM is credited as the creation of a Dutch man identified only as “Justin B.” in court documents, and who went by the name “Cxrpse” online.
Justin B. appeared in a Rotterdam courtroom for the first time in October 2025 to face charges for allegedly coercing victims online to commit self-harm, engage in animal crushing, share extreme violent and terrorist material, and create child sexual abuse material.
In November 2025, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published one of few publicly available images of Justin B.
Images of Cxrpse shared on the social media platform Telegram. (Source: Telegram).
Cxrpse left NLM around 2023. The NLM responsible for the manuals with MKY was run by a different individual, who went by the screen name “S1N.”
Two of the collaborative manuals included the “NLM Terror Guide” and a “Kill Guide.” These manuals contain detailed instructions on selecting weapons, bomb making, poison creation, and how to conduct mass casualty attacks. In some parts of the documents, the authors have simply taken pages from manuals produced by the Islamic State (IS) and covered the organization’s logo with the logo of NLM, illustrating the similarities of online.recruitment and radicalization processes across the extremist spectrum.
An image from an NLM publication instructing the creation of a variety of poisons. (Source: Provided).
Under S1N’s leadership, NLM also collaborated on manuals with one of the most infamous and dangerous Com groups, 764. Started by an American teenager, Bradley Chance Cadenhead, 764 is one of a multitude of different Com groups focused on sexually extorting, typically young girls and women, to commit an increasingly degrading series of actions that includes finding and abusing new young people on their behalf, self-harm, creating CSAM, and coached suicide.
The “764 network,” as the broader Com subset of sexual extortion groups have begun being called, has become so prolific that it has been mentioned in numerous press releases and warnings by federal and local law enforcement in multiple jurisdictions globally. In the United States alone, the FBI reports hundreds of open investigations into the network at all of its 55 field offices.
Many of the manuals will also contain “Rosters” for Com groups. Despite being a decentralized network, some Com groups have rigid hierarchies for members who have proven themselves, either through criminal action or the creation of media content for the group.
In a joint NLM and 764 publication, titled “Classified,” the roster lists the then leader of 764, Trippy and member War. Trippy was revealed to be Prasan Nepal, a 20-year-old North Carolina man arrested in April 2025 for crimes relating to operating an international child exploitation enterprise. “War” was revealed later to be 21-year-old Leonidas Varagiannis, a citizen of the United States and Greece residing in Thessaloniki. While Greek officials refused to extradite Varagiannis, he was later charged in the country, where he is still awaiting trial.
A roster published in a joint publication put out by the groups NLM and 764. (Source: Telegram).
Also listed on the same roster is a 14-year-old Swedish boy known online as “Slain.” The teen attacked a woman in her 50s in July 2024 and then, in September 2024, attacked an 82-year-old man in a Stockholm suburb. Videos of the attacks, and six others allegedly carried out by Slain, were shared online. Several of these videos continue to circulate.
Rosters, like the one found in the 764/NLM publication, are important signifiers among Com groups, as they often indicate affiliation and denote rank within the group. If a leader is arrested or disappears, only those with ownership (sometimes referred to as “OS”) or permission (“perms”) granted by an owner can carry on a group. There have been numerous iterations of 764, NLM, and other prominent Com groups.
764 has also seen its membership produce manuals not attributed to the group, but that still instruct the reader on the horrendous crimes they have become known for: the systematic extortion of children into self harm and sexual abuse. One particularly egregious manual reveals in explicit detail how to target, groom, and extort children over hundreds of pages. The manual is believed to be the work of Arizonan Baron Cain Martin, a 764 leader arrested in December 2024 on charges of participating in a child exploitation enterprise, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, conspiring to kill, kidnap or maim persons in a foreign country, five counts of producing child pornography, 11 counts of distributing child pornography, three counts of coercing and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity, three counts of cyberstalking, animal crushing and distribution of animal crush videos, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Among the litany of accusations, Martin allegedly coerced a 13-year-old girl to carve his screen name “Convict” and other symbols on her body with sharp objects, leading to “permanent disfigurement.” This is a Com practice called creating “cut signs.”
There are also numerous other guides, with unknown authors, that circulate in the digital forums, chatrooms, and platforms used by this community. Some include guides to hiding your identity online, while others are instructional on how to locate and “dox” individuals—the practice of revealing the personal information of a target publicly. Others provide instructions on suicide.
Manuals Instruct Modern Extremist Violence
Terrorists of all stripes have long relied on manuals to pass on ideological and operational knowledge to their cells and supporters. One of the most significant series of modern manuals of far-right terrorism came from the neo-Nazi Terrorgram Collective, a group that spawned from the network of the same name.
The Collective produced four long-form books allegedly written by multiple authors and contributors. These books—Hard Reset, Do It For The Gram, Militant Accelerationism, and Make It Count—are highly stylized publications, offering both reasoning and methods for conducting mass casualty violence in the name of National Socialism. Some of the alleged authors and leaders of the Terrorgram Collective are Canadian Mathew Althorpe, as well as Dallas Humber of California, and Matthew Allison of Idaho. All three are facing charges in relation to encouraging terrorism against public officials, judges, journalists and more. Humber pleaded guilty in December 2025, as did Althorpe, in a Canadian federal court, while Allison so far intends to fight the charges.
Groups like MKY, Satanic Front, 764, and other related organizations are part of what is sometimes called the “Edgesphere” of online communities. Comprised of multiple “continuously shifting and overlapping” extreme internet subcultures, the Edgesphere consists primarily of chronically online youths. This social network began to emerge and calcify between 2018 and 2020, and then accelerated its radicalization during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
This broad social space incorporates aspects of many of the most fringe and dangerous parts of far-right extremist movements, alongside injurious online communities like those focused on promoting eating disorders and self harm.
While ideology often takes a back seat to social standing and recognition, the influence of neo-Nazi and far-right networks like the Order of Nine Angles and Terrorgram continue to permeate the space. Some of the subgroups inside the sphere operate criminal networks that will rise to the level of supporting or advocating for terrorism. MKY for instance, developed a “points” system where a number value was assigned to various crimes that started with petty vandalism and escalated up to murder and biological attacks. Members were required to earn a required amount of points each month to stay in the group.
Other manuals, several of which were created by a pseudonymous neo-Nazi author known as “Laserhawk,” detail how and where to attack critical infrastructure to cause the most damage and chaos, incorporating news stories and documentation from businesses like power companies to guide would-be attackers.
Recommendations
Manuals and guides like the ones discussed in this paper live online long after their authors are arrested or leave the movement. These documents provide clear instructions and frameworks for youth to follow, pushing them toward deeper radicalization while encouraging violent action.
Manuals also offer a window into how that radicalization process takes place, allowing for the understanding of the tactics and techniques used by these organizations. The 764 network, the larger network of exploitation groups that 764 emerged from, and its associated crimes involve the systematic and repeated exploitation of children on a massive scale. The methods used require study to develop effective means of intervention and prevention.
Difficult to stamp out completely, these documents are often stored inside of cloud drives, on internet archive sites, pastebins (a type of anonymous file sharing website), online forums, and social media. Links and copies can be easily distributed to those who know how or where to look. Often, even the correct combination of keywords can retrieve these manuals from major search engines.
These manuals build on the lessons learned by earlier violent extremists and are packaged in a manner that appeals to a much younger generation of radical youth. Far from a fringe curiosity, these guides serve as road maps for transitioning radical anger into real-world harm.
