Michele Prado
Michele Prado is a Brazilian researcher and founder of the NGO Stop Hate Brasil who since 2022 has monitored Terrorgram Collective channels operating in Brazil, submitted reports to ABIN and the Ministry of Justice, and documented the online radicalization pipeline connected to the wave of Brazilian school attacks from 2022 onward.
Michele Prado is a Brazilian researcher based in Bahia and the founder of Stop Hate Brasil, a non-governmental organization focused on combating far-right online extremism in Brazil. She also serves on a voluntary consulting basis to Brazilian public security agencies, civil society groups, and the federal government on online extremism prevention. She has received support from the Social Change Initiative and has collaborated with Brazilian federal institutions including ABIN (Agência Brasileira de Inteligência) and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.1
Stop Hate Brasil
Stop Hate Brasil (also written Stop Hate Brazil) is a Brazilian NGO founded by Prado to identify, document, and counter far-right extremist content on social media platforms, with particular focus on the radicalization of children and adolescents. By 2024, Prado had documented more than 40 violent incidents in Brazilian school settings with some connection to online extremist networks over a three-year span. Stop Hate Brasil's research found that at least two Terrorgram Collective channels operating in Brazil had been created by adolescents, pointing to the network's exploitation of youth as both targets and participants in its infrastructure.2
2023 ABIN Report
In 2023, Prado submitted a formal report to ABIN and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security identifying Telegram channels linked to Terrorgram members operating in Brazil. The report documented the "Wolf Boy Winter" pseudonym, used by an as-yet-unidentified individual who posted surveillance footage from the 2022 Aracruz School Shootings to a major Terrorgram channel approximately two days after the attack and who contributed multiple pages to "The Hard Reset," a core Terrorgram propaganda publication. The report also documented channels linked to Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira, subsequently designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the US government in January 2025.2
Terrorgram Monitoring
Prado documented that Terrorgram Collective had been operating in Brazil since approximately 2021 or 2022. Her analysis identified the network's use of mainstream platforms including gaming environments such as Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft as entry points for recruitment, with extremist content introduced via YouTube algorithmic recommendations adjacent to gaming content. She noted the network's "ironic" use of Nazi and fascist memes as a normalization strategy targeting youth audiences. This methodology was subsequently corroborated by the Lancet Regional Health (Americas) analysis published in March 2024 and by GNET's November 2024 assessment of the Brazilian accelerationist landscape.23
Sources
- Social Change Initiative. "Michele Prado." https://www.socialchangeinitiative.com/michele-prado ↩
- GNET. "Terrorgram and Youth Radicalisation: Understanding Brazil's Online Extremist Landscape," November 22, 2024. https://gnet-research.org/2024/11/22/terrorgram-and-youth-radicalisation-understanding-brazils-online-extremist-landscape/; Raw Story. "'The Hard Reset': Here's how the U.S. is exporting terrorism around the world." https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/terrorgram-terrorism/ ↩
- The Lancet Regional Health (Americas). "The rise of school shootings and other related attacks in Brazil," March 27, 2024. PIIS2667-193X(24)00051-6. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(24)00051-6/fulltext ↩
Local network
Michele Prado's direct connections. Click any node to navigate, drag to pan, scroll (or pinch) to zoom. + 2‑hop expands the neighborhood one level further.