The Terrorgram materials, which include viable bomb-making instructions, camouflage and tactical guides, as well as instructions on how to disable critical infrastructure such as electrical substations, water treatment plants and dams, have radicalized at least one so-called “saint” or mass shooter, and claims they are connected to a series of power grid attacks in North Carolina, as well as several active federal prosecutions.
“William Pierce doesn’t make bombs,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told Rolling Stone a quarter century ago. “He builds bombers.” In many ways, Terrorgram Collective fulfills the same role now, and its posts have become the modern version of The Turner Diaries. Spread worldwide through the unmoderated wilderness of Telegram, the group’s message of hate and violence now circulates independently of any organized group or ideology for disaffected, unbalanced “lone wolves” to seize upon as justification for future atrocities.
While The order remains firmly rooted in the past, except for a passing reference to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. in the title card, there was no escaping the drumbeat of resurgent far-right militancy in the United States during the production. Kurzel, the director, remembers watching news coverage of the Jan. 6 uprising and noting the gallows erected outside the Capitol building — a drawing that is in the book and the exposition scene with the law. “The Turner Diaries started to become more visible in today’s environment in a way that I was kind of shocked by,” he says, speaking to WIRED from his residence in Tasmania. In fact, after January 6th, Amazon removed The Turner Diaries from your online inventory.
Holt’s bravura portrayal of the icy-cold, controlled, yet menacing Matthews through the Order’s campaign of armed robbery, forgery, murder, and armed confrontation with the FBI is one of the film’s twin anchors. Aside from his striking physical resemblance to the founder of the Silent Brotherhood, Holt carefully studied his subject, mimicking Matthews’ mannerisms and movements from old documentary footage, studying texts that radicalized his subject, lifting weights and eliminating alcohol from his diet.
“Matthews was a guy who thought and planned so far in advance what his ultimate goal was, I think he always had his eye on it. That’s something that Justin and I talked about, that he’s not going to lose his head over trivial things or things that would potentially hurt his cause. In his mind, he’s already kind of planned his destiny,” Holt tells WIRED.
