Terrorgram’s content, including practical bomb-making instructions, camouflage and tactical guides, and instructions on how to disable critical infrastructure such as electrical substations, water treatment plants, and dams, has led to radicalization. At least one so-called “saint,” or mass shooters, and are reportedly linked to a series of Power grid attacks in North Carolina And Several active federal lawsuits.
“William Pierce doesn’t make bombs,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told Rolling Stone a quarter century ago. “He makes bombs.” In many ways, the Terrorgram Collective now serves that same role, and has become the modern form of its publication. The Turner Diaries. Spread around the world by the unbridled wilderness of Telegram, the group’s message of hatred and violence is now broadcasting to justify future atrocities to disaffected, disaffected “lone wolves” from any organized group or ideology.
While Order Firmly rooted in the past except for a reference to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the title card, there was no escape from the drumbeat of resurgent far-right militancy in the United States during production. Kurzel, the director, remembers watching news coverage of the January 6 uprising and commenting on the gallows erected outside the Capitol building—a drawing book of which features a demonstration scene with statutes. “The Turner Diaries In today’s environment it started to look more in a way that I was surprised by,” he says, speaking to Wired from his Tasmanian residence. In fact, after January 6, Amazon removed The Turner Diaries From its online inventory.
An ice-cool bravura portrayal of Holt, who controls 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. In addition to a striking physical resemblance to the founder of the Silent Brotherhood, Holt studied his subject closely, studying Matthews’ behavior and movements from old documentary footage, texts that radicalize his subject, weight lifting and Cut alcohol from his diet.
“Matthews was someone who thought and planned what his end goal was, I think he always kept in sight. That’s something that Justin and I talked about, that he’s not going to lose his head over trivial things or things that potentially hurt his cause. In his mind, he had already, in some ways, planned his destiny,” Holt tells Wired.
