"The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram", directed by Tom Jennings & Annie Wong

Review by Antony Cirocco, 27-05-2025

“The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” is a documentary produced by the Frontline TV program in the USA. It has been re-edited and made available in Australia on the 4Corners Program, released on May 19, 2025. The Frontline program has been running in the USA since 1983, it has produced 827 episodes ranging from 30 minutes to feature length. Frontline is a powerhouse of documentary journalism in the USA. It is a program on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network and has just had its funding cut by the Trump administration. 

The Rise and Fall of Terrogram, official movie poster

This film follows an Emmy-winning investigative journalist, Adam C. Thompson as he goes down the rabbit hole to investigate online hate crimes and communities with a focus on those using messaging services, most notably Terrorgram, an online conglomerate of hate activists.

This film goes deeper than law enforcement communities in Slovakia, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA to track through the emergence of single-person shooters who are groomed, nurtured, and encouraged to commit hate crimes, in the real world spurred on by these hate communities. It breaks down the risks of allowing unbridled hate speech and the power of these communication tools to spread racist vitriol and misinformation. For parents of young children who let their kids roam free on their phones, this documentary is a stoney-eyed watch, as they hear their kids beckon from a distance for bottomless wifi and unlocked devices, it’s a warning, and it’s worth watching.

This film investigates an emerging trend where communities of like-minded hateful people gather and intersect online using various messaging services, and there they encourage each other to commit acts of violence against other people. The filmmakers identify three crimes that occurred, the most famous of which was the shootings in a Mosque in Christchurch on March 15th of 2019 that killed 51 people. Just like influencers convincing us to purchase products on Instagram or YouTube, these communities function the same way, but they dwell and fester on lesser-known messaging services, where they spruik hate, and even more so they influence those gullible enough to manifest their hate in the real world through physical violence. 

This investigation combs over these online communities, tracking down the influencers and exposing their trove of hate speech. It also exposes the ease with which they move from service to service and how they have, up until recently, gone unchecked by law enforcement. 

This program focuses on a shooting in Slovakia, committed by a 19-year-old boy, completely hoodwinked by hate-touting influencers online. It breaks down the lead-up to the event and the legacy this crime has left, not just in Slovakia but around the world.

This film has 2 x directors, Jennings and Wong, who never appear on camera, which is normal in some modes of documentary, instead Thompson fronts the camera and leads us through the story in a kind of expository, participatory mode, where he is an expert investigator, not aligned with the victims perse, although no doubt sympathetic.

This story is relevant, as governments around the world grapple with hate crimes online. This is evident in Sydney’s eastern suburbs right now, the influence of these evil actors continues to grow, and governments are still scrambling to catch up. Meanwhile, online messaging service providers and the programmers that run them, hide behind firewalls and do very little to stem the tide of hate on their services, unfortunately, they are not accountable now or in the near foreseeable future.

This documentary breaks new ground with detailed network documentation and establishes a timeline of communication between the influencers and the perpetrators. It’s brilliant in the depth and detail of research.

The Directing team and the investigative journalist here are seasoned professionals, and Thompson has been investigating similar crimes and subcultures for many years. The editing is not in your face, it’s rhythmic and constant, with an inevitable purpose. The music works to drive emotion subtly, it used in a stylised way to build tension at times, but if you think of the target audience here being middle America then it makes sense to position the work instep, to a degree, with other documentaries it competes with and therefore the over use of music could be forgiven.

Ethically, this film observes and intersects with members of the community committing acts of extreme violence spurred on by a crowd of cheering onlookers, hidden by their anonymous internet handles, who probably don’t have the guts to commit the same crimes themselves, in essence setting up their friends for a spectacular fall for their entertainment. This means that the directors and producers need ot take due care in focusing on crimes past, where evidence had already been gathered and prosecutions completed. On this level, the team has done their job well, not foreboding any future crimes and not celebrating perpetrators either, but rather looking on them as examples of perpetrators that took part in these horrible crimes. The film treats the victims with the respect they deserve, allowing the families and friends of the victims of crime time to speak and share their story. All this, the working history of the filmmakers involved, the platforms the work is presented on, and the detail of the research present on screen, speaks to the journalistic rigour and professionalism with which this story has been told. It’s polished and professional.

Beware this film can be triggering, for victims of hate crimes, cyber bullying and racism, the actors in this film, the perpetrators, they do say some pretty horrible things, the filmmakers present those things as evidence of wrong doing and they quickly cut away, tastefully, not to dwell on anything the perpetrators have said so as not to give their diatribe of hate gravity, that was important for me as a viewer. I want to see the evidence…but I don’t want to stay there, I am not keen to know more or go deeper, I get the picture, moving on.

There is visual symbolism here also that is banned in some countries, and rightfully so, this might also trigger some other viewers. Beware, this film is not an easy watch. It’s definitely not for young children or the faint-hearted, for that matter. It is a worthwhile documentary though because that visual symbolism connects this high-tech community to past political movements that were ripped down decades ago, and to see these symbols of hate reemerge is frightening, but sometimes seeing is believing, the filmmakers needed to show some of the symbols of hae, but i’s just evidence, no more no less.

As a documentary, it is expertly crafted, the depth of connection between old school bigotry and new school tech is outstanding, and rolling out a history of online chatter where the community of hate are egging the perpetrators on to commit these hideous crimes is new, we have not seen that before. It speaks to where the law enforcement community around the world needs to go to catch these criminals. My only negative thought was that this documentary aired at 1 hr 27 mins on the Frontline Program in the USA but in Australia it aired for 45 mins. Where did the rest of it go, and what are we not seeing? Was the truncation of the documentary really that necessary ABC? And could the ABC provide the full-length version on ABC iView outside of broadcast schedule limitations?

The alarm bells are ringing in this documentary, the rise of rightwing propaganda and hate speech online has not gone unnoticed. The chatroom activity of these extreme groups reminds us all to be vigilant online, to protect young people, and to keep asking the government to put pressure on internet chat providers to moderate content on their platforms. For those unaware of such activity, this film is going to be a head-turner. 

This film is a good way to get anyone up to speed as to how internet chat apps are being misused and the conduits for hate speech and extreme right wing values, it’s a timely documentary that balances tragedy with education and makes the audience think about the apps on their phone and what people are doing inside them. It’s excellent journalism, 4.0 stars.

Review by Antony Cirocco

Check out the trailer (only the Frontline version of the trailer was available at the time this post was created)