In August 2017, individuals from at least 35 states across the U.S. converged in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was the largest gathering of white supremacists in a generation.

Chants of “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil,” a Nazi slogan, rose in the air. Violence flared. And by the time the “Unite the Right” rally ended, a counterprotester was killed after a neo-Nazi behind the wheel of a car slammed into a crowd, an act of terror that injured dozens.

At the end of Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s 2018 documentary investigating the deadly rally and its roots, correspondent A.C. Thompson said, “The movement that violently erupted in the streets of Charlottesville hasn’t gone away.”

“The story,” he added, “is far from over.”

What has happened in the years since has borne out the truth of that statement — and FRONTLINE and ProPublica have kept on reporting.

On March 25, the two organizations will release The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram — a new, 90-minute documentary investigating how a global community of white supremacists exploited loosely-moderated online platforms to spread hate and promote terror attacks in recent years.

In the runup to the documentary’s premiere, explore a selection of FRONTLINE and our partners’ past documentaries and podcast episodes tracing the evolution of violent far-right extremism, white supremacist movements, and online radicalization, from Charlottesville to today.

Documenting Hate: Charlottesville

This duPont-Columbia and Emmy Award-winning documentary with ProPublica investigated white supremacist movements’ attempt to break into the American mainstream during President Donald Trump’s first term, the white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, rally, and how a series of violent clashes involving some of those very same individuals and groups preceded Charlottesville. “I could see from my office here in New York City how this was building … this was not just predictable, but predicted,” Mike German, a retired FBI special agent who spent years infiltrating white supremacist groups, said in the documentary.

FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s joint reporting in the leadup to the documentary revealed that one participant in the Charlottesville violence was an active-duty Marine, and that another worked for a major defense contractor and held a U.S. government security clearance.

Documenting Hate: New American Nazis

The second film in the Documenting Hate series, which also aired in 2018, investigated a neo-Nazi group, the Atomwaffen Division, that had actively recruited inside the U.S. military. This joint investigation with ProPublica documented the Atomwaffen Division’s terrorist objectives, examined how civilian and military authorities responded, and showed how the group was impacted after Charlottesville.

The documentary also examined the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — in which the killer appeared to be “someone who is motivated and propelled by a worldview and by a social network of like-minded people who push and enable violence,” Kathleen Belew, a historian and author who researched the history of white supremacy, said in the film.

American Insurrection

This George Polk Award-winning 2021 documentary with ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program, updated in 2022, offered an in-depth look at how far-right extremist groups had evolved from the Charlottesville rally, to the time of the January 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Supported by the WNET initiative Exploring Hate, the documentary examined the threat posed by groups that saw themselves as defending the U.S. Constitution but were tied to anti-government, white supremacist ideologies and criminality; some members of those groups were present on Jan. 6.

“A.C. Thompson on Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremism”

In 2023, Thompson joined The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss his years of reporting on right-wing extremism in light of recent high-profile incidents of antisemitism.

“If you go back to 2015, 2016, and you’re looking at what people are discussing in right-wing extremist circles, at first there wasn’t a lot of talk of antisemitism. There was a lot of talk about anti-immigration rhetoric, a lot of anti-Muslim talk,” Thompson said. “What I think you’ve seen since then is sort of a quiet but steady uptick in antisemitism and now it’s bursting onto the scene.”

The Discord Leaks

This Emmy-nominated 2023 documentary with The Washington Post investigated Discord leaker Jack Teixeira, a young Air National Guardsman who had a history of violent threats, racism, and conspiracy theories, and the backstory on one of the biggest leaks of government secrets in U.S. history.

From award-winning filmmakers Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong, who also directed the upcoming documentary The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram, The Discord Leaks explored how Teixiera obtained a security clearance despite the nature of his online presence, and probed online radicalization and the role of platforms like Discord.

“Investigating a Massive Online Leak of Government Secrets”

The Washington Post reporters Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford, who were featured in The Discord Leaks, spoke more about extremism, the role of online platforms, and how Discord was policing hate speech in this 2024 FRONTLINE Dispatch podcast episode.

“Discord knows that its platform is very attractive to extremist groups. You know, the Charlottesville rally in 2017 for Unite the Right organized on Discord,” Harris said at the time. “I think, to their credit, they’re trying to take steps to combat it, but practically speaking … the way the system is set up, the platform is set up, they’re not really positioned to be able to monitor for people sharing racist rhetoric, for people organizing in this way.”

For the latest installment of FRONTLINE’s reporting on white supremacist extremism and radicalization on online platforms, watch The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram starting Tuesday, March 25. A collaboration with ProPublica featuring Thompson and his colleague James Bandler as correspondents, the 90-minute documentary investigates how an online network known as Terrorgram spread extremism and violence.

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