New movie shows rise, fall of Idaho white supremacist group. You can watch it in Boise

Forty years ago, a domestic terrorist group with ties to North Idaho and Boise was on a crime spree – assassinations, armed robberies, bombings – in the hope of sparking a race war.

Though it was one of the most violent white supremacist groups in the country’s history, its brief existence is often overshadowed in Idaho by the long-tenured Aryan Nations. Now a film featuring big-name actors details its story, and the effort by FBI and local law enforcement to quash its attacks.

“The Order,” which shares its name with the splinter group, hit select theaters in the U.S. on Friday, showing at the Flicks in Boise and theaters in Ketchum and Coeur d’Alene.

Nicholas Hoult, known for his roles in movies such as “About a Boy” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” as well as TV shows like “Skins” and “The Great,” stars as the group’s leader, Bob Mathews. Jude Law, who has played Sherlock Holmes and a young Albus Dumbledore in addition to Oscar-nominated roles in “Cold Mountain” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” plays FBI agent Terry Husk.

Experts who saw the Order’s violence firsthand in the 1980s told the Idaho Statesman that the film, which is partially set in Idaho, gets many of the historic details right and sends an important message at a time when hate crimes are at a high in the state, according to Idaho State Police data.

‘The Order’ ties in Idaho’s past with violent terrorist group

In the film, Husk moves to Coeur d’Alene to reopen an FBI field office. There he notices white supremacist flyers and asks local law enforcement, “Is that the Aryan Nation?” Husk looks over photos of a swastika inside a bright red circle painted on the roof of a building – real imagery the group emblazoned on its compound in Hayden Lake.

Actor Tye Sheridan as sheriff’s deputy Jamie Bowen tells Husk that the pamphlets barely scratch the surface of what’s happening.

“A bomb went off at a synagogue in Boise,” Bowen tells Husk over newspaper clippings about the event – a reference to a real attack on Congregation Ahavath Beth Israel in April 1984.

Bowen and Husk speak with Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, played by Victor Slezak, and work out that Mathews’ group, while related, is a different beast. Mathews created the Order in 1983, recruiting like-minded members with a speech – depicted in the film – at a neo-Nazi convention. He was living in Metaline Falls, Washington, a rural area about 15 miles from the Idaho border and a roughly two-hour drive from Hayden Lake.

The film covers the Order’s real-life adherence to “The Turner Diaries,” a white supremacist playbook from 1978 that influenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and was referenced by insurrectionists supporting Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

Hoult portrays Mathews’ recruitment of nearly four dozen members who rob banks and armored Brink’s trucks for money, plan terror attacks in major U.S. cities and assassinate outspoken Jewish radio host Alan Berg (played by Marc Maron), who criticized their far-right-wing ideals.

In reality, the Order’s tenure was brief. By the end of 1984, Mathews died in a standoff with law enforcement on Whidbey Island, Washington, and more than a dozen of the group’s members – many of them with direct ties to the Aryan Nations – were convicted on various charges related to the Order’s crimes.

‘This actually happened’: White supremacist movie sticks to Idaho history

“The Order” is largely based on a 1989 book, “The Silent Brotherhood,” by former Rocky Mountain News reporters Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, who covered the group’s crimes and eventual court cases. The book is now available with the same name as the film.

Flynn, who is now a Denver City Council member, told the Statesman in a phone interview that he was contacted by screenwriter Zach Baylin and producer Bryan Haas, who learned about the Order’s crimes while researching for a film on domestic terrorism.

“They came across our book and they said to each other, ‘We don’t have to make up this story. This actually happened,’ ” Flynn said.

Flynn described Mathews as “a type of charismatic leader who was capable of getting ordinary people radicalized to the point where they would actually rob a Brink’s truck, where they would gun down Alan Berg in his driveway, where they would kill Walter West, a would-be member who was talking too much.”

Law’s character is based on an amalgamation of FBI agents and law enforcement officials who worked to stop the group, Flynn said. Flynn and Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations co-founder Tony Stewart both told the Statesman that the Husk character bears strong resemblances to FBI agent Wayne Manis.

Manis, who still lives in North Idaho, played a key role in ousting the area’s white supremacist groups alongside others like Stewart and task force co-founder Larry Broadbent.

Flynn said while there are obvious departures from reality – like Husk’s role, and some locations and other details of the group’s crimes – he felt the film’s director, Justin Kurzel, and cast and crew worked hard to keep the movie as accurate as possible. Flynn said he saw everyone from camera crews to the film’s stars referencing his book between takes when he visited a filming location in Calgary, Alberta.

“Between shots, they would come up and say, ‘Tell me more about this character or that character’ or ‘How did the armored car robbery go down? What did they do here or there?’ ” said Flynn, who is credited as a consultant on the film.

Flynn’s involvement with the film brought up plenty of memories, like a research trip to Boise with Gerhardt, who died in 2015. They visited a Brink’s depot that the Order planned to rob before moving its target to San Francisco, and spent time at a home on 10th Street that Order members used for counterfeiting operations.

Flynn said the group’s leaders spent time at the house after robbing an armored truck in Ukiah, California, and getting away with $3.8 million. They even stashed some of the money behind a loose brick in a fireplace.

“Bob Mathews and some of his the inner circle, the five members who were in the leadership, they had a big fight in that room of that house over the direction the gang was going and where they should go from there,” Flynn said.

The woman who was living in the house at the time Flynn and Gerhardt were researching was “so gracious,” Flynn said, and allowed them to take photos and spend time in the home to better describe the scene in their book.

Film’s message on hate still relevant, experts say

Flynn said “The Order” has an important theme that remains as relevant as ever.

“The overarching point is the story of the existence in this nation almost at all times of white nationalism,” he told the Statesman.

Flynn said the U.S. saw a brief respite from outspoken white supremacist groups after the Order came to light in the mid-’80s and shocked people. But the sentiment has persisted, and the internet has made spreading hate messages easier than ever.

“I think that the technology that we have today would have made the Aryan Nations proselytizing, spreading their message much easier,” Flynn said.

“We didn’t defeat it when they defeated the Order. We didn’t defeat it when Richard Butler was sued by Morris Dees and (the Aryan Nations) lost their property,” Flynn added. “Obviously, if you look around today, you see it all around.”

Along with Dees, Stewart’s task force was integral in bankrupting the Aryan Nations in 2000 and selling the hate group’s former property to fund a human rights endowment at North Idaho College. He hasn’t yet seen the film but told the Statesman that seeing it “will be emotional because it’s reliving things we all went through.”

Stewart received death threats from Aryan Nations members, and then-chair of the task force Bill Wassmuth survived a bombing of his house in 1986 by members of the short-lived Order II.

Stewart said “The Order” is an important tool in teaching people about the dangers of hate.

“It’s yet another reminder of what can happen,” Stewart said. “If hate appears in your community, please do not ignore it.”