In the first video Matthew Althorpe helped produce, eight armed men in skull masks carry black-and-yellow flags at dusk. The flags billow ominously as the men advance in slow motion.
They turn toward the camera, but their eyes are blurred. Ambient music plays atop the sound of a baby crying.
The scene cuts to a field where American and Israeli flags lie on the ground. The men stand in a semi-circle around them, their masked faces illuminated in the dark.
As the video ends, the flags are set on fire.
“Join us, or perish with the rest,” a voice-over warns, as the recruitment email for international neo-Nazi organization Atomwaffen Division appears on the screen.
The video was shown in court on Oct. 9, when Althorpe, who has been in custody since his arrest in December 2023, pleaded guilty to three terrorism-related charges.
He was identified as the one left-handed shooter in the video after the RCMP executed search warrants at five residences as part of an investigation into extremism.
His sentencing hearing at the 361 University Ave. courts in Toronto continues today.
Althorpe, a 30-year-old father of a two-year-old girl from Niagara Region, pleaded guilty to facilitating terrorist activity, instructing others to carry out terrorist activity and committing an offence for a terrorist group.
An agreed statement of facts obtained by Humber Et Cetera states he admitted to participating in the production of three recruitment and propaganda videos, as well as writing terrorist manifestos and leading offline training efforts for neo-Nazi movements.
The videos include Feuernacht, which “celebrates" the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 attack on German Jews by the Nazis, as well as the above-described Fission: A Reckoning with Modernity, a recruitment video for the now-dissolved Atomwaffen Division.
Atomwaffen Division promoted militant accelerationism, a movement that advocates for societal collapse through terrorism and purports to replace it with a “white ethnostate."
The ideology has “recently emerged as one of the dominant terrorist movements in the Western world," according to a 2024 report by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
Althorpe also contributed to three militant accelerationist manifestos published to Terrorgram, an extremist network on the social media app Telegram, which was declared a terrorist entity in December.
The manifestos promote the destruction of infrastructure and the murder of civilians. They also provide instructions for carrying out terrorist acts.
One section on how to attack “a large public event” concludes, “Have no doubt: You’ve. Got. This.”
The back cover of another publication previews the upcoming Saint Encyclopedia, a commemoration of white nationalist mass murderers around the world.
The manifestos have since been cited in at least five terrorist acts, including the 2022 murder of two people outside a gay bar in Slovakia and the stabbing of five people near a mosque in Turkey in 2024.
“Just before the attack [in Turkey], the perpetrator released a manifesto and folder … including the Terrorgram publications, describing them as ‘useful’ to those who wanted to plan their own attacks,” the statement of facts says.
The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has stressed that Canada is no exception to the international rise of these movements.
Violent and polarizing rhetoric has become “normalized,” it warned in a report released last year, feeding into a threat that is “eroding our social cohesion and threatening Canadian communities.”
Althorpe’s lawyer, Robb MacDonald, will deliver his sentencing submissions on Friday. He has advocated for a sentence of less than 14 years for his client.
The federal Crown attorney, Amber Pashuk, is seeking 20 years.
Superior Court Justice Jane Kelly is expected to reserve her decision until the following appearance next month.
