If you’re watching “Bama Rush,” the new HBO documentary centered around sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama now streaming on Max, odds are you’ve heard about the Machine.

You don’t have to be a GDI to know about the group, a secretive and select coalition of traditionally white fraternities and sororities designed to influence campus politics at the University.

Since director Rachel Fleit’s film about four women in the months leading up to Tuscaloosa’s annual rush week immerses itself in the Capstone’s Greek culture, it was only natural that the Machine, otherwise known as Theta Nu Epsilon, would be mentioned.

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A rollcall of Alabama politicians – from the past and present – have ties to the Machine, going back to the early 1900s. And stories about its exploits have assumed legendary proportions.As AL.com columnist John Archibald, who appears in “Bama Rush,” explained in a 2018 column:

“Crosses have been burned in sorority yards, independent candidates intimidated regularly. One candidate – who claimed in college he was run off the road by Machine thugs – went on to become a federal agent.

“The daughter of a governor reported that she was cut with a knife for daring to run for SGA president when she was not the Machine choice. Members of the Machine surrounded the school newspaper and stole whole runs of papers. Members bugged offices, helped to ruin a beloved pizza joint and interfered with real-world elections.”

The Machine traces its roots to Connecticut in 1870, when a group of Wesleyan College students gathered to establish a secret campus group – a chapter of Yale’s Skull and Bones.

And in 1905 that group – Theta Nu Epsilon – found its way to a willing clique of elites at the University of Alabama.

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Machine fraternities and sororities are billed hundreds of dollars per semester for each Machine member, and the group selects SGA officers and homecoming queens choices – that almost always go on to win.

It has groomed many powerful state politicians, from U.S. Sen. Lister Hill to Sen. Richard Shelby and Gov. Don Siegelman.

Convicted bond dealer Bill Blount was a Machine-backed SGA president, as was Joe Espy, a university trustee and lawyer to Milton McGregor (and the operatives at The Matrix.)

Former Secretary of State John Merrill famously beat the machine to become SGA president at Alabama, only to have his office ransacked. R.B. Walker, a board member of the dark money group former Gov. Robert Bentley used to pay Rebekah Mason, was a Machine-backed SGA president.

The Machine was previously mentioned in a 2017 documentary on Fusion TV, “‘The Naked Truth: Frat Power,” which made allegations of rigged elections and racist agendas.

The organization was also blamed for a three-year shutdown on campus elections in the early 90s, prompted by a violent attack against an independent candidate, as well as a cross-burning on the lawn of a white student’s off-campus house.

“The Machine’s power lies not only in the people it turns out but in the lessons it offers on how power is won and wielded. Indeed, it has helped remake state politics in its own shadowy image,” a 1992 Esquire Magazine cover story on the group stated, calling the Machine the “most powerful fraternity in America.”

Listen to Reckon Radio’s podcast series “Greek Gods,” about the secret society that has controlled student government at the University of Alabama for more than a century.

Ben Flanagan contributed to this report.