I wonder if we'll do anything about the
"Active Clubs"?
Active Clubs mix white supremacy and violence, training in kickboxing, among other combat sports. But — at least the moment — they’re not seeking to intimidate the public with swastikas and face tattoos, common to other groups of racist brawlers. Instead, Active Clubs have put forward a slicker, more presentable aesthetic — recruiting new members by touting physical fitness, self-improvement, and “white unity.”
The Active Clubs are flying below the radar of law enforcement. But as described in a new 50-page report from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), the network is evolving into a dangerous “stand-by militia” of well-trained, white-nationalist fighters “who can be activated when the need for coordinated violent action on a larger scale arises.”
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White Supremacy 3.0 in this context seeks to achieve a mix of publicly-presentable aesthetics, real-world activism, and white-power solidarity. The Active Clubs reflect these ideas in their slogans, including, “Make fascism fun,” “White unity at every opportunity,” and “Being handsome and jacked is more important than being right when it comes to politics.”
Active Clubs do not have a top-down hierarchy. They operate instead as an “open network” of locally run cells that all share the same ethos. According to the CEP report, “Active Clubs are supposed to connect and cooperate but stay operationally independent.” The logic behind the distributed power structure is that “infiltrations and arrests of leadership figures, or even the shutdown of an Active Club, should have little if any effect on the Active Club network itself.”
Of note:
What do Active Clubs Look Like?
The Active Clubs present themselves as groups of gym bros who pursue mixed martial arts — and just happen to dabble in white power. “They are specifically asked not to talk about ‘The Jews’ when recruiting, but to focus on positive things like brotherhood, community and so on,” says Alexander Ritzmann, the Berlin-based researcher who authored the CEP report. This follows Rundo’s belief that: “A group of strong white men is a fascist statement in itself.”
Embracing the socially-acceptable violence of MMA culture allows active clubs to avoid the attention of law enforcement, who at first glance, Ritzmann says, would encounter what appears to be just “sporty white men — not much to see here.”
But beneath the surface, Active Clubs represent gangs of young white supremacists who are all about the “glorification of brutal violence,” Ritzmann insists. Lewis, the GW extremism researcher, warns that Active Clubs have “truly become the tip of the fascist spear.”
Where?
Since their founding in late 2020, the Active Clubs have grown explosively. There are now nearly 50 active clubs across 34 states, according to the CEP research. The network is also active in Canada, where there are a dozen clubs, and in Europe where 46 clubs can be found across 14 different countries.
In the U.S., the groups are now taking leadership cues from Rundo’s home club, SoCal Active Club. Other prominent cells include the Tennessee Active Club, the Great Lakes Active Club, the Southern Sons Active Club, and the Evergreen Active Club. A typical Active Club ranges from five to 25 members. But they have a broader reach through social media. The Telegram channels of the most popular clubs have hundreds — and as many as thousands — of subscribers.
Most clubs adopt a similar white-power logo, a cross inside a circle. “This is a use — or abuse — of the Celtic cross, and then they put their local spin on it,” Ritzmann says. Despite supposed prohibitions on Nazi symbolism, some clubs have drifted into more overt anti-semitism and racism. The Southern Sons Active Club logo, for example, features SS lightning bolts and a sonnenrad instead of a Celtic cross.
