Active Clubs – What Risks Do they Pose?
This is a republication of a post I originally wrote on July 27, 2023 over on my dedicated blog site that I am rolling into wonksecurity.com.
Key Takeaways
Active Clubs constitute a growing threat to marginalized groups in over two dozen states in the U.S. These clubs subscribe to white supremacist ideology and espouse a desire to protect the white race from the threat of a perceived global white genocide. Active Clubs are decentralized, range in membership from a handful of participants to hundreds, and cater to individuals seeking camaraderie and training to prepare for violent action to counter the alleged replacement of the white race. While the movement’s decentralized nature limits its ability to conduct highly coordinated violence, Active Clubs likely possess the ability to perpetrate small-scale violence against targeted individuals and organizations, which could be difficult for law enforcement to detect and disrupt.
What Are Active Clubs?
Originally the idea of Robert Paul Rundo, the leader of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), the Active Club movement is a loose network of mixed martial arts (MMA)-based fight clubs that believe they are working to protect the white population from an alleged global white genocide. The Active Club concept came to prominence in late 2020 after Rundo and several other RAM members were arrested, prompting Rundo to flee to Serbia. While in Serbia, Rundo proposed the “white nationalism 3.0” framework, which argued that creating decentralized Active Clubs would make it harder for researchers and law enforcement to track white supremacist activity and planning.
In March 2023, Romanian authorities arrested Rundo, who is awaiting extradition to the U.S. As intended by the “white nationalism 3.0” framework, however, the Active Club concept has metastasized into its own movement and continues to grow, even in Rundo’s absence. In fact, Active Clubs are reportedly active in over two dozen states across the U.S. The movement also has chapters abroad in Australia, Canada, France, and other countries.
Connections and Activities
To date, Active Clubs across the country have built connections with other white supremacist groups, such as Patriot Front and White Lives Matter. This has enabled cross-group collaboration to create networking events, fight nights, and social gatherings of like-minded individuals. It has also allowed these associated groups to raise awareness about the existence of Active Clubs, allowing small clubs to grow due to the notoriety of more organized groups.
The primary activities conducted by Active Clubs focus on a variety of training programs. Activities most often focus on physical fitness and mixed martial arts training but also include training in media production and other disciplines helpful to operating an extremist network, like propaganda production.
The propaganda system created by the clubs is robust and includes podcasts, social media posts, Telegram and Gab groups, posters and stickers, graffiti, burning “enemy” materials, and hiding controversial books in public libraries. The movement’s forebear, RAM, marketed itself to would be recruits and supporters alike through its media arm, Will2Rise, which sold an entire selection of merchandise, including t-shirts, buttons, and other clothing accessories. Will2Rise also accepted a variety of cryptocurrencies as payment, a growing trend among the white supremacist movement.
Recruitment and Membership
Activities and propaganda created by Active Clubs typically focus on attracting physically fit white males with an interest in maintaining their ancestral heritage. Fight nights and networking events are sometimes used to recruit, as are Telegram channels. Some propaganda focuses on recruitment efforts as well, appealing to recruits’ desire for camaraderie and, for those feeling powerless to affect their surroundings, a sense of power and control. Candidates that are highly sought after often bring skills that can be beneficial to each club, including the ability to train other members in the above capabilities.
Overall, the Active Club movement is highly active across the United States, though each club varies in size. Clubs are believed to be active in California, where RAM was first founded, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. The smallest clubs host only a handful of members though large clubs can have hundreds of members.
Nature of the Risk
To date, no violent actions are directly attributed to an Active Club. However, like many organizations and loose networks within the hyper-masculine white power milieu, the potential risks posed by Active Clubs come in the form of disorganized street violence that can be either random or targeted at particular individuals from marginalized groups. Violence caused by similar groups most often includes street fights, brawls, assaults, and murders.
Yet the strong identification with the “Great Replacement” theory is cause for additional concern. The so-called “Great Replacement” is the belief that the white race is at risk of being replaced by non-white immigrants, resulting in the eventual extinction of the white race as a whole. This theory served as the basis for Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant’s ideology and inspired numerous other mass shooters. Given that Active Club members are openly training to bring violence upon their perceived enemies, it is likely that one or more individuals from this loose network could mobilize to violence based on the “Great Replacement” theory. Thus, individuals, businesses, and racial justice or religious organizations affiliated with non-white immigrants, Muslims, Jews, and people of color could be targets of potential mass shootings in addition to vandalism, arson, and the above instances of white power-based violence.
Overall, given the decentralized nature of the Active Club movement combined with the chilling effect that January 6 prosecutions and convictions have had on the overall white supremacist milieu, it is unlikely that Active Clubs could constitute an organized threat capable of perpetrating violence at scale. Yet its distributed nature will likely allow the movement to perpetrate low-level violence in a distributed way across much of the United States. This violence will likely also be harder to detect since it could be perpetrated by individuals or tightly knit groups that are resistant to law enforcement infiltration. Law enforcement and businesses should closely monitor for Active Club activity for potential targeting clues.
Sources
https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/active-club-network