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Small local organizations called active clubs have spread in the United States and internationally, using fitness as a coverage for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new form and more difficult to detect the organization of white supremacists who merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.
Active clubs present themselves as harmless training groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. Clubs generally use encrypted messaging applications such as telegram, thread and matrix to coordinate internally.
For wider propaganda and awareness, they rely on alternative social media platforms such as Gab, Odysee, VK and sometimes Bitchute. They also selectively use consumer sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and Tiktok, until these sites prohibit clubs.
The members of the active club were involved in the orchestration and distribution of videos and neonazi recruitment demonstrations. At the end of 2023, for example, two men from Ontario, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and accused of distribution of documents for the division of the Neonazi Atomwaffen group and the transnational terrorist terrorist group.
After their arrests, the Public Network of Active Club Canada has become dark, the telegram pages have been deleted or renamed, and the club has become practically silent. NIPPAK obtained a deposit in strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in detention.
As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I saw the movement pass from formal organizations to small decentralized cells – a change embodied most clearly by active clubs.
White nationalism 3.0
According to private analysts who follow extremist activities from the far right, the Active Club Network has a basic membership of 400 to 1,200 white men worldwide, as well as sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men at the end of their adolescence and twenty.
Since 2020, active clubs have quickly developed in the United States, Canada and Europe, notably the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Finland. The specific figures are difficult to verify, but the clubs seem to spread, according to the Extremism Project Counter, the anti-diploma league, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research.
The clubs would operate in at least 25 American states, and potentially up to 34 years. The active American chapters would have increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025.
The increase in clubs reflects a broader change in the white supremacist strategy, far from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neonazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “nationalism 3.0 white” – a decentralized, brand and fitness approach to the extremist organization.
Rundo previously founded the rise above the movement, which was a violent and far-right extremist group in the United States known for the promotion of white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating by social media. The organization led attacks during events and gatherings from 2016 to 2018.
Active clubs integrate their ideology into apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting. This model allows them to blend with traditional fitness communities. However, their deeper objective is to prepare members for a racial conflict.
‘You have to learn to fight’
Active club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength – a “warlike identity” designed to attract young men.
“The active club is not so much a structural organization that it is a lifestyle for those who are ready to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and promote them to others,” said Rundo via his telegram channel.
“They never said to each other,” You have to learn to fight so that you can beat people of color. ” It was like, “you have to learn to fight because people want to kill you in the future”, “said a former member of the active club in Vice News in 2023.
These cells are deliberately small – often under a dozen members – and autonomous, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club works semi-autonomous while remaining connected to the wider ideology and to the digital network.
Expand the links on a global and in -depth scale
The active clubs maintain strategic and ideological links with groups of formal white supremacists, notably Patriot Front, a nationalist and white neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Rally unit in Charlottesville, in Virginia.
Active clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the theory of “great replacement”, which affirms that white populations are deliberately replaced by non -white immigrants. While presenting themselves publicly as fitness groups, they can collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events.
Figures linked to accelerating groups – organizations that seek to create social chaos and a societal collapse which, according to them, will lead to a racial war and the destruction of liberal democracy – played a role in the foundation of the Active Club Network. In addition to the elevation above the movement, they include the Atomwaffen division and another neonazi group, the basis-organizations that redesign violent fascism to call on young unhappy white men in the United States
Fraternity as a cover
By minimizing the symbols of explicit hatred and emphasizing strength and preparation, active clubs call on a new generation of recruits which do not initially identify with manifest racism but which are attracted by a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.
Anyone can start a local chapter from the active club with minimum supervision. This autonomy makes it difficult for law enforcement organizations to monitor groups and helps the network develop quickly.
Shared brand image and digital propaganda maintain ideological coherence. Thanks to this approach, active clubs have built a transnational network of echo rooms, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary style training in parks and gymnasiums.
Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Combat sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.
Members distribute leaflets, stickers and online content to broadcast white supremacist messages. Active clubs have integrated into local communities by organizing events, promoting physical form, organizing public actions and sharing propaganda.
Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted applications such as Telegram or on social networks. Clubs recruit in person in gymnasiums, events and local events, checking new members to ensure that they share the group’s beliefs and can be reliable to maintain secret.
From fringe to the functional network
Based on the current information of the global project against hatred and extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the network of active clubs in 27 countries – an increase of 25% compared to the end of 2023. The consortium for the counting of crowds documented 27 protest events involving active clubs in 2022-2023.
However, specific membership numbers remain difficult to determine. Some groups are called “young clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities.
The members of the active club consider themselves defenders of Western civilization and male virtue. From their point of view, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hatred. Members are encouraged to remain secret, to prepare for the collapse of society and to build a network of men committed and adapted to act by infiltration, activism or violence.
Sight
The law enforcement organizations, researchers and civil society are now faced with a new type of domestic threat that is carrying out training clothes instead of uniforms.
Active clubs work through international borders, linked by shared ideas and tactics and a common goal. It is new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What seems to be a harmless training group can be a bridge of violent extremism, a pushup at a time.
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