Small local organizations, known as active clubs, extended for the United States and an international level, using fitness as an excuse for a much more alarming mission. These groups represent a new and difficult way to detect white supremacist organization, which combines extremist ideology with the culture of fitness and combat sports.
Active clubs are presented as harmless training groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks, but their real objective is to recruit, radicalize and prepare its members for racist violence. They usually use encrypted messaging applications such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate their activities.
For propaganda dissemination, they resort to alternative social networks such as GAB, Odysee, VK and, sometimes, Bitchute. They also selectively use popular platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X and Tiktok, until they prohibit their activities.
Members of the active clubs were involved in the creation and distribution of neo -Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. At the end of 2023, for example, two men from Ontario, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and accused of distributing materials for the neo -Nazi Atomwaffen Division group and the Terrorgram transnational terrorist organization.
After its arrests, the public network of Active Club Canada was deactivated, Telegram pages were eliminated or renowned and the club was practically silent. Nippak was granted freedom on bail with strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.
As a sociologist who studies extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I observe how the movement passes from formal organizations to small and decentralized cells, a change that active clubs clearly exemplify.
White nationalism 3.0
According to private analysts who monitor the extreme right, the Active Club network has between 400 and 1,200 active members worldwide, in addition to supporters, online followers and passive members. Clubs focus mainly on young white men between 19 and 20 years.
Since 2020, active clubs expanded rapidly in the United States, Canada and Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Finland. Although it is difficult to verify exact figures, the growth is evident indicates the project against extremism, the anti -infamamation league, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research.
Currently, clubs operate in at least 25 US states, and potentially by up to 34. Active chapters in the US increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025.
The rise of active clubs reflects a strategic change in white supremacy, which moves away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, the American neo -Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0”, a decentralized, brand approach and based on physical aptitude for extremist organization.
Rando previously founded the Rise Abeve movement, a violent group of the extreme right in the United States known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social networks. The organization carried out attacks in protests and demonstrations between 2016 and 2018.
Active clubs integrate their ideology in seemingly apolitical activities, such as martial arts and weightlifting, which allows them to mix with traditional fitness communities. However, its deepest purpose is to prepare its members for racial conflict.
The messages of the active club glorify discipline, masculinity and strength: a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men.
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“The active club is not so much a structural organization as a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals and promote them to others,” said Rando through his Telegram channel.
“They never told me: ‘You have to learn to fight to hit people in color.
These cells are deliberately small – often with less than a dozen members – and autonomous, which gives them greater safety and operational flexibility. Each group operates in a semi -autonomous way, being connected to the ideology and the broader digital network.
Global expansion and brotherhood roots
Active clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacy groups, including Patriot Front, a white and neo -fascist nationalist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite The Right manifestation in Charlottesville, Virginia.
These clubs share extremist beliefs with other organizations, including racial hierarchies and the theory of “great replacement”, which states that white populations are deliberately replaced by non -white immigrants. Although they are presented as Fitness groups, they can collaborate with other supremacist organizations in recruitment, training, propaganda or public events.
Figures linked to accelerationist groups – organizations that seek to cause social chaos and the collapse of liberal democracy to generate racial war – contributed to the foundation of the Active Club network. Among them, in addition to the Rise Abeve movement, the Atomwaffen and The Base Division, neo -Nazis groups that reinvent violent fascism to attract young people discontent in the US, stand out.
By minimizing explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparation, active clubs attract a new generation that may not initially identify with manifest racism, but is attracted to hypermasculinity and personal overcoming.
Anyone can create a local active club section with minimal supervision, which hinders monitoring by order forces and facilitates the rapid growth of the network.
The shared brand and digital propaganda maintain ideological coherence. Thanks to this approach, active clubs have built a transnational network of resonance chambers, recruitment channels and paramilitary style training in parks and gyms.
Members participate in combat sports, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Combat sessions are usually recorded and shared online as a recruitment tool.
They distribute brochures, stickers and digital content to disseminate messages from white supremacy, integrating into local communities through events, promotion of physical activity and public actions.
The potential members first find propaganda in encrypted applications such as Telegram or social networks, and are recruited in gyms, protests and local events, where it is verified that they share the beliefs of the group and maintain discretion.
From the periphery to the functional network; hidden but located
According to the global project against hatred and extremism, the active club network has 187 active chapters in 27 countries, an increase of 25% since the late 2023. The Crowd Consortium documented 27 protests in which between 2022 and 2023 participated.
Although it is difficult to determine the exact number of members, some groups call themselves “youth clubs”, but share ideas, aesthetics and similar activities.
Members are considered defenders of Western civilization and male virtue, receiving their activities as a noble resistance and not as hate. They are encouraged to maintain the secret, prepare for a possible social collapse and build a network of committed men and in form, ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.
Order forces, researchers and civil society now face a domestic threat that wears sportswear instead of uniforms.
Active clubs operate internationally, united by ideas, tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as personal improvement. What seems like a harmless training group can be a gateway to violent extremism, a flexion at the same time.
*Art Jipson He is an associate professor of Sociology, University of Dayton.
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This article was originally published in The Conversation
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