By Art Jipson
Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.
Active Clubs frame themselves as innocuous workout groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. The clubs commonly use encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate internally.
For broader propaganda and outreach they rely on alternative social media platforms such as Gab, Odysee, VK and sometimes BitChute. They also selectively use mainstream sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, until those sites ban the clubs.
Active Club members have been implicated in orchestrating and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. In late 2023, for instance, two Ontario men, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and charged with distributing materials for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and the transnational terrorist group Terrorgram.
Following their arrests, Active Club Canada’s public network went dark, Telegram pages were deleted or rebranded, and the club went virtually silent. Nippak was granted bail under strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.
As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I have watched the movement shift from formal organizations to small, decentralized cells – a change embodied most clearly by Active Clubs.
White nationalism 3.0
According to private analysts who track far-right extremist activities, the Active Club network has a core membership of 400 to 1,200 white men globally, plus sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men in their late teens and twenties.
Since 2020, Active Clubs have expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada and Europe, including the U.K., France, Sweden and Finland. Precise numbers are hard to verify, but the clubs appear to be spreading, according to The Counter Extremism Project, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research.
The clubs reportedly operate in at least 25 U.S. states, and potentially as many as 34. Active U.S. chapters reportedly increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025.
The clubs’ rise reflects a broader shift in white supremacist strategy, away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0” – a decentralized, branded and fitness-based approach to extremist organizing.
Rundo previously founded the Rise Above Movement, which was a violent, far-right extremist group in the U.S. known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social media. The organization carried out attacks at protests and rallies from 2016 through 2018.
Active Clubs embed their ideology within apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting. This model allows them to blend in with mainstream fitness communities. However, their deeper purpose is to prepare members for racial conflict.
‘You need to learn how to fight’
Active Club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength – a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men.
“The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo explained via his Telegram channel.
“They never were like, ‘You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color.’ It was like, ‘You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,’” a former Active Club member told Vice News in 2023.
These cells are deliberately small – often under a dozen members – and self-contained, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club operates semi-autonomously while remaining connected to the broader ideology and digital network.
Expanding globally and deepening ties
Active Clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacist groups, including Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Active Clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants. While publicly presenting as fitness groups, they may collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events.
Figures connected to accelerationist groups – organizations that seek to create social chaos and societal collapse that they believe will lead to a race war and the destruction of liberal democracy – played a role in founding the Active Club network. Along with the Rise Above Movement, they include Atomwaffen Division and another neo-Nazi group, The Base – organizations that repackage violent fascism to appeal to disaffected young white men in the U.S.
Brotherhood as a cover
By downplaying explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparedness, Active Clubs appeal to a new generation of recruits who may not initially identify with overt racism but are drawn to a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.
Anyone can start a local Active Club chapter with minimal oversight. This autonomy makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to monitor the groups and helps the network grow rapidly.
Shared branding and digital propaganda maintain ideological consistency. Through this approach, Active Clubs have built a transnational network of echo chambers, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary-style training in parks and gyms.
Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Fight sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.
Members distribute flyers, stickers and online content to spread white supremacist messages. Active Clubs embed themselves in local communities by hosting events, promoting physical fitness, staging public actions and sharing propaganda.
Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted apps such as Telegram or on social media. The clubs recruit in person at gyms, protests and local events, vetting new members to ensure they share the group’s beliefs and can be trusted to maintain secrecy.
From fringe to functioning network
Based on current information from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the Active Club Network across 27 countries – a 25% increase from late 2023. The Crowd Counting Consortium documented 27 protest events involving Active Clubs in 2022-2023.
However, precise membership numbers remain difficult to ascertain. Some groups call themselves “youth clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities.
Active Club members view themselves as defenders of Western civilization and masculine virtue. From their perspective, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hate. Members are encouraged to stay secretive, prepare for societal collapse and build a network of committed, fit men ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.
Hiding in plain sight
Law enforcement agencies, researchers and civil society now face a new kind of domestic threat that wears workout clothes instead of uniforms.
Active Clubs work across international borders, bound by shared ideas and tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What appears to be a harmless workout group may be a gateway to violent extremism, one pushup at a time.
Art Jipson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Dayton.
Pogo says
@Professor Jipson
Right (pun intended) on target; it’s even the same playbook, e g.:
The Reich Stuff
https://www.google.com/search?q=nazi+pilot+training+interwar+era
Bo Peep says
There’s no problem in displaying one’s national pride. These peaceful clubs are organized opposition to the violent left that protests by suppressing opinion, lawful, vandalism, looting, and arson, in addition to attacking federal officers in the performance of their duties The leftiet are the fascists of today.
You Reap What You Sow says
Black people have never, owned white people as slaves in the USA and have never had power to inflict Jim Crow type laws on there fellow humans nor do they want to. It’s funny how white supremist have historically done the worst of horrors to rightfully be called “White Supremacist’s” to claim and keep the title. Now suddenly they’re the victims and everyone else is the threat. A good conscience makes a soft pillow.
Skibum says
Bo Peep…
OMG, you have really gone ALL IN for the white nationalist movement, haven’t you?! The next steps, if you have not already done so on your “to do” list, should be:
* Make enough room in your bedroom closet for those special white robes with cutouts for your eyes and mouth
* Browse white extremist pseudo-Christian websites for sales on confederate flags to adorn the walls in your house
* If space allows after that decorating is done, many extremist websites also have swords, brass knuckles and other mob mentality accoutrements just like those “patriots” brought to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6… you know, that “just another normal visitor day” according to maga republicans who would rather forget the significance of the word “insurrection”
* Don’t forget to go foraging for enough sticks and branches to twine together into homemade torches for your midnight “rallies” and secret meetings like your mentioned in your comments above, where participants can “display one’s national pride” and singular purpose in “suppressing opinion” etc. from those who have dark colored skin or who you otherwise strongly disagree with
And, if all else fails to cement that warm racist feeling of being welcomed here in our local community, you could always uproot and find some dilapidated trailer park in the hills of West Virginia where people walk around barefooted, without a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of, while touting all of the wonderful things their orange faced, pedo protecting, convicted criminal president has done to improve their lives.
Laurel says
What the hell is wrong with young men today? Neo Nazi hate groups recruiting them. Woman hating incels recruiting them. Where are their parents, who should be teaching them confidence? Why do so many people feel so inferior that they have a need to be superior?
Do you know what is majorly attractive about my husband? His confidence! He doesn’t fear rejection. He is always making new friends, and it doesn’t matter if they have a different color, or gender, he loves talking to people. Kind of a good trait, don’t you think?
If you are one of these young men who are subject to a lack of confidence, do yourself a favor, and steer clear of these sad boys. Instead, work on your own personality, and don’t be dragged down by these users.
If you are a parent, teach your child confidence, how to get over disappointments, and the fact that people are people, and it’s much easier to make friends than to put himself through the agony of ongoing hatred. That makes for a miserable life!
Dennis C Rathsam says
You worry about social clubs? Wake up America, before you lose your country! Have you seen what’s happening in Europe! Muslims are popping up like mushrooms, chanting death to Europe & America. Stopping traffic to pray….burn our flag…What!!!!! The Somalis, Obama dropped in Minn have shown their worth, millions of Covid money is missing , & into the pockets of rep Omar who is now worth over 30 million! X VP candidate GovWaltz was in on it too! Somali,s come to countrys to live for free, they don’t work, & most have a 5th grade education! Look what theve done in these other countrys as far as government aid. Norway 73%! Sweeden 64%! Denmark 69% USA 79%!!!!! In 50 yrs if TRUMP fails to deport the millions of Biden invaders, Americans will be a minority in their own country… The death of America!
Skibum says
I have some breaking news that might just be of historical importance (and historical accuracy) to you, Dennis. As of this year, the percentage of actual Americans here in this country is now only 2.09 percent.
Of course, I am referring to Native Americans… you know, those individuals who lived here before all of the boats brought the hoards of invaders from Europe. And the population of real Americans have steadily declined ever since. You referred to “The Death of America!” by the encroaching immigrants without even a single mention of this country’s native population that was decimated and displaced by white people like your ancestors and mine, as if that fact either escaped you are is historically insignificant.
But now, NOW, you are suddenly aware of, horrified it sounds like, regarding our country’s long history of citizens who’s ancestors, just like your and mine unless you are Native American, who came to this land and called it “home”.
How is it that you are so bereft of educational and historical honesty when you comment about immigrants?
Laurel says
Okay Dennis, so exactly what channel are you watching?