Active Clubs are small, local fitness groups that serve as covert white supremacist organizing cells across the U.S. and internationally. They merge extremist ideology with fitness and combat-sports culture to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. The groups present innocuous workout personas on digital platforms and use encrypted messaging apps like Telegram, Wire and Matrix for internal coordination, while relying on Gab, Odysee, VK, BitChute and sometimes mainstream social media for outreach until banned. Members have been linked to producing and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos, and arrests have prompted networks to go dark, delete pages or rebrand. Private analysts estimate a core global membership of 400–1,200 white men, targeting late-teen and twenties demographics.
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
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.
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