As Mastermind of Far-Right ‘Active Clubs’ Goes to Jail, His Violent Movement Goes Global

American neo-Nazi Robert RundoThe six-year “battle with the feds” — a fight that includes two dismissals, three appeals, and extradition and deportation from at least two countries — concludes today with his sentencing to federal prison for attacking ideological opponents at political rallies in California. in 2017.

Along with several members of the Rise Above Movementa club-cum-street fighting gang Rundo co-founded with fellow extremist Ben Daley in Southern California during the height of the alt-right movement, Rundo was convicted in 2018 on charges of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Riot Act federal for training and planning series of attacks on political opponents at demonstrations in California and Unite the Right in Virginia the year before. While Rundo may be behind bars for years, the movement he created is raging around the globe.

In the interceding years from his initial arrestindicted, imprisoned, and on the run from the United States after his case was initially dismissed in 2019, Rundo helped design an international network of RAM clones known as “Active Clubs.” A transnational alliance of far-right fight clubs that overlap closely with skinhead gangs and neo-fascist political movements in North America, Europe, the Antipodes and South America. The network of the active Club is proliferating internationally. There are dozens of active Clubs in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Australia and Colombia, according to the presence of groups in Telegram and researchers of extremism.

Seemingly harmless from the outside, Active Clubs are small groups of young people who go hiking, train in combat sports, lift weights, and build camaraderie—all part of the Rise Above Movement’s original program. But the darkness is in the details: the groups’ membership often overlaps with other extremist organizations such as the Patriot Front, criminal skinhead groups such as the Hammerskins, and others. violent extremists in foreign nations. Some US-based Active Clubs are branching out into politics intimidation and violencelike the Rise Above Movement before them.

“I definitely believe that in the future there needs to be a mass movement, a mass organization, but when it comes down to it, you really want a bunch of guys who come strictly from the online world to join a mass movement without having? Any experience or skills?” Rundo said in a video posted online shortly before his March 2023 arrest in Bucharest, Romania. “Active clubs are a great local way to start guys coming from the online world into the real world, to learn actual skills.”

Hannah Gais, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has long investigated Rundo and his associates, says the Active Club model stands out for its low barrier to entry, the emphasis on positive community building to get new blood from outside extremist circles. , and a ready international network. “The model really facilitated the ease of transnational connections,” says Gais. “If you’re not an organization, you can network with whoever you want.”