From Canada to Finland, a US neo-Nazi fight club is rapidly spreading across the globe | Far right (US)

MOre that a dozen men wearing black masks and sunglasses – obstructing all open source investigators to easily identify them – appeared in a telegram video in front of the town hall in London, Canada, in June.

“Mass depuls now,” shouted men in unison, brandishing banners with the same slogan. “No blood for Israel.”

Although this type of scene with singing masked men is relatively common in the United States, this incident in Canada illustrated the belly of a booming world movement: the neo-Nazi “active clubs”, born in the United States, neofascist combat clubs are quickly spread through borders.

London, a larger Canadian city in what is a rust belt in the province of Ontario, has had a long history with the Ku Klux Klan family dating from the 1920s and a racist murder of a Pakistani-Canadian family in 2021. But the arrival of an active club, which has also been shown in other neighboring paths as a new development (the country.

“Welcome to Hamilton, our city,” wrote a telegram from the same Canadian active club with its symbol published on a sticker next to a sign for one of the largest cities in Ontario. “Folk-Family-Future!”

All over the world, Canada is not the only country to be presented to these clubs, which are groups of fitness and mixed martial arts operating from gymnasiums and local parks that marry neonazi and fascist ideologies. Proliferating in the United States already in a certain number of states, active clubs openly take their historical indications of the Obsession of the Third Reich for machismo and their modern inspiration of European football hooliganism.

Recent research published by the Global Project Against Hate and extremism (GPAHE) has shown that since 2023, these clubs have been newly germinated in Sweden, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland and for the first time in Latin America with two chapters in Chile and Colombia.

According to GPAHE research, there are now chapters in 27 countries, with new youth wings – similar to Hitler’s youth clubs – increases in the United States and abroad, “metastasing” in Western countries and recruiting young men in toxic and far -right ideologies encouraging racial war.

“The Active Club model was designed by Rob Rundo,” said Heidi Beirich, founder of GPAHE, referring to a neonazi and New York infamous who pleaded guilty in 2024 for a conspiracy with a view to riot during the 2017 political rallies in California.

At that time, Rundo was also the leader of the climb above the movement, a neonazi gang which had four of its members for their role in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, in Virginia, but then pivoted to spread the idea of active clubs among the disciples like the new nervous centers for a fascist indoctrination and a recruitment.

“As far as we can say, Rundo is not directly involved in the movement chapters systematically, but the chapters are inspired by him and the ideology he represents,” said Beirich.

Beirich explained that although Rundo is not likely to take a helping hand in these groups, he throws himself with his original vision of active clubs being “autonomous and local”. But many of these chapters of clubs active in countries with large populations of whites – some have openly gravity to racist, nativism in recent years – promoted as a global struggle and are linked in a network of accounts on the Telegram application.

A set of accounts, in particular, which have become the type of manufacturers of tastes among online neonazis, have promoted several chapters of local active clubs around the world and applauded those they think to create the effective models to imitate.

The same accounts admire the work of Thomas Sewell, a well -known and violent Australian neonazi, which has promoted groups of club style active in his country:

“Their organization should be what each group dissident through European civilization seeks to imitate,” said an admiring article on Sewell and its crew.

Beirich said Sewell, who previously admitted that he had personally tried to recruit the mass shooter of Christchurch to one of his former groups, is aligned with Rundo’s policy.

“Sewell, just like Rundo, is a violent neonazi recruiting new members to prepare for violence against political enemies and communities he targets, such as immigrants, Jews and the LGBTQ +community,” she said, adding that he “organized MMA training and tournaments” to attract new followers.

The Ultimate Combat Championship and Combat Sports that fall under its competence have become a place on the far right. Likewise, Sewell and Rundo favored learning these sports as a way to become street soldiers, similar to modern shirts, for their movement.

Other organizations, which are more obviously political and engage in public activism demonstrations, have seen this model of violence formed as a means of recruiting and solidifying their ranks. Patriot Front, a group of American proto-fascist hatred known for public marches and the propaganda of natural disasters, has linked externally to the movement of the active club.

His leader, Thomas Rousseau, recently published an image of a group with himself and others doing a “grappling and striking” training in a gymnasium of martial arts in northern Texas.

Beirich described how the members of the Patriot Front “often work in close collaboration with the chapters of active clubs”, including participation in their mixed martial training. On Telegram, the chapters of active clubs regularly share the patriot propaganda.

“Join the Patriot front if you are in America”, an adjacent account of the active club published on Telegram, with nearly three thousand views.