FIGHT CLUBS POUND OUT FEARSOME NEW PRESENCE

Groups draw alienated young men with lure of community - & experts say they're spreading

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DANGEROUS neo-Nazi fight clubs — like the underground slug fests featured in the 1999 Brad Pitt movie Fight Club — are serving as breeding grounds for violent fascists and are spreading like wildfire throughout the U.S. and Western Europe.

Fighters in these so-called active clubs, or ACs, are said to meet in members' garages, gyms and parks to bash each other in the name of self-discipline, masculinity and strength in pursuit of what organizers call a “warrior identity.”

But those lofty ideals are nothing more than a marketing gimmick intended to mask themes of racism and xenophobia while appealing to disaffected, young white men desperate for a sense of community, according to experts and former AC members.

“They are trying to cloak the same neo-Nazi ideas that their [neo-Nazi skinhead] forbears had with their jackboots and swastika T-shirts ... 10, 20, 30 years ago,” says Michael Colborne, a researcher who has studied the “active group” phenomenon.