'An international movement' Intelligence agencies eye neo-Nazi fight clubs

Neo-fascist fight clubs, a global locus of neo-nazism, have caught the eye of western intelligence agencies that consider them a burgeoning national security threat, according to experts and government documents reviewed by the Guardian.

- By Ben Makuch

“Active clubs”, pseudo mixed martial arts gangs preaching a strain of far-right activism inspired by the teachings of Adolf Hitler, are well known to be moving across borders. But the revelation that official security services are keeping watch over them, the same kind of agencies known to surveil proscribed terrorist organisations such as Islamic State, shows how active clubs are an evolving and quickly growing threat.

“Intelligence agencies want to be aware of extremist networks that exist in their countries,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, about active clubs, “their potential for current or future violence, and what links they may have to other movements and individuals, both domestically and internationally.”

Already, evidence of international coordination is coming to light.

In August, a Canadian active club, Nationalist-13, released a video of a national meetup inside Canada on the Telegram app.

Typical of the low production propaganda common to the clubs, members are seen pumping weights and sparring, featuring blurred faces and a synth beat. Then seven emblems of participating chapters appear: two are American active club chapters, from Illinois and Wisconsin, with a third being Patriot Front - an ultra-nationalist American hate group.

“Canada needs all [white] men of good character,” the post read.

The open, cross-border pollination of an American extremist movement - born from the ashes of a criminal neo-Nazi gang central to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville - has not gone unnoticed.