As the mastermind behind the far-right “Active Clubs” goes to prison, his violent movement goes global

American Neo-Nazi Robert RundoHis six-year “battle with the feds” — a battle that spanned two firings, three reversals of appeals and extradition and deportation from at least two countries — ended today with his sentencing to federal prison for assaulting ideological opponents at political rallies in California in 2017 Mr.

Along with several members of Rise above the trafficfight club and street gang that Rundo founded with fellow extremist Ben Daly in Southern California during the height of the alt-right movement, Rundo was convicted on charges in 2018 of conspiring to violate federal riot law for training and planning a series of attacks on political opponents at rallies in California and Unite the Right in Virginia a year earlier. While Rundo may be locked behind bars for years, the movement he created has taken off around the world.

In the years following his initial arrestindictment, imprisonment and flight from the US after his case was initially dismissed in 2019, Rundo helped create an international network of RAM clones known as the “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, Active club network is distributed internationally. there is dozens of active clubs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Australia and Colombia, according to Telegram group presence and extremism researchers.

Seemingly innocuous on the outside, active clubs are small groups of young men who hike, practice martial arts, lift weights, and build friendships—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 Patriotic Front, criminal skinhead groups such as the Hammerskins and others violent extremists in foreign nations. Some US-based active clubs are branching out into political ones intimidation and violencelike the Rise Above movement before them.

“I definitely believe that in the future there should be a grassroots movement, a grassroots organization, but when it comes down to it, do you really want a bunch of guys coming strictly from the online world to join a grassroots 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 as they come from the online world into the real world to learn actual skills.”

Hannah Geiss, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who has long studied Rundo and his associates, says the Active Club model stands out for its low barrier to entry, emphasis on positive community building to attract new blood outside extremist circles , and a ready international network. “The model has really made it easier to facilitate these transnational connections,” Geiss says. “If you’re not an organization, then you can communicate with whoever you want.”