White supremacist groups are escalating efforts to recruit new members over the Telegram app, where they’ve amplified racist conspiracies while posing as men-only fight clubs.

Communications from so-called Active Clubs surged on Telegram over the past month, as the US election neared, according to civil rights groups and researchers who have studied extremism for years. Some clubs with large followings have shared one another’s messages in a sign of coordination among cells that have previously portrayed themselves as independent.

US lawmakers, congressional staff and the departments of state and homeland security have received more than 20 briefings in recent weeks from counterterrorism experts who track Active Clubs, according to a person involved in the discussions who requested anonymity to describe closed-door meetings. Some of the briefings prior to the US election focused on potential political violence by far-right Active Clubs in the event that vice President Kamala Harris won the election.

The loosely organised network of Active Clubs in the US and Canada consist of men who say in online forums they’re working to stop the elimination of the white race, a popular topic of online conspiracies. The groups, which often have thousands of followers in Telegram communities, have summoned members to practice mixed martial arts and post fliers in public places.

“Moderation is an ever-evolving challenge for every platform,” Telegram spokesman Devon Spurgeon said in a statement. “Telegram supports the peaceful expression of ideas. However, calls to violence are explicitly forbidden by its terms of service and are always removed by moderators.”

Attention on the Active Clubs coincides with an uptick of extremist activity in the US since the election of Donald Trump. The phrase “your body, my choice”, a rebuke against female reproductive rights, has soared by 4 600% since election day, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a human rights non-profit.

A small group of avowed neo-Nazis marched through Columbus, Ohio in the US on 16 November wearing red masks and carrying swastika flags, an event that drew widespread condemnation from state officials. Demonstrators in Michigan earlier in the month had waved Nazi flags outside a theatre production of The Diary of Anne Frank. There’s no indication Active Club members played a role in either incident.

“They’re using this mainstream moment to insert themselves into this dialogue,” said Morgan Moon, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “They’re getting more subscribers, and these groups are becoming increasingly emboldened to take on real-world activity.”

The posts from Active Clubs are putting renewed focus on Telegram, a text-based messaging app that says it has 950 million monthly active users. In August, the site served as a staging ground for extremists blamed for fomenting anti-immigration riots in the UK, while accused domestic terrorists have used it to plan shootings at US power stations.

Eighty-eight percent of the Telegram posts from Great Lakes Active Club, with roughly 1 700 members, were originally shared in other Active Clubs’ channels, according to Open Measures, which tracks online extremism. Fifty-eight percent of the posts from a Toronto Active Club were cross-posted from elsewhere, Open Measures found.

Another Active Club claimed credit for a 16 November demonstration outside the University of Michigan’s football stadium, where they used a megaphone and “White Lives Matter” signs to broadcast their messaging.

Rather than support specific political candidates, Active Clubs advocate violence to disrupt democratic systems, according to academics who specialise in domestic terrorism. Podcasts, YouTube videos and branded clothing also help Active Clubs promote themselves, and since Trump’s victory, Telegram communities have urged participants to work harder to recruit more followers, researchers said.

Conspiracy theories

There were 46 Active Clubs in the US in August 2023, the most recent numbers available, according to the Counter Extremism Project. In April 2023, the Accelerationism Research Consortium, which tracks hate groups, had found 30 Active Clubs in 17 states.

Posts in dozens of Active Club channels advocate conspiracy theories and repost videos from Patriot Front, a white nationalist group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Members travelled to Windsor, Ontario where we connected with the Windsor branch of our community. We were joined by members of Great Lakes Active Club and the Michigan chapter of Patriot Front,” said one post widely shared on Telegram. “We went on a hike, got some decent sparring in, then went for food and drinks. There was much laughter and many plans for the future were discussed.”

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The Patriot Front formed after the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Idaho police in 2022 arrested 31 Patriot Front members, many wearing masks and disguising their identities, outside a Pride parade on charges of conspiracy to riot.

While Active Clubs claim to simply be martial arts-focused groups for white men, researchers say the groups are disguising themselves as sports clubs to evade law enforcement attention. The Active Club network was founded by Robert Rundo, who pleaded guilty in September to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act, according to the US justice department.

Active Clubs function as a milder public face of a white power movement where more radical members flow into more militant groups, said Oliver Goodman, project manager at Moonshot, a research firm that tracks violent misogyny.

As new recruits join, they enter a white supremacist ecosystem that inundates members with violent material, said Kathleen Belew, a Northwestern University associate professor who studies white supremacist violence. Pictures in highly visited Telegram channels show participants holding flags with hate symbols.

The spread of the same posts in multiple Active Club Telegram communities signals that the groups are not functioning as independent units, researchers said. A more centralised community could lead to larger fight club events, bigger street demonstrations and more aggressive propaganda campaigns, according to experts who track domestic hate groups.

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“This is a new strategy to organize extreme right violence while avoiding law enforcement interference,” said Alexander Ritzmann, a senior advisor with the Counter Extremism Project. “They’re trying to build a shadow militia network that can be activated to protect and fight for a political party or leader they think deserves their protection.” — Jeff Stone, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP

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