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A network of white supremacist fitness clubs is spreading across the US, recruiting men to prepare for what they believe will be a race war.
The groups, known as "active clubs," target disaffected white men by offering a sense of community, with members regularly meeting to practice martial arts or work out.
But the groups have a much darker agenda that's rooted in white supremacist ideology.
Their Telegram channels reveal their extreme views — they are filled with neo-Nazi iconography, racist and antisemitic memes, and negative news articles about people of color and LGBTQ+ people.
"They are quickly becoming one of the most prominent vectors for white terrorist radicalization in the United States in recent years," Jon Lewis, a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Business Insider.
"They're training for what they view to be this kind of inevitable race war, this inevitable violent clash for the future of civilization," he added.
One former member of an active club told Vice News last year that the group would slowly introduce extremist ideology to new members by making racist jokes and talking about stories in the news in which ethnic minorities attacked white people.
"They believe that there's an inevitable cultural war that'll come and because they tie culture directly to race, a culture war means race war," they said.
"They never were like, 'You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color. It was like, 'You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,'" they added.
Although many far-right groups once aligned themselves with former President Donald Trump, most have since grown disillusioned and criticize him for not doing enough to advance their extremist agenda.
https://www.businessinsider.com/white-supremacist-fight-clubs-race-war-2024-3
The groups, known as "active clubs," target disaffected white men by offering a sense of community, with members regularly meeting to practice martial arts or work out.
But the groups have a much darker agenda that's rooted in white supremacist ideology.
Their Telegram channels reveal their extreme views — they are filled with neo-Nazi iconography, racist and antisemitic memes, and negative news articles about people of color and LGBTQ+ people.
"They are quickly becoming one of the most prominent vectors for white terrorist radicalization in the United States in recent years," Jon Lewis, a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Business Insider.
"They're training for what they view to be this kind of inevitable race war, this inevitable violent clash for the future of civilization," he added.
One former member of an active club told Vice News last year that the group would slowly introduce extremist ideology to new members by making racist jokes and talking about stories in the news in which ethnic minorities attacked white people.
"They believe that there's an inevitable cultural war that'll come and because they tie culture directly to race, a culture war means race war," they said.
"They never were like, 'You need to learn how to fight so you can beat up people of color. It was like, 'You need to learn how to fight because people want to kill you in the future,'" they added.
Although many far-right groups once aligned themselves with former President Donald Trump, most have since grown disillusioned and criticize him for not doing enough to advance their extremist agenda.
https://www.businessinsider.com/white-supremacist-fight-clubs-race-war-2024-3
