American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo’s six-year “battle with the feds”—a battle that spans two dismissals, three appellate reversals, and an extradition and deportation from a minimum of two international locations—concludes at the moment together with his sentencing to federal jail for attacking ideological opponents at political rallies throughout California in 2017.
Together with a number of members of the Rise Above Movement, a battle club-cum-street gang Rundo cofounded with fellow extremist Ben Daley in Southern California through the peak of the alt-right motion, Rundo was convicted on 2018 costs of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act for coaching and planning a sequence of assaults on political opponents at rallies throughout California and Unite the Proper in Virginia the yr prior. Whereas Rundo could also be locked behind bars for years, the motion he created is working wild across the globe.
Within the interceding years since his initial arrest, indictment, imprisonment, and flight from the US after his case was initially dismissed in 2019, Rundo helped mastermind a world community of RAM clones often called “Lively Golf equipment.” A transnational alliance of far-right battle golf equipment that carefully overlap with skinhead gangs and neofascist political actions in North America, Europe, the Antipodes, and South America, the Active Club network is proliferating internationally. There are dozens of Active Clubs in america, United Kingdom, Eire, France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Australia, and Colombia, in accordance with the teams’ presence on Telegram and extremism researchers.
Seemingly innocent from the skin, Lively Golf equipment are small teams of younger males who go on hikes, practice in fight sports activities, weight-lift, and construct camaraderie—all a part of the Rise Above Motion’s unique program. However the darkness is within the particulars: The teams’ membership typically overlaps with different extremist organizations like Patriot Entrance, felony skinhead teams just like the Hammerskins, and different violent extremists in overseas nations. Some US-based Lively Golf equipment are branching out into political intimidation and violence, just like the Rise Above Motion earlier than them.
“I undoubtedly do consider that sooner or later there must be a mass motion, a mass group, however when it comes for that, do you actually need a bunch of men coming strictly from the net world to return be a part of a mass motion with out having any expertise or abilities?” Rundo stated in a video posted on-line shortly earlier than his March 2023 arrest in Bucharest, Romania. “Lively golf equipment are a fantastic native approach to begin guys off as they arrive from the net world into the true world, to study precise abilities.”
Hannah Gais, a senior analysis analyst on the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart who has lengthy researched Rundo and his associates, says the Lively Membership mannequin stands out for its low barrier to entry, emphasis on optimistic neighborhood constructing to attract new blood from outdoors of extremist circles, and a ready-made worldwide community. “The mannequin has actually made it simpler to facilitate these transnational connections,” Gais says. “If you happen to’re not a company, then you possibly can community with whoever you need.”