A Michigan-based neofascist group whose members are committed to becoming “white warriors” is increasing its presence in metro Detroit by holding mixed-martial arts training, burning anti-fascist flags, and spreading hateful propaganda in the form of banners, stickers, and graffiti.
The Great Lakes Active Club is part of a growing network of white men spreading hateful propaganda worldwide and recruiting new members by promoting physical fitness, self-improvement, and “white unity.”
Active clubs are a strand of the white nationalist movement that is aimed at creating “a stand-by militia of trained and capable” right-wing extremists “who can be activated when the need for coordinated violent action on a larger scale arises,” according to a 52-page report from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP).
With more than 100 active clubs worldwide and 46 in the U.S., the decentralized active clubs are “the largest and fastest growing transnational right-wing extremist combat sports network,” the report states.
The Great Lakes Active Club launched a Telegram account in April and has steadily grown each month, with 623 current subscribers. The hate group is noticeably active and has been meeting in Warren and other southeast Michigan locations to train in hand-to-hand combat.
On its Telegram account, the group describes itself as a “fraternal organization for young, like minded white men in the lower and upper peninsula of Michigan that is dedicated to physical fitness, self-improvement and brotherhood.”
Its members are also affixing dozens of white supremacy stickers on light poles and other public property in the southeast Michigan communities of Detroit, Milford, Mount Clemens, Eastpointe, Brighton, and Commerce Township. Some of the stickers promote active clubs, and others read, “White Lives Matter,” “White Youth in Revolt,” “White Boys Trouble Makers Club,” and “Will 2 Rise, In Brotherhood We Trust.”
On May 11, the group posted a photo of sheets of pictures containing their logo and wrote on Telegram, “Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.”
Some of the stickers were displayed in Hart Plaza and light poles along the Detroit riverfront. In front of the Spirit of Detroit statue, four of the members posed for a photo, with each holding a fist over their hearts.
“We shall return to the glory days of what once was the motor city,” the group boasted on Telegram on May 15.
In each photo, the group blurs the faces of its members.
On Sept. 1, the group posted a video of its members working out before burning a “Three Arrows” flag that became popular in the 1930s to protest Nazis.
In Grand Rapids, the group spray-painted “One Nation Against Invasion,” a common phrase used by white supremacists to describe immigration.
On Oct. 10, the group posted photos showing its members placing a banner above a freeway in Commerce Township that read, “America First.”
The Telegram page is also riddled with racist and anti-immigration propaganda.
The group is coordinating with other white supremacists. In May, the Great Lakes Active Club held a “joint training session” with Patriot Front, a racist hate group that advocates the formation of a white ethnostate. The Patriot Front has also increased its presence in metro Detroit, posting racist propaganda on light poles in metro Detroit.
In August, the group traveled to Burns, Tenn., to attend the annual American Renaissance conference, where white supremacists gathered to promote “pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
During the trip, the local group met up with active clubs in Ohio and Kentucky, according to its Telegram page.
Their hate isn’t just racial. The local active club encouraged the theft of rainbow flags during Pride Month in June. On June 3, the group called Pride Month “happy capture the flag month.”
“Reminder that homosexuality, Marxism, pedophilia and every other form of degeneracy is not welcome in the Great Lake state,” the Telegram post reads.
The group also falsely suggested that “fags did not EARN their flag but rather stole the rainbow to give their sinister intentions a ‘friendly’ look in the face of children.’”
In fact, the rainbow was intended to show the spectrum of sexuality and gender.
The group shared a news article on Telegram about Pride flags being stolen in California and wrote, “Get active.”
In other states, members of active clubs have donned tactical gear and masks and bullied drag queen shows and LGBTQ+ events. In late May, an active club protested drag queen events in two Montana cities. In June, members of the Evergreen Active Club in Washington harassed people at the Lewis County Pride Festival in Centralia, Wash. A week later, active club members intimidated revelers at the Wind River Pride event in Lander, Wyo., and the next weekend, they targeted Oregon City Pride.
Active clubs were inspired by Robert Rundo, a self-professed fascist and white supremacist who was on the run from the law until he was arrested in Romania in the spring. In August, he was extradited to the U.S. on charges of planning and engaging in riots at political rallies across California.
Rundo created the “Rise Above Movement,” or RAM, a white supremacist gang that called itself the “premier MMA (mixed martial arts) club of the Alt-Right.” He and his compatriots were responsible for violent street brawls, and he was charged in 2019 with federal conspiracy to riot for violent confrontations in California. He and his fighters donned “goggles, mouth guards, athletic tape around their wrists, and black face masks with white skeleton designs,” according to the federal indictment.
While in Eastern Europe, Rundo sought to create what he called “White Supremacy 3.0,” which became the impetus for the active clubs. The idea was to create a more presentable aesthetic that combined activism and fitness with belonging and white-power solidarity.
The objective is twofold.
“Firstly, to avoid, delay, mitigate, or withstand law enforcement interventions, the network is supposed to present a friendly face to the public,” CEP wrote in its report. “Consequently, network members are asked to avoid engaging in threatening behavior or displaying obvious Nazi symbols. Secondly, this less aggressive and more mainstream strategy is supposed to help grow the AC network, in particular by widening the social strata of society the network is able to reach.”
Active clubs have no top-down hierarchy and operate as an “open network” of local groups that share bigoted beliefs.
“Active Clubs are supposed to connect and cooperate but stay operationally independent,” CEP states in its report.
The idea behind a decentralized structure is that “infiltrations and arrests of leadership figures, or even the shutdown of an Active Club, should have little if any effect on the Active Club network itself.”
Alexander Ritzmann, author of the CEP report, tells Metro Times that the Great Lakes Active Club “fits the profile of a stereotypical Active Club as it was designed by Robert Rundo.”
To fool law enforcement, the strategy of the ACs is to hide in plain sight by pretending to be about sports, but to actually build a shadow militia,” Ritzmann says. “To what degree this applies to the Great Lakes Active Club can only be revealed through an in depth investigation into their actual activities, not just on what they self-report via Telegram.”
Ritzmann says the active clubs have the potential to become violent.
“Some active clubs have shown that they do actual militia training with semiautomatic rifles as well as tactical casualty care drills,” Ritzmann says. “You don’t need that for boxing matches.”
Multiple militia members have been convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Prosecutors said the white men were anti-government extremists who were hoping to trigger a civil war. The would-be kidnappers were infiltrated by undercover FBI agents and arrested in October 2020.
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