A Warning for America: White Nationalists 'Taking Notes' on Belfast Race Riots
White nationalists "are watching the situation closely, taking notes, and citing those events to further their own propaganda efforts.”
White nationalist groups—including one recently platformed in a light-handed 60 Minutes report—are openly celebrating the violent attacks on immigrants in Belfast and suggesting their followers can learn from the rioters’ tactics.
Will2Rise—the influential white nationalist group associated with the Active Club network and headed by self-proclaimed fascist Robert Rundo—published an article Wednesday on operational security (“for educational purposes only”) that described how members of the Belfast mob have avoided arrest.
And extremism experts with whom I have exchanged messages over the last 24 hours confirmed my own horrified reaction to the chatter in the dark corners of the internet: What we’re seeing in Belfast should be a wake-up call for America.
“The Will2Rise OPSEC article is not a protest safety guide. It is a tactical, lessons-learned document for violent, extremist street mobilisation,” said Alexander Ritzmann, senior advisor with the Counter Extremism Project.
Ritzmann has described the Active Club movement, which uses combat sports to recruit disaffected young White men, as a “neo-Nazi militia hiding in plain sight.” (You can watch my recent interview with Ritzmann below.)
In an email, Ritzmann told me:
“In the Active Club context, the article reads as advice on how to conduct political street violence while making identification, arrest, and prosecution more difficult.
“The broader Active Club strategy depends on preserving a public fiction of fitness and heritage while building a pool of men prepared for violent confrontation. The OPSEC article fits that strategy almost perfectly.”
Ritzmann just published his own post about the Will2Rise opsec article.
Violence erupted this week after a “harrowing'‘ knife attack on a White Irishman by a Sudanese immigrant, and X owner Elon Musk has face intense criticism over accusations that he has used his platform to whip up tensions.
Jeff Tischauser, senior researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center, told me he was not surprised that far-right groups here in the U.S. and across Europe are rallying around the White mobs because “members of the Active Club network see themselves as building an international movement of white nationalists.”
“White nationalists in Active Clubs want to harm non-White groups, so they lie about crime rates to paint non-White groups as more violent, which keeps their supporters angry, hateful, and easier to mobilize,” Tischauser said.
“Active Clubs want to see White people everywhere rioting over immigration, and Active Clubs want to add fuel to the fire to make this happen in the U.S. and elsewhere.”
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, agreed with that assessment.
“This should be a wake-up call of the dangers of social media that isn’t moderated and a moment for public figures to rethink stoking violence against innocent people,” Beirich told me in an email exchange.
She added:
“What is happening in Northern Ireland shows how white supremacists, racists and even public figures like Elon Musk are willing to take advantage of tragic situations to stoke rage and violence. Taking advantage of a horrific murder to rain down violence on immigrants and neighborhoods is what these groups are willing to do in their racist attempts to drive immigrants from Ireland and other countries. Organizations like the Active Clubs have been mobilizing and training for just such an opportunity.”
Plausible deniability?
Jared Holt, a senior researcher at Open Measures, which traces harmful activity online, said his organization has “seen thousands of posts from far-right extremists and likeminded communities that have celebrated the riots, amplified calls for additional mobilizations, and encouraged escalations in tactics.”
Holt said those groups “are watching the situation closely, taking notes, and citing those events to further their own propaganda efforts.”
“Hardcore white supremacist movements often long fantasized about an inevitable racial ‘uprising’ or mass-conflict where White people will have to reassert dominance over their countries, going back decades,” he added.
“They are eager to see the situation in Belfast devolve further, hoping it will help bring about a racist awakening in Western society where they emerge as leaders.”
The Will2Rise article—to which I will not link in this post—denies that the Active Club network has played any role in the violence nor that the information is intended as anything more than “an academic curiosity.”
Will2Rise is headed by Robert Rundo, who was featured in a recent 60 Minutes profile which I criticized for playing into the hands of the violent convicted felon’s new “Fun in Fascism” propaganda effort.
“There were many fascinating truths revealed by the latest protests in Northern Ireland: it takes only 1,000 men in black bloc to outnumber 1312,” Will2Rise wrote, referring to the mob confronting law enforcement. (The number ”1312” corresponds to the letters on a phone keypad “ACAB”—”All Cops Are Bastards.”)
Another lesson that Rundo’s team gleaned from the violence: “Politicians are powerless when patriots organise on the streets, only able to complain and make meaningless statements of condemnation that make them look weak.”
Still, while apparently attempting to establish plausible deniability, the Telegram accounts associated with Robert Rundo and the Active Club network appear to be cheering on the violent mob’s attacks on immigrants.
“White boy summer is starting off hot this year,” said the caption for a photo of White rioters running from a burning police vehicle. It was posted on a channel that Robert Rundo frequently uses for official pronouncements. (See above.)
Another image showed a black-clad mob marching down the streets of Belfast with the far-right rallying cry: “By God, we’ll have our home again.”
Yet, another post declared, “Tomorrow belong (sic) to us.”
‘Tribe up, get ready’
A related Sweden-based, neo-Nazi fight club known as Gym XIV—a reference to the neo-Nazi “fourteen words” slogan—shared posts that were even more provocative, including calls for more violence.
Robert Rundo, in a video I found online, has described the founder of Gym XIV as “one of the guys that helped really bring about the whole Active Club movement.”
“Give it a little time, it will become apparent to many more that there can be no middle ground,” said a post shared by Gym XIV. “The lukewarm and meek shall not inherit the earth. Instead they shall fade into oblivion and infamy.”
It concluded, “In the end, it’s either a total Aryan victory or planet of the apes.”
In another case, Gym XIV urged its followers watching events in Ireland: “Tribe up. Go to the gym. Support those that support you. Get ready.”
A final thought…
From the SPLC’s Jeff Tischauser:
“Members of Active Clubs have a few key reasons to paying attention to what is going on in Belfast. First, white nationalists spend a lot of their time trying to make White people afraid of non-White groups. White nationalists do this by claiming non-White groups are more prone to act violently, which is what I’ve seen from Active Club channels on Telegram responding to the race riots in Belfast. White nationalists in Active Clubs connect individual acts of violence against White people that occur anywhere in the world to a perceived anti-White system. It’s all lies and bigotry. In reality, white-on-white violence is a bigger threat to White people. For example, I know of several Active Club members who are currently in jail for domestic violence in which they beat their partners, all of whom were White women. Leaders of Active Clubs don’t want anybody to know this because it will destroy their narrative about who commits violence.”
This is deeply disturbing. For years we've mostly laughed at the self-styled white supremacists who are, if their videos are evidence, pretty incompetent. This is evidence some of them are not. Thank you for showing the threat, the global links, and the sources of propaganda and training we need to pay attention to.
These Neo Nazi, right wing extremes militias are truly frightening! The fact that they’ve started really pushing the youth groups is deeply disturbing to me. So many of these young people are isolated from human contact other than internet connections that I believe actual youth groups where they can ‘make friends’ face to face (at a time in life where they are truly impressionable) is an alarming part of these militia’s plans to inculcate them into the neo nazi, white Christian nationalist movement.