Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Adding to Recruitment Arsenal, White Nationalists Organizing Mixed Martial Arts Events & Fight Clubs
September 15
By Bill Berkowitz
Come for the face punching; stay for the race war! While video games, heavy metal music, and music festivals featuring extremist bands, continue to be important recruiting tools for white nationalist organizations, several groups are adding new tools to their recruitment kits; mixed martial arts (MMA) and fight clubs. Why these activities? They are very popular with young white men, they mix fashion, culture and politics, and while they may be punching each other in the face, these events are meant to be training grounds for real life street confrontations.
The Rise Above Movement and Patriot Front (nee Vanguard America), both of which had a strong presence at the Charlottesville, Virginia 2017 Unite the Rally, are major players in these relatively nascent developments. And their influence has spread throughout Europe where a RAM-organized Tour aimed at uniting white nationalist organizations. The Rise Above Movement (RAM) refers to itself as the “the premier MMA club of the Alt-Right representing the United States.”
Writing for The Guardian, Karim Zidan reported, The Southern California-based RAM “boasts over 50 members and fashions itself as a fight club. Its members train in various combat sports such as MMA and boxing, which they later apply during street fights and protests. The group has been spotted in Santa Monica, where RAM members tried to disrupt a Committee for Racial Justice meeting, and in San Bernardino, where they took part in an ‘anti-Sharia law’ protest with signs such as ‘RAPEFUGEES stay away NOT WELCOME.’ They engaged in physical violence during protests in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and Charlottesville.”
In his 2018 Mother Jones piece titled “The Terrifying Rise of Alt-Right Fight Clubs” (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/02/the-terrifying-rise-of-alt-right-fight-clubs/) investigative reporter Bryan Schatz wrote: “Mixed martial arts has a long and sordid relationship with white supremacists. But neo-Nazi-affiliated MMA outfits, like White Rex, a Russian clothing company and former fight promotion that helped launch [the career of Anastasia] Yankova,” a Russian model-turned-mixed martial artist who has appeared in a Nike commercial. They “have typically been confined to eastern Europe and Russia, where they have, well, something of a stranglehold over the far-right fringes of the sport.
“But now, inspired in part by emerging international talents like Yankova, groups in America, including Rise Above Movement in southern California, have helped popularize a particularly violent version of combat-ready racism, offering an example of how to advance white nationalism with perfectly executed strikes and takedowns, which have already been used with vicious effect in street battles in California and beyond.”
“RAM [founded by Robert Rundo] saw all these well organized groups in Europe and beyond that were outspoken,” Bryan Schatz told The Guardian. ‘They had gyms. They had events that drew a lot of people. I think [RAM] found a lot of inspiration in how successful these groups were able to be so they wanted to import that model to the United States.’”
According to the Daily Dot’s Tina-Desiree Berg, RAM founder Rundo “fled the country after being charged for assault at a rally in California in 2017 and remains at large, but was last reportedly seen in Bosnia.”
More recently, Zidan reported (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/sep/11/far-right-fight-clubs-mma-white-nationalists) that “Over the years, fighters with links to the far-right have been involved in some of the world’s most recognizable promotions, including the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Strikeforce. UFC fighter Donald Cerrone and former fighter Joe Brammer were sponsored by Hoelzer Reich, a far-right brand known for propagating extremist symbols. The brand was banned by the UFC in 2009. Four years later, welterweight Benjamin Brinsa was accused by German media of maintaining ties to extremist groups in his native country, while his gym was accused of sheltering neo-Nazi fighters. He was later released by the UFC before making his official debut but did not struggle to find professional fights in Russia.”
The Daily Dot reported (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/patriot-front-rise-against-white-nationalist-mma-event/) that “a post about the event on Telegram from one of the hosts declared that ‘Not only are we awakening the warrior spirit, but we are demonstrating that we can organize on our own, outside of the mainstream structure. We are creating a counterculture of resistance’ and that ‘for the first time, a roster of fighters from across the spectrum stepped inside a ring to do battle for brotherhood and our shared goals.’”
Media2Rise, RAM’s media outreach organization, is currently preparing a video documenting the southern California event. According to the blog Hyphen Report, the “event [wa]s the culmination of years of work to create a real-world movement for young White men who feel a greater calling than a lifetime of Twitter ban-evasion. The match, put together by SoCal Active Club with critical support from Will2Rise and Patriot Front, is a physical testament to the often intangible and fleeting work put in by small groups of men all over the West.”
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