encryption
blank 719 once relegated by me to to fringe?
apple would not give up key to FBI?
---
AN 9 25
Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.
:{Active Clubs frame themselves as innocuous workout groups on digital platforms and decentralized networks to recruit, radicalize and prepare members for racist violence. :{The clubs commonly use encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, Wire and Matrix to coordinate internally}:. For broader propaganda and outreach they rely on alternative :{social media platforms such as Gab,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: Odysee, VK and sometimes BitChute. They also selectively use mainstream sites such as Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, until those sites ban the clubs.}:
Active Club members have been implicated in orchestrating and distributing neo-Nazi recruitment videos and manifestos. In late 2023, for instance, two Ontario men, Kristoffer Nippak and Matthew Althorpe, were arrested and charged with distributing materials for the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division and the transnational terrorist group Terrorgram. Following their arrests, Active Club Canada’s public network went dark, Telegram pages were deleted or rebranded, and the club went virtually silent. Nippak was granted bail under strict conditions, while Althorpe remains in custody.As a sociologist studying extremism and white supremacy since 1993, I have watched the movement shift from formal organizations to small, decentralized cells – a change embodied most clearly by Active Clubs.
An investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tracks down two Ontario-based Active Clubs that recruit and train young men to fight.
White nationalism 3.0
According to private analysts who track far-right extremist activities, the Active Club network has a core membership of 400 to 1,200 white men globally, plus sympathizers, online supporters and passive members. The clubs mainly target young white men in their late teens and twenties. Since 2020, Active Clubs have expanded rapidly across the United States, Canada and Europe, including the U.K., France, Sweden and Finland. Precise numbers are hard to verify, but the clubs appear to be spreading, according to The Counter Extremism Project
, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and my own research. The clubs reportedly operate in at least 25 U.S. states, and potentially as many as 34
. Active U.S. chapters reportedly increased from 49 in 2023 to 78 in 2025. The clubs’ rise reflects a broader shift in white supremacist strategy, away from formal organizations and social movements. In 2020, American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo introduced the concept of “White Nationalism 3.0
” – a decentralized, branded and fitness-based approach to extremist organizing. Rundo previously founded the Rise Above Movement, which was a violent, far-right extremist group in the U.S. known for promoting white nationalist ideology, organizing street fights and coordinating through social media. The organization carried out attacks at protests and rallies from 2016 through 2018. Active Clubs embed their ideology within apolitical activities such as martial arts and weightlifting
:{. This model allows them to blend in with mainstream fitness communities. However, their deeper purpose is to prepare members for racial conflict.
An actor reconstructs how British broadcaster ITV News infiltrated and secretly filmed inside Active Club England, documenting its recruiting process, activities and goals.}:
‘You need to learn how to fight’
Active Club messaging glorifies discipline, masculinity and strength – a “warrior identity” designed to attract young men. “The active club is not so much a structural organization as it is a lifestyle for those willing to work, risk and sweat to embody our ideals for themselves and to promote them to others,” Rundo explained via his Telegram channel. “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,’” a former Active Club member told Vice News in 2023.These cells are deliberately small – often under a dozen members – and self-contained, which gives them greater operational security and flexibility. Each club operates semi-autonomously while remaining connected to the broader ideology and digital network.
Expanding globally and deepening ties
:{:{Active Clubs maintain strategic and ideological connections with formal white supremacist groups, including Patriot Front, a white nationalist and neofascist group founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Active Clubs share extremist beliefs with these organizations, including racial hierarchy and the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims white populations are being deliberately replaced by nonwhite immigrants.}:
While publicly presenting as fitness groups, they may collaborate with white supremacist groups on recruitment, training, propaganda or public events. Figures connected to accelerationist groups – organizations that seek to create social chaos and societal collapse that they believe will lead to a race war and the destruction of liberal democracy – played a role in founding the Active Club network. Along with the Rise Above Movement, they include Atomwaffen Division and another neo-Nazi group, The Base – organizations that repackage violent fascism to appeal to disaffected young white men in the U.S.}:
Brotherhood as a cover
By downplaying explicit hate symbols and emphasizing strength and preparedness, Active Clubs appeal to a new generation of recruits who may not initially identify with overt racism but are drawn to a culture of hypermasculinity and self-improvement.Anyone can start a local Active Club chapter with minimal oversight. This autonomy makes it hard for law enforcement agencies to monitor the groups and helps the network grow rapidly. Shared branding and digital propaganda maintain ideological consistency.
Through this approach, Active Clubs have built a transnational network of echo chambers, recruitment pipelines and paramilitary-style training in parks and gyms.Club members engage in activities such as combat sports training, propaganda dissemination and ideological conditioning. Fight sessions are often recorded and shared online as recruitment tools.Members distribute flyers, stickers and online content to spread white supremacist messages. Active Clubs embed themselves in local communities by hosting events, promoting physical fitness, staging public actions and sharing propaganda. Potential members first see propaganda on encrypted apps such as Telegram or on social media. The clubs recruit in person at gyms, protests and local events, vetting new members to ensure they share the group’s beliefs and can be trusted to maintain secrecy.
From fringe to functioning network
Based on current information from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, there are 187 active chapters within the Active Club Network across 27 countries – a 25% increase from late 2023. The Crowd Counting Consortium documented 27 protest events involving Active Clubs in 2022-2023. However, precise membership numbers remain difficult to ascertain. Some groups call themselves “youth clubs” but share similar ideas and aesthetics and engage in similar activities. Active Club members view themselves as defenders of Western civilization and masculine virtue. From their perspective, their activities represent noble resistance rather than hate. Members are encouraged to stay secretive, prepare for societal collapse and build a network of committed, fit men ready to act through infiltration, activism or violence.
Hiding in plain sight
Law enforcement agencies, researchers and civil society now face a new kind of domestic threat that wears workout clothes instead of uniforms.Active Clubs work across international borders, bound by shared ideas and tactics and a common purpose. This is the new white nationalism: decentralized, modernized, more agile and disguised as self-improvement. What appears to be a harmless workout group may be a gateway to violent extremism, one pushup at a time.
Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/capitol-riot-2655791525/
burner phones to WH
no lnx
Jan. 6 rally organizers used anonymous 'burner phones' to communicate with top Trump officials: report
Alex Henderson November 24, 2021
Using a burner phone is much different from using a high-end Apple iPhone or an Android-based smartphone: they're cheap, disposable, designed for temporary use rather than long-term use, and do not require an account. Burner phones also offer anonymity. And according to Rolling Stone's Hunter Walker, they were allegedly used by some Republican activists who helped organize former President Donald Trump's "Save America" rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6.
Walker, in an article published by Rolling Stone on November 23, explains, "Some of the organizers who planned the rally that took place on the White House Ellipse on January 6 allegedly used difficult-to-trace burner phones for their most 'high level' communications with former President Trump's team. Kylie Kremer, a top official in the 'March for Trump' group that helped plan the Ellipse rally, directed an aide to pick up three burner phones days before January 6, according to three sources who were involved in the event. One of the sources, a member of the 'March for Trump' team, says Kremer insisted the phones be purchased using cash and described this as being 'of the utmost importance.'"
:{
}:
Walker writes that according to those three Rolling Stone sources, Kremer "took one of the phones and used it to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials" such as the Trump Organization's Eric Trump (a younger brother of Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr.), former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and long-time Donald Trump ally Katrina Pierson. One of the Trump supporters given a burner phone was Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer's mother and another rally organizer.
Walker reports, "According to the three sources, some of the most crucial planning conversations between top rally organizers and Trump's inner circle took place on those burner phones…. Burner phones — cheap, prepaid cells designed for temporary usage — do not require users to have an account. This makes them hard to trace and ideal for those who are seeking anonymity — particularly if they are purchased with cash. The use of burner phones could make it more difficult for congressional investigators to find evidence of coordination between Trump's team and rally planners."
January 6, 2021 was an incredibly dark day in U.S. history. That day, a violent mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of stopping Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. The Capitol riot was preceded by the large "Save America" or "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C. that Kylie and Amy Kremer helped organize. During the March For Trump bus tour, the Kremers promoted the Big Lie: the false, totally debunked claim that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election but was victimized by widespread voter fraud.
"There was no evidence the Kremers and the other rally organizers encouraged or planned violence in the group text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone," Walker explains. "However, critics have argued Trump and the leaders who encouraged thousands of his supporters to come to Washington as the vote was certified deserve some blame for the violence because of their pre-January 6 rhetoric and the fiery content of the former president's speech at the Ellipse rally."
Walker continues, "The three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack, say Kylie asked the aide to buy the three 'burner phones' as the group passed through Palm Springs, California about a week before the Ellipse event. Based on the group's website, which has since been deleted, the tour began on December 27, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada before moving on to California."
aha with encryption reversion to old direct mail; complete, no filter/moderation/correction
an ME 221
QAnon believes are known for circulating misinformation campaigns but now it appears they have been duped by fraudsters on social media.
According to The Daily Beast, impersonators of former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump managed to dupe QAnon believes who flocked to the private social media platform Telegram after more than 70,000 QAnon believers were exiled from mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Due to Telegram's end-to-end encryption capability, users have a better chance of having conversations without them being screenshotted or made public which would likely serve as an advantage of right-wing extremists. In a matter of days, QAnon believers were joined by prominent right-wing conservatives and they thought they'd finally found a platform they could use to get their message across.
The publication reports:
Many of the Telegram newcomers found that some of MAGAworld's biggest stars had joined them. Donald Trump himself was on the app, amassing more than 200,000 followers within a few days. So was Melania Trump, posting herself to Telegram as "Lady Melania Trump." Air Force General John Hyten joined the app and began issuing cryptic, QAnon-style pronouncements that thrilled believers eager to see President Joe Biden arrested and Trump returned to power.
However, things did not work out in QAnon believers' favor. All of the accounts claiming to be top members of Trumpworld were fake.
In addition to the fake Trump family accounts, the publication reports that the top, fake account belonged to a hoaxer impersonating former Air Force general Lt. Gen Tom McInerney, who has emerged as a conspiracy theorist who frequently appears on Alex Jones's InfoWars show. McInerney, a highly influential right-wing voice, also contributed to the birther conspiracy Trump pushed about former President Barack Obama.
Although McInerney confirmed back in January that the fake account was not his, that has not stopped it from garnering more than 158,000 followers on the strength of the real former general's reputation. While the publication notes that the account holder does not appear to have ulterior motives, there are still concerns about the rise of fake accounts on social media platforms. Now, some QAnon believers are also wondering about the reason behind the fake accounts.
"Someone somewhere is trying to mind f**k us," QAnon believer Jordan Sather said in a Telegram post.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/ammon-bundy-is-building-a-far-right-theocratic-army-under-the-guise-of-defending-rights/
There's been a buffoonish quality to Ammon Bundy's brand of far-right "constitutionalist" politics over the past six months, primarily organized in a typically paranoid response to COVID-19-related public-health measures: Protesting at the home of a police officer who had arrested an anti-vaccination fanatic for violating the closure of a playground. Trying to bully his way inside a health-board meeting. Getting arrested twice in two days for ignoring his ban from the Idaho Statehouse. Going maskless at a Caldwell High School football game that forced the game to be called off, for which he was not only ejected but banned from future games by the local school district.
The endless antics, however, have always obfuscated a darker, much more dangerous agenda. A disturbing new in-depth report by Devin Burghart at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights reveals that all the time that Bundy has been gathering media time and headlines, he's been building a massive army of volunteers—a network called People's Rights—intent on imposing a far-right authoritarian state, all under the guise of defending individual rights.
Bundy first announced the formation of the People's Rights network in March, when he held a gathering not far from his home in Emmett, Idaho, discussing plans to organize people to form ad-hoc gatherings to "defend" local citizens against COVID-19-related "tyranny." Bundy told the audience that they didn't need to obey the governor's stray-at-home or business-closure orders. And he pledged to bring fellow "Patriots" to the rescue if anyone felt pressure from "authorities" to comply.
"I will be there," Bundy told the *Idaho Press*. "I will bring as many people as we can. We will form a legal defense for you, a political defense for you, and we will also, if necessary, provide a physical defense for you, so that you can continue in your rights."
As it has played out on the ground, these gatherings have become bellicose, and frequently armed, mobs protesting police officers at their homes, breaking into health-board meetings that were being held online, and breaking down the doors inside the Statehouse and attending committee meetings unmasked in order to intimidate state legislators.
The incident resulting in the cancellation of the football game between Caldwell and Emmett high schools is emblematic of these anti-democratic intimidation tactics at work.
Bundy, whose son plays for Emmett High, showed up in Caldwell for the game without a mask—though one was required for entry—and refused to put one on, first taking a seat in the stands, then moving to a fenced area away from the stands. As he livestreamed the exchange, Bundy refused to leave when game officials asked him to.
Moreover, members of his network watching on Facebook sprang into action and began phoning 911 dispatchers in Caldwell—not merely to complain, but to threaten and intimidate. The flood of threats was so overwhelming and worrisome that at halftime, officials announced the game was being cancelled.
"The threats made to dispatch appear to have stemmed from the dispute between Mr. Bundy and the Caldwell School District personnel that requested he wear a mask while attending the game," a Caldwell police spokesman told the Idaho Statesman. "The calls did specifically reference the football game."
Ten days later, the district voted unanimously to ban Bundy from Caldwell school grounds for the next year.
The IREHR report explores how this is all being organized. The People's Rights network, it explains, has seen rapid growth fueled by "a fusion of Bundy's core of the far-right paramilitary supporters built up over years of armed standoffs with a mass base of new activists radicalized in protest over COVID-19 health directives."
Bundy devised a secure online system built on SMS text messaging to enable the network to organize without public scrutiny or exposure. IREHR managed to obtain access to the network, however, and reports that "Bundy has assembled a team of 153 'assistants' in sixteen states." It goes on to identify all of those people, and found that their backgrounds include significant activism in radical right causes—and that, somewhat unusually, the majority of those local assistants are women (though the national and state leadership remain dominated by men).
This network is not engaged in the usual far-right battle against "government tyranny," which is the usual rhetoric that surrounds "Patriot" groups. Bundy's network instead is pro-government—but one that has no compunction about erasing the rights of people its participants have deemed morally depraved:
Instead of a more traditional "anti-government" narrative, People's Rights leaders have expressed a desire for governmental power to be used to protect the "righteous" against "wicked" liberals, antifa, Black Lives Matter activists, and others. Several People's Rights leaders are running for elected office—to become the government. Absent that sort of intervention, leaders have proposed a type ofarmed enclave-style "neighborhood" nationalism, where "righteous" neighbors stand against the "wicked." People's Rights leaders have often defined the "wicked" using far-right conspiracism, racism, antisemitism, anti-indigenous, and anti-transgender sentiment.
Moreover, in addition to building an "Uber-like" paramilitary response system that can be mobilized whenever people believe their rights are under attack from godless liberals, IREHR's report explains that discussion within the surreptitious network go well beyond such imagined "self-defense" measures.
Some of the People's Rights network participants are running for elective office, hoping to promote the group's theocratic-state agenda from within the halls of power. Mario Perea, a People's Rights assistant from Idaho, told would-be participants in a rally for a political candidate: "We claim, and we use, and we defend our rights. In order to defend our rights, we have to get people into these government positions. That is a form of defense because we're being attacked politically. So we need to fight back and resist politically."
The politics include a sensibility attuned to modern "Patriot" movement rhetoric, particularly the rising "Boogaloo" talk about broad social breakdowns and violence surrounding the coming election. Mostly, there is a fairly typical eagerness for the battle to begin.
"Are you ready for Civil War November 4?" asked People's Rights leader Tony Pellegrino in a Facebook post.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/09/30/the-app-that-the-proud-boys-used-to-celebrate-donald-trumps-debate-performance
bs
who emerged the winner from the presidential debate between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden?
To many, it was hard to tell. It seemed like cacophonous chaos, the night producing less of a clear victory for either man than an overall loss for a country that had to sit through 90 minutes of barbs, cross talk and ill will. But the crowd on Parler, a new social media app that courts conservative America, including the far-right Proud Boys, seemed to reach a more definitive conclusion: This was a total victory for Trump.
“People were on Parler tonight because they can freely express their views without fear of being throttled, banned, deplatformed,” says John Matze, the app’s founder. He sees Parler as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, the mainstream platforms that Matze and others believe try to silence conservatives. “Overall, I think their Parler experience contributed to a fair and free election.”
Parler, founded in 2018, has become a beacon for Republicans during the past few months, and in June, Trump publicly flirted with the idea of leaving Facebook and Twitter to concentrate efforts on Parler. He didn’t, though he, his son Eric and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani all made official accounts and became active on the app. So did plenty of Trump supporters. At one point this summer, Parler was getting 500,000 downloads a week, and its user base neared 2 million, many times the amount on the app before Trump highlighted Parler, a place that the Proud Boys have made a home for themselves since Twitter and Facebook suspended the group in 2018.
[Recommended For You
- ### ‘Stand Back And Stand By’: Trump Doesn’t Condemn White Supremacists, But Gives Shoutout To Right-Wing Proud Boys
- ### Trump Threatens To Issue Executive Order Preventing Biden From Being Elected President
- ### Who Are The Proud Boys, The Group Behind The Controversial Portland Rally?]
Unsurprisingly then, Parler was a hotbed of activity throughout Tuesday’s debate. John Solomon, the founder and editor in chief of the right-leaning News.com, labeled the evening a “Biden blunder.” The event was characterized in violent terms by one self-described “supremacist” on the app, @MidnightMarauder: “The equivalent of #trump bringing a gun to a pillow fight.” While another user, @HouseofTrump, simply concluded that Biden “truly has no clue.”
Those words glow with only low luminosity when compared to the 10,000-watt intensity on the app after Trump told the Proud Boys during the debate to “stand back and stand by,” a phrase that the group understandably interpreted as a call to arms.
Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs could hardly contain his glee,typing out this on Parler: “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy.” (He reportedly made similar comments on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has attracted nationalist groups because of its anonymity-protecting technology.) Biggs has a sizable following on the app, some 34,000 people, and he describes himself in his Parler profile as a “Singer, Motorcycle rider and freedom fighter.”
Enrique Tarrio, another Proud Boys chief, echoed Biggs’ comment. “I’m am [sic] extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight,” he wrote on Parler. The Proud Boys’ widely followed main account, @TheProudBoys, which has 50,000 subscribers, offered up a brief summation of the evening, punctuating their excitement with capital letters: “THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!” Below those words was a picture of a black T-shirt with the words “Proud Boys Standing By” emblazoned on it in canary yellow.
Matze, the app’s founder, had this to say about the talk on his app. “We are a neutral town square. As long as [the Proud Boys’] speech is legal . . . and they follow our [terms of service] . . . we do not discriminate based off group or association.”
As it happens, the boys did not, actually, have the last word on Parler last night. An hour after the debate, user @IceQueenAsh, who has decorated her Parler profile with Pepe the Frog and characterizes herself as a “#proudmom” and a “#proud patriot,” wrote: “Screw it I’ll say it! #TheProudGals are here in spirit and damn proud how #TheProudBoys have handled themselves!”
“The Proud Boys are awesome,” she concluded. “Good old fashion red white and blue!”