American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo’s six-year “battle with the feds”—a combat that spans two dismissals, three appellate reversals, and an extradition and deportation from not less than two international locations—concludes at present 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 Motion, a combat club-cum-street gang Rundo cofounded with fellow extremist Ben Daley in Southern California throughout the peak of the alt-right motion, Rundo was convicted on 2018 prices of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act for coaching and planning a collection of assaults on political opponents at rallies throughout California and Unite the Proper in Virginia the 12 months 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 preliminary 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 known as “Lively Golf equipment.” A transnational alliance of far-right combat golf equipment that intently overlap with skinhead gangs and neofascist political actions in North America, Europe, the Antipodes, and South America, the Lively Membership community is proliferating internationally. There are dozens of Lively Golf equipment in the US, United Kingdom, Eire, France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Australia, and Colombia, in keeping with the teams’ presence on Telegram and extremism researchers.

Seemingly innocent from the surface, Lively Golf equipment are small teams of younger males who go on hikes, prepare 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 usually overlaps with different extremist organizations like Patriot Entrance, legal skinhead teams just like the Hammerskins, and different violent extremists in international 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 positively 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 part of a mass motion with out having any expertise or abilities?” Rundo mentioned in a video posted on-line shortly earlier than his March 2023 arrest in Bucharest, Romania. “Lively golf equipment are a fantastic native technique 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 Legislation 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 group constructing to attract new blood from exterior of extremist circles, and a ready-made worldwide community. “The mannequin has actually made it simpler to facilitate these transnational connections,” Gais says. “In case you’re not a company, then you may community with whoever you need.”