In a secluded forest in Virginia, two groups of seven men walked toward each other in March 2026. Each group wore matching shirts indicating their team. One group’s white shirts were emblazoned with the Nordic Wolfsangel rune, an ancient Germanic symbol embraced by neo-Nazis, while the other wore black, bearing the symbol of a chapter of the neo-Nazi Active Clubs.
Each participant wore a pair of fighting gloves used in mixed martial arts tournaments. As soon as the groups were in striking distance of each other, punches began to fly as the teams battered one another to the ground.
The group combat was not between enemies, but rather allies testing each other’s mettle. The fight was recorded by a team of camera operators on the ground and a drone hovering above the action. Referees oversaw the fighting, pulling fighters off one another as their opponents signaled defeat.
Two members of a team striking an opponent during a Forest Fights U.S.A. event in Virginia in March 2026. (Source: X)
The “Forest Fights” are organized by a white supremacist group and attract members of neo-Nazi and racist networks. The events are modeled after hooligan football firms in Europe which have developed a tradition of using secluded locations for unsanctioned fights against their rivals.
The fight is just one of the latest in a series of events held by white supremacists that seek to bring separate and sometimes divided parts of far right extremists together. With a focus on employing martial arts training to prepare for real-world combat, the Forest Fights and other events represent an escalation of the far right’s preparations for what they view as inevitable and coming violence between races.
With more bouts scheduled, these “Forest Fights USA” events are being held on land belonging to the Wolves of Vinland (WoV), a fascist organization organized similarly to outlaw motorcycle gangs. The WoV has supporters and affiliated martial arts clubs and gyms in several locations across the United States, though the group’s compound in Lynchburg, Virginia, was used as the primary location for the fight.
Old Guard, New Guard
These fights are part of a broader networking effort by white nationalists across the Western world. These and other similar events are uniting older well-established skinhead groups with a newer, younger generation of militant activists.
Organizations and individuals can sign up to participate. Those without a team will be matched with other fighters, according to a post on Telegram geared towards prospective brawlers. Those wishing to participate are asked to fill out a basic questionnaire using a Google Form that requests a name, age, fighting experience, and the state where they train. No date for the next event has been revealed, but a post to the Forest Fights USA Telegram page promises another bout in May, this time in Pennsylvania.
A video indicating an upcoming Forest Fights event in May 2026. (Source: Telegram).
In a video of the first official Forest Fight event, alleged to have taken place in March 2026, several individuals identified themselves and their affiliations. This included the Wolves of Vinland, the Texas-based Lone Star Active Club, and the Pennsylvania Active Club. At least one participant identified as a member of the Hammerskin Nation, a transnational racist skinhead gang with chapters in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia.
A recent investigation by The Guardian found that a previous brawl had taken place in December 2025, including members of WoV, Active Clubs, and the white supremacist organization Patriot Front.
Many of the organizations rely on the model popularized by U.S. white nationalist Robert Rundo, who founded the Active Club (AC) movement as decentralized, hyper-local independent. groups. Rather than being controlled by a central leader, the ACs are united by a shared aesthetic and far-right ideology.
ACs place a particular emphasis on martial training, particularly combat sports, and this often factors heavily into their propaganda. The training is not only about health or camaraderie but also the transfer of these skills into preparation for the inevitable coming violence. Sparring matches, where members engage in restrained fights to hone their skills, are common as are supervised competitive matches.
In June 2025, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism found that there were 187 active AC chapters in 27 countries, up from 149 chapters in 21 countries in late 2023. That represents a growth of 25 percent in a short time. Half of the new groups are “Youth Clubs” that specifically recruit teen boys aged 15 to 18.
ACs emphasize preparation for violence, discipline, and loyalty, operating as an unstructured “violence-ready” militia. In interviews, Rundo has said he was directly inspired by European football hooligans, which will often include fan groups that align themselves with the far right or nationalist movements.
The “forest fights” are a tool that brings white supremacists together from across the U.S., creates propaganda, and, more concerning, serves as a bridge between organizations and individuals already connected to violent white nationalist organizations. In a March post written by Rundo on his Substack blog, he praised the Forest Fights event, adding that “these events are a tip off point for a fascist cultural revolution,” and “the first step in building our own parallel system.”
Cross-Generational Networking
The AC model and emphasis on physical combat has resulted in a coalescing of different organizations and movements. Within the ACs, there are members belonging to neo-Nazi skinhead street gangs, including one of the largest in the world: the Hammerskin Nation (HSN).
Violent and secretive, the HSN has members in multiple countries. HSN members have been swept up in police raids for alleged violence, one member opened fire at a U.S. Sikh temple in 2012, and HSN members have been responsible for multiple murders and assaults against minorities.
Officially beginning as the “Confederate Hammerskins” in Dallas, Texas in 1988, the group has expanded to have multiple chapters across North America, South America, Europe and Australia. There was a recent attempt to ban the organization in Germany, though the case fell apart. This was partly because the German government attempted to ban “Hammerskins Deutschland,” an organization that does not exist. German HSN clubs are broken into regional groups, without a larger national chapter. Before the ban was overturned by the courts, Hammerskins in Germany remained active and traveled to Italy to attend an annual “Hammerfest” event which brings together members of the brotherhood from across the world.
During the March fight, Hammerskin Russell Coleman was credited as an organizer in a blog post written by Wolves of Vinland founder Paul Waggener. In a group photo shared by the official Forest Fights USA Telegram channel on March 8, 2026, the first image posted to the channel, Coleman can be seen holding a Hammerskin flag.
A group photograph of the participants in the “Spring Brawl” posted to the Forest Fights USA Telegram channel. Participants are holding the flag of the Pennsylvania Active Club (bottom right) and the Hammerskin Nation (top middle right). (Source: Telegram).
In Canada, the national chapter of the Vinland Hammerskins (VHS) created the Active Club Canada in 2021 to replace the dwindling white power music scene they had previously used as a recruitment tool. While the AC model is still used in Canada by groups like the neo-Nazi Nationalist 13 or the white nationalist Second Sons Canada, the ACC deleted all of its active social media, including on the encrypted, low moderation social media platform Telegram, following the arrest of several of its members for activity with the neo-Nazi networks the Atomwaffen Division and the Terrorgram Collective, both listed terrorist entities in Canada.
The Quebec chapter, the Frontenac Active Club, is the only known active Canadian group to still use the “Active Club” branding. Members of the chapter recently tried to intimidate journalist Rachel Gilmore after she reported on their activities in the Montreal area.
In Finland, a HSN clubhouse, called “Hammer House,” was previously used for meetings and training sessions of the Active Club.
Activists have revealed other extensive HSN connections, including that Robert Harris, a member with the Northwest Hammerskins, has used his property to host meetings of ACs in the Eastern U.S. This aided broad attempts to forge a coalition of nationalist crews, spearheaded by the Evergreen AC. The Idaho-based AC was led by Thomas Anthony Rowe, a Crew 38 prospect. Rowe has an extensive criminal history including convictions for sexual and domestic assault.
In California, the SoCal Active Club is run by Robert Wheldon, a former Proud Boy who is also an alleged member of the Western Hammersins. The SoCal AC has been responsible for running its own organized white supremacist “Frontier” fighting tournament held annually since 2023.
The Hammerskin Nation is one example of how older white nationalist groups have been taking advantage of the popularity of white nationalist fight clubs.
The neo-Nazi Vinlanders Social Club (VSC), a racist skinhead gang with a long history of violence, has absorbed the Southern Sons Active Club, based in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The Southern Sons have dropped the AC label and work as part of the Vinlanders’ support club “Firm 22.” Prospective Southern Sons members are directed to apply via the VSC website.
Combat Sports as an Organizational Tool
Beyond street crews, these nationalist fight clubs focus on the development of fighters, as well as other interests, like martial arts and strength building, for the furtherance of white nationalist and white supremacist ideologies.
Several prominent white supremacist groups also organize under the banner of martial art teams or clubs. The Wolves of Vinland are directly associated with Devotion Jujitsu, a private martial arts club co-founded by Waggener in 2017. The club sells a variety of merchandise and apparel online and has been a site for training WoV members and members of other groups.
Waggener has taken a similar approach to his Forest Fights project, including already listing pre-orders for t-shirts promoting the events.
Advertisement on the Forrest Fight Telegram channel that ran a limited t-shirt pre-order to support the event. (Source: Archive.org)
Outside of WoV, Patria Gloria American Jiu-Jitsu is a competitive jiu-jitsu team made up of members of the white nationalist organization Patriot Front. Beside competing in the SoCal AC’s Frontier tournament in 2023 and 2024 and the “Blood on the Mats” tournament hosted by the WoV in 2024. The Patria Gloria Telegram channel indicates participation in mainstream events like the Chewjitsu Open in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in May 2024.
Martial arts and combat sport tournaments are a popular and healthy past time, but have firmly been targeted for the far-right as a means of bringing in young, new participants.
The meetings, training sessions, and fights are all tools used by the far right to recruit and popularize a militant and radical worldview that offers violent predictions of a coming race war in the United States.
Older groups, like the Hammerskin Nation, Wolves of Vinland, or Vinlanders Social Club, offer a history, while new networks and groups like the Active Clubs, offer contemporary branding and aesthetics that appeal to new activists. Born from the same ideologies that motivated the violent racist skinheads of the past, these events, whether they take place in a secluded forest or a local boxing ring, are repackaged into a slick propaganda product that is broadcast on mainstream and fringe social media channels to bring in more bodies for the cause.
