Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound

A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution”.

Social media posts and group chats show members of so-called active clubs from Texas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania have in recent weeks and months travelled to Lynchburg, Virginia to train together at a secretive compound. The compound is run by the Wolves of Vinland, which the civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a neopagan white nationalist hate group. Also present were members of the white supremacist hate group Patriot Front and the neo-Nazi skinhead group known as the Hammerskins.

Active clubs, a loose network of localized white supremacist groups, were founded by the violent neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, who served jail time in 2024 for conspiring to stage riots at California political rallies.

Experts have warned that these groups, which mix rightwing extremism with fitness and combat sports to recruit and radicalize members of communities across the US, pose a potential public danger.

A Guardian investigation found that participants in the Virginia gatherings included a Georgia-based licensed school teacher, a one-time West Virginia police officer who now runs a grappling gym catering to small children, a Tennessee emergency medical technician, the son of a prominent Maine anti-abortion activist, and the owner of a Vermont dog-walking business.

On 6 December, members of active clubs from Texas and Tennessee, Patriot Front and the Wolves participated in an eight-versus-eight brawl at the neopagan group’s Lynchburg compound, according to photos and video posted to public and private social media.

They also spent the weekend networking and taking part in joint training, including at Devotion Jiu-Jitsu, an on-site, Wolves-affiliated grappling gym.

A screenshot of a video shows members of far right groups participating in a joint brawl in December 2025. Photograph: Telegram

The Guardian last year revealed several of the event’s participants, including active club members Thomas Grady, and Andrew Lindgren, are involved with a Russian fight club that set up a US offshoot with help from American neo-Nazis. Grady declined to comment and Lindgren did not respond to a request for comment.

Footage posted to social media shows that alongside them at the Virginia fight was Logan Florence, a licensed massage therapist and personal trainer at a metro Atlanta area sports clinic.

Florence, whose affiliation with any rightwing groups is unclear, is also a licensed schoolteacher.

A 2019 Facebook post by an Atlanta-area middle school shows he joined its faculty to teach eighth-grade social studies in 2019. According to one public salary database, he was most recently paid by the school in 2024. He is not currently listed on the faculty page of its website.

A video screenshot shows Logan Florence, left, participating in a combat event with active club and Wolves of Vinland members. Photograph: Telegram

Florence’s teaching license remains active, according to Georgia Professional Standards Commission records accessed by the Guardian.

After the Guardian messaged him for comment on Instagram, Florence wiped the content of his account before deleting it. He did not reply. Otwell middle school, where he taught, did not reply to a request for comment.

Contact with young people has become increasingly important for wing movements including active clubs, which have aggressively recruited teenage boys and launched youth-oriented offshoots.

Videos and images posted to social media show members of the Wolves are no different. Marston Sneddon, one of the neopagan group’s members who fought in the December brawl, has refereed cage fights around Lynchburg involving local teenage boys, appearing to act as mentor to attendees.

Marston Sneddon, left, is shown refereeing a youth cage fight. Image has been blurred to obscure identities of minors. Photograph: Instagram

News articles and family obituaries show he is the son of Leslie Sneddon, a prominent anti-abortion activist who spent years demonstrating outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Portland, Maine.

Sneddon did not respond to a request for comment.

Seth Waggener, another Wolves member and the brother of the group’s leader Paul Waggener, is also pictured with young boys and men at local events. He bragged that his own son took part in the December fight at the Lynchburg compound.

“Some people watch their sons play little league … this weekend I watched my youngest in an 8v8 hooligan brawl,” he wrote in an Instagram post.

The December gathering is illustrative of expert concerns that the active club movement is becoming an ever more coordinated danger.

A screenshot of a video posted by Seth Waggener in which he says he watched his youngest son in a ‘hooligan brawl’. Photograph: Instagram

In recent months, security officials in Canada and Germany, where one active club was raided on suspicion of illegal firearms possession, have warned the groups are potentially violent threats to public safety. In January, the FBI linked multiple Tennessee active club affiliates to white supremacist efforts to start an armed paramilitary unit.

Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser with the Counter Extremism Project who studies active clubs, has warned that their objective is to create a “standby militia of trained and capable” rightwing extremists.

He told the Guardian that the rhetoric of Rundo, the movement’s founder, has in the last year aimed to “harmonize and accelerate its evolution”.

“He has reinforced core tactics (mainstream appearances, fitness-as-recruitment) while innovating by making infrastructure-building the central objective,” he said. “This combined message – lay low, build quietly, harden your community – is shaping [active club] activities across multiple countries, potentially turning a once loosely connected movement into a more disciplined, goal-driven network.”

In a recent blogpost, Rundo testified to the value of group gatherings including those at the Wolves compound in Virginia. Writing that “every victorious nationalist movement was forged by hardened men who’d already tasted real danger”, he called the fights “the modern equivalents of that vital hardening”.

On 7 March, members of multiple active clubs and white nationalist groups again converged on the Wolves’ Virginia compound to train, fight and network.

In attendance was Joshua Hunt, a one-time police officer in Charleston, West Virginia.

A police department spokesperson for the Charleston police department told the Guardian that Hunt was employed there from August 2018 to April 2019, when he resigned before completing his probationary year.

A 2018 post by Charleston police shows Joshua Hunt alongside other officers. Image was blurred to obscure the identities of other officers. Photograph: Facebook

“An extensive background check was completed on Mr Hunt prior to his hiring,” they said, adding it did not surface any connections to white nationalist groups.

Hunt, a jiu jitsu black belt, now runs a private gym called Appalachian Submission Grappling. Social media posts show a significant portion of his students are small children and that he coaches a youth wrestling team in Poca, West Virginia. The youth wrestling team did not reply to an emailed request for comment.

Hunt, in an Instagram comment, called the Virginia brawl the “most fun I’ve had in my life”. His specific affiliation with any of the groups is unclear, and he fought on a team of members with mixed affiliations, billed as the “Confederation of American Natives”.

He did not reply to requests for comment. Hunt’s Instagram account and the Facebook page for his grappling school were deactivated after the Guardian contacted him.

Josh Hunt pictured at his home grappling school with several children and another man. Image has been blurred to obscure the identities of the children and the other man. Photograph: Facebook

Also on his team was Maurice Michaely, a Wolves member who in 2013 pleaded guilty to setting fire to the Mount Pleasant Baptist church, a historic Black church in Gainsville, Virginia.He declined to respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Hunt was not the only attendee with a first responder background. The team pitted against his, dubbed “Tribal Lands”, included Patriot Front member Tristan Rettke.

Tennessee board of emergency medical services records accessed by the Guardian show Rettke is a registered emergency medical technician in the state. In addition, he was involved in attempts by Patriot Front to launder its reputation when it claimed to be part of central Texas flood relief efforts last year, the Texas Observer reported in January.

Rettke did not reply to a request for comment.

Two other groups fought against each other on the March weekend: another mixed group of fighters, this one branded “Koryos” after the Proto-Indo-European word for army, and the Pennsylvania active club.

The team of mixed fighters included Wolves member Sneddon and Avery Ross Ruiz, a member of the Dallas-area Lone Star active club and head of the underground Russian street fight organization Streets Fights Club’s expansion into the US.

Records in Parker county, Texas, show Ruiz pleaded guilty to felony burglary in 2022 and was sentenced to five years’ probation. In October, his attorney Jason Lee Van Dyke, a far-right activist who has frequently served as Patriot Front’s counsel, filed a successful motion for his early release.

A video screenshot from March 2026 shows members of the Pennsylvania active club in combat with members of other white nationalist groups near the Wolves of Vinland compound. Photograph: Instagram

Roughly two months later, Ruiz posted multiple images to Instagram of a masked, hooded person with their eyes blurred, holding what appear to be semi-automatic weapons. In one picture, a neo-Nazi sonnenrad symbol was superimposed behind their head. It is unclear if he is the individual pictured.

Texas law bars people with felony convictions from owning firearms for five years after the completion of their sentence, after which they can only possess a gun in their home.

Reached for comment, Ruiz replied with a middle finger emoji.

Wolves founder Paul Waggener wrote in a blogpost that Ruiz organized the Virginia gatherings with Russell Coleman, who he identified as a member of the neo-Nazi skinhead group Hammerskins, and Wolves member Gentry Martell, the latter of whom also fought on the Koryos team.

Shane Burley, a journalist and author who has studied the Wolves, describes them as “a heathen biker gang” that practices a form of “racialized paganism” honed by Waggener.

“One of the things that they really make clear for Wolves of Vinland members is that every member is required to come when called and to engage in violence at any moment,” he told the Guardian.

Burley said Waggener has previously downplayed connections between the Wolves and white nationalism. However, in a podcast appearance this past weekend, he fully endorsed the active club movement, stating: “All the active clubs that are out there are doing positive stuff to the young guys, and they have been for a long time now.”

Waggener also suggested he would physically assault journalists who cover the Wolves if he were to meet them in person.

“They know what will happen to them if I’m ever given the chance to see them in person, he said. “They’ll have a heart attack before I could probably get anywhere near them.” He complained that reporting on his group could cost them their livelihoods, adding journalists who do write about them “might find out someday it costs them everything”.

The active club movement has also recently attempted to intimidate journalists. Last month, members of one Montreal-area group showed up at a small music club to confront Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore after she reported on their activities.

Waggener did not reply to a request for comment.

Also at the March gathering was senior Patriot Front figure Graham Whitson, who travelled with members of the Lone Star active club, according to a video posted to the group’s Telegram page. In an Instagram post, the Wolves’ Sneddon credited Whitson with filming footage of the weekend’s events (Patriot Front is considered the most prolific producer of hateful white supremacist propaganda in the US by experts).

Patriot Front’s Graham Whiston shown waiting at an airport before, according to a Lone Star active club Telegram post, travelling to Virginia. Photograph: Telegram

He is currently wanted in Idaho for failing to appear in court for criminal conspiracy charges related to his alleged role in a plot to disrupt a pride event in Coeur d’Alene, local records show.

Two more attendees were Caleb Johnston, a marketing professional who works for a travel company, and Jahnu Gibbs, the owner of Middlebury, Vermont-based dog walking service Premium Dog Care and knife sharpening business Fenrir’s Bite.

Images from last year posted to its Telegram channel show Johnston trained at the Wolves-affiliated Devotion grappling school and represented it at a jiu jitsu tournament in June 2025. Gibbs, meanwhile, has shared images of himself wearing a patch of Northern Aggression, the Wolves’ New England offshoot. Neither replied to a request for comment.

Since the two gatherings, active club and Wolves members have continued to deepen ties. The mixed group who fought under the name Koryos traveled to South Carolina in late March to participate in a fight tournament organized by Patriot Front, posts to social media show.

Rundo, the active club founder, lavished praise on the group combat gatherings, writing in a blogpost last month: “These events are a tip off point for a fascist cultural revolution, its [sic] is the first step in building our own parallel system.”