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Members of Canada’s biggest white nationalist group trained this spring with U.S. counterparts south of the border and met with the founder of a global movement of fascist fight clubs, a CBC visual investigation has found.
One expert called it a “very significant” signal of closer co-ordination between white supremacist groups on both sides of the border.
A Telegram post with blurred faces shows Second Sons Canada members posing with an individual CBC identified as Robert Rundo, an American neo-Nazi who founded the “active club” movement. Other posts show them training and meeting with active club groups in Texas and South Carolina in late March.
“It’s very significant that we’re seeing Canadians travel across the border,” said Steven Rai, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a U.K.-based think-tank dedicated to studying authoritarianism, hate and extremism.
“This shows that this problem of white supremacy is not isolated to Canada alone and that the white supremacist groups in Canada are not operating within geographical silos.”
Several U.S. active clubs have sent members to Canada to network with the Hamilton-based group Nationalist-13, which is openly neo-Nazi. But this is the first time Second Sons Canada has shared images of travel by its members to the U.S. since it was founded in 2024.
‘There’s fun in fascism,’ says Rundo
Based on publicly available Telegram posts, Second Sons members met with Robert Rundo in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. Despite framing itself as a “men’s nationalist club,” the meeting with Rundo is the latest link between Second Sons Canada and the white supremacist active club movement.
In 2024, Rundo was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting riots at political events in California. He and members of his organization assaulted several people, with Rundo repeatedly punching one person, according to a U.S. prosecutor release. Rundo was later seen in videos “celebrating the assaults they had committed.”
Although his prison time was considered to have already been served because of the length of his pre-sentencing detention, he was also sentenced in December 2024 to two years of supervised release. Rundo was recently featured in a 60 Minutes interview from CBS News in which he identified his movement as “ultra-nationalists, far-right fascists,” and said “there’s fun in fascism.”
Michael Colborne, a journalist with the open-source investigative media outlet Bellingcat, said Rundo is the “strategic or ideological figurehead” of the active club movement, which focuses on “fitness, fashion and fighting to really try to lure young men into the far right.”
CBC News identified Rundo in a picture posted to Telegram by the Lone Star Active Club. In the photo, three men pose in shirts branded with Second Sons Canada insignia.
Rundo appears to be the man in the middle of the photograph. The watch worn by the man in the picture closely resembles one worn by Rundo in other videos and images; he also consistently wears it on his right hand. Additionally, the blurred area on the man’s elbow matches where Rundo has a distinctive tattoo of a Sonnenrad — a symbol commonly used by neo-Nazis.
Rundo has appeared in the location pictured before: he can be seen in multiple pieces of media published by Lone Star Active Club. His facial features, despite the blurring, also match Rundo’s.
“When I first saw that picture, I laughed because, despite the blur in it, I knew it was Rundo right away,” said Bellingcat’s Colborne. He said it’s unclear why Rundo would have his face blurred, given that he’s a well-known figure in the white nationalist movement.
In February, Rundo appeared on a podcast hosted by Alex Vriend, Second Sons Canada’s vice-president, in which Vriend speculated about future co-operation between Canadian and U.S. groups.
“I’m hoping to get some of our guys at some of the American events,” Vriend said.
According to the terms of his supervised release state, Rundo is not to meet with members of the Rise Above Movement, his now-defunct organization.
CBC News reached out to Rundo to ask about his connection with Lone Star, meet-up with Second Sons Canada members and how his activities relate to the terms of his supervised release. He did not directly address CBC’s questions.
Second Sons members met Rundo at a location commonly used by members of the Lone Star Active Club, which is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. CBC News geolocated joint activities at a commercial gym in the area as well as a private facility used by Lone Star. The private gym was first geolocated by the Texas Observer.
American Muscle event
According to Telegram posts, members of the two groups then travelled to an event in South Carolina called American Muscle 2, a combat sports tournament featuring a number of active clubs.
American Muscle 2 was organized by Patriot Front, one of the most notorious white nationalist groups in the U.S. In a post describing the event, Patriot Front said it is “dedicated to the reconquest of the nation.” On its website, Patriot Front claims, “Our nation is European in racial character.”
Rai, of the ISD, said fight tournaments are increasingly common mechanisms by which white nationalist groups gather to “strengthen real-world bonds” and build “durable infrastructure” for the wider movement.
Second Sons Canada is a growing Canadian ‘nationalist’ men’s club, but its sanitized official posts mask pro-Nazi, racist and violent statements made by its leaders. CBC’s visual investigations unit used AI tools and manual verification to uncover the more extreme views of Second Sons’ leaders in personal podcasts and livestreams, revealing an intentional strategy to recruit Canadians.
“There is very likely a high degree of strategizing that is happening at these events, as well as deeper thinking as to how to propel the movement forward,” he said.
The event took place at a business in Travelers Rest, S.C., called Dixie Republic. CBC News confirmed this by geolocating footage published by Patriot Front in promoting the event after it took place.
Dixie Republic advertises itself as the “South’s largest Confederate store.” The store did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CBC News.
A number of active clubs from across the United States were present at the event, including Michigan’s Great Lakes Active Club, which also posted about meeting with Second Sons Canada.
CBC News reached out to Second Sons Canada, Lone Star Active Club and Great Lakes Active Club for comment. None responded.
“This is very much a broad, multinational movement of like-minded individuals,” said Rai. “They want to establish a homeland for white people only.”
Colborne said that active club groups in the United States appeared to be having difficulty growing substantially in numbers, but he was still concerned about escalation.
“What I worry about with all active club movements, and of course especially in the U.S., is not so much an expansion, or a huge expansion, of their ranks and recruitment, but … a radicalization of their existing ranks towards political violence.”
Rai said these groups “are ultimately seeking to undermine democracy and replace Canadian values with a very strict fascist interpretation of the society they want to achieve.”
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