Jun 26, 2026 · 19 min · 10 segments
Last week's British race riots were largely organized by a rising movement of affiliated neo-Nazi organizations called Active Clubs. It should surprise no one that they have direct links to Ukraine…
It was in 2018, less than a year after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, that one of its most notorious participants, Robert Rundo, leader of the violent Rise Above movement, met his future co-host, Denis Kapustin, better known as Denis Nikitin.
Yes, White Rex is, that's who that is.
Dennis Kapustin?
Okay, yeah.
They named their podcast after Rundo's Active Club network, which has been, which has drawn inspiration from the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and proliferated NATO countries as the, quote, preeminent organization model for far-right street fighters.
Today, he commands the Russian Volunteer Corps, perhaps the most heavily neo-Nazi military unit in Ukraine.
Years ago, he inspired Robert Rundo, not only as the godfather of white nationalist mixed martial arts tournaments in Europe, or the owner of a successful neo-Nazi brand, White Rex, which Rundo considered to be an exemplary active lifestyle movement.
When they first met, Kapusan essentially played the role of unofficial ambassador at large for Ukraine's Azov movement.
Rundo has said that these neo-Nazis and Kapusan in particular opened my eyes to the importance of sports culture in our movement.
A couple months after the Russian invasion, he taught to the Southern Poverty Law Center saying, quote, we active clubs are like Azov, but the U.S. version.
quote, this is my whole inspiration for everything, he, Rondo, told a right-wing podcast in September 2017, referring to Azov as the future.
They really have the culture out there, he said.
They have their own clubs, they have their own bars, they have their own dress style.
Going to Kiev in 2018 and being able to compete, honestly, that was one of the greatest memories of my life.
It was an honor, and I'll always stand by those who stood by me.
A lot of what has inspired me, our ideas, the structure, the vision, came from groups like Azov, Casa Pound, which is an Italian neo-national neo-fascist movement that is allied with azov and others okay so we've talked about the rise above movement which was mentioned earlier and we've talked about casa pound and we talked about azov in that article that i wrote about foreign fighters in ukraine uh that we discussed in the podcast maybe i'll link that in the show notes too so people can go listen to that if they haven't yet
Read the full transcript.
Create an account to read the whole episode, search across every transcript, and follow the shows you care about.