The Organizations
Part 2 of 9: The Shadow Republic | How white supremacist networks built the infrastructure now embedded in federal agencies—and what the January 6 pardons set in motion
In October 2025, a man named Ian Elliott reported for work in California’s Six Rivers National Forest. His employer, Knight Division Tactical, had been awarded nearly $4 million in USDA contracts over fiscal years 2024 and 2025—federal money flowing to a company that had hired Elliott to manage its operations.
Elliott is better known in other circles as “Brother V.” He runs the day-to-day operations of Patriot Front’s Tennessee compound—a 124-acre property in Tellico Plains where, according to CNN drone footage from December 2025, the largest active white supremacist organization in America conducts paramilitary training. The compound features multiple buildings, a barn converted to a gym, and newly installed electrical infrastructure.
When asked about Elliott’s employment, the USDA responded that contractors manage their own hiring decisions.
This is the landscape in March 2026: a Patriot Front operative working for a company with nearly $4 million in federal contracts. Proud Boys leadership photographed at Mar-a-Lago. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes teaching classes nationwide while rebuilding his organization with explicit plans to serve as Trump’s activated militia. The Base—a transnational accelerationist network directed from Russia—conducting assassination operations in Ukraine while neither of its U.S. properties has been seized. Active Clubs proliferating so rapidly that the Counter Extremism Project describes them as a “shadow or stand-by army” that can be “activated when the need for coordinated violent action on a larger scale arises.”
Part 1 documented the permission structure: the January 6 pardons, the dismantling of domestic terrorism infrastructure, the theological fusion now embedded in the Pentagon. This installment maps what that permission enabled—the organizations themselves, their documented penetration of federal agencies, and the infrastructure they are building while no one is watching.
The Infrastructure: Active Clubs and Patriot Front
To understand how white supremacist organizations function in 2026, begin not with the famous names but with the connective tissue: the Active Club network and its relationship to Patriot Front.
Part 1 documented the Active Club explosion—187 chapters across 27 countries, the fastest growth any researcher has seen. What it didn’t document is who controls them.
The concept was co-created by Robert Rundo and a Russian neo-Nazi now active in Eastern Europe. Rundo founded the Rise Above Movement, a violent California-based group; he was released from federal custody in December 2024 after serving two years for assaulting counter-protesters at political rallies in California. Rundo's release followed a seven-year legal battle in which a federal judge twice dismissed his charges—once on First Amendment grounds, once arguing prosecutors had failed to equally target left-wing counter-protesters—and was twice reversed by the Ninth Circuit, the second time after Rundo had fled to Europe on a forged passport.
The Active Club model—decentralized fitness-focused chapters conducting MMA training, hiking, and "community building"—allows white supremacists to organize without formal membership structures that would expose them to RICO prosecution.
But the decentralization is, in part, a fiction.
In May 2025, the Southern Poverty Law Center published an analysis of leaked internal documents showing that Patriot Front directly oversees at least nine Active Clubs as “subsidiary recruitment projects,” with seven additional independent clubs operating in cooperation. Financial flows connect through Graham Whitson, Patriot Front’s chief propagandist, whose Will2Rise operation projects $10,000 per month in revenue. The internal documents explicitly label these clubs as recruitment feeders for the parent organization.
Patriot Front itself remains the largest white supremacist propaganda distributor in America—over 30,000 flyers since 2018, roughly 60% of all incidents tracked in 2023. Its leader, Thomas Rousseau, is 27 years old and operates from the Dallas-Fort Worth area with an estimated 200 to 230 active members.
The Tennessee compound—introduced in Part 1 and mentioned earlier—has a deeper story. The 124-acre Tellico Plains property was purchased in March 2021 for $287,000 by Liudmila Culpepper. Her husband, Brian Culpepper, managed the site until his death in October 2025. Shortly before his death, the barn housing Elliott’s gym was briefly listed for sale; approximately 117 acres remain under organizational control. No federal action has been taken against the compound or the organization.
The September 2025 national conference in Texas, documented by UK’s ITV News, illustrates the network’s transnational reach. Attendees included Rousseau, Rundo (in apparent violation of his supervised release terms prohibiting travel and association with RAM members or convicted felons), Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and Matthew Gravill—a British neo-fascist and former Buckingham Palace warden. Participants wrote over 100 letters supporting imprisoned Australian neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell. Representatives from at least four countries attended.
Civil liability has not deterred operations. In January 2025, a court entered a $2.76 million judgment against individual Patriot Front members for a 2022 assault in Boston. The organization itself was not a defendant. No federal prosecution of Patriot Front as an organization has been attempted.
The Youth Pipeline
The most alarming development in Active Club infrastructure is the systematic recruitment of minors.
United Nations data released in 2025 found that minors now constitute 42% of terrorism-related investigations in Europe and North America—a threefold increase since 2021. The pipeline is documented: recruitment begins on gaming platforms (researchers identified over 350 far-right Roblox posts and profiles in 2025), moves to Discord servers, and culminates in Youth Club membership.
Youth Clubs are Active Club chapters specifically targeting boys aged 15 to 18. According to GPAHE’s June 2025 report, at least 19 Youth Club chapters now operate across 42 U.S. states, plus one UK chapter (Albion Youth Club, created October 2025). Half of all new Active Club chapters since late 2023 are Youth Clubs. An umbrella coordination entity called “United Youth” was created on February 24, 2025.
The integration with adult chapters is not theoretical. On October 6, 2025, the Chesapeake Youth Club posted to its Telegram channel a photograph of four individuals posing with the chapter flag, stating the Youth Club had “met up and trained” with the adult Chesapeake Active Club. Open Measures documented this as one of several confirmed in-person meetups between Youth Clubs and adult chapters. ADL reporting captured a Chesapeake Youth Club Telegram post stating: “Everyone who joins our clubs is already in a ‘fascist ideology.’”
The ideology is explicit. Youth Club Telegram channels feature Great Replacement rhetoric, variations of the “14 Words” (the white supremacist slogan), and Black Sun imagery—the Nazi occult symbol. Activities include MMA-style training, propaganda distribution, group hikes, and camping trips.
In January 2025, three Florida teenagers associated with a group called Blood and Soil Crew were convicted of racially motivated crimes. They had been recruited online.
Inside the Agencies
Part 1 documented the Oath Keepers membership database: 306 DHS employees, 373 active law enforcement officers, 117 active military. The numbers establish infiltration. What they don’t show is the pattern within the organization itself.
Charles Dyer, a former Marine who served as Oath Keepers’ liaison to militia groups, was convicted in April 2012 of raping his 7-year-old daughter and sentenced to 30 years; he remains incarcerated. Abdullah Rasheed, head of the West Virginia chapter, had a prior felony conviction for aggravated sexual assault of a child—a fact that emerged at Stewart Rhodes’ trial. Rasheed secretly recorded the pivotal November 9, 2020 GoToMeeting call in which Oath Keepers leadership discussed post-election plans; he provided the recording to the FBI, which did not act before January 6.
The Proud Boys present a different infiltration pattern. A Senate subcommittee report cited a wrongly detained American who observed ICE agents with Proud Boys tattoos. Recruits at the Brunswick training academy were found with white supremacist tattoos during screening. After the pardons, multiple Proud Boys chapters celebrated on social media: “Toledo Boys living high on the hog right now!!” Chapters in several states offered “bounties on illegals.”
The SPLC documented that Tom Homan—Trump’s “Border Czar”—met at least four times with Terry Newsome, a self-described “Proud J6 Attendee” who has been photographed with both the Illinois Proud Boys chapter head and Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist streamer.
Patriot Front’s internal records show that one in five applicants reports military experience or affiliation. The Clockwork Crew case at Camp Pendleton illustrates the military dimension: Sergeant Gunnar Naughton was charged with stealing approximately 840 rounds and dumping more than 12,000 rounds plus three grenades into a ravine; he reached a plea agreement. Lance Corporal Mohammed Wadaa was court-martialed and received 11 months in the brig plus a bad conduct discharge.
Since March 2020, a network called OPSECGOY has distributed professional security tradecraft via Telegram—counterintelligence techniques, surveillance detection, operational security protocols—to white supremacist organizations. The professionalization is deliberate.
The Accelerationists
While Patriot Front and Active Clubs build recruitment infrastructure, a parallel network pursues a different strategy: acceleration. The theory holds that targeted violence—against infrastructure, minority communities, and government officials—will hasten societal collapse and enable the emergence of a white ethnostate. Three organizations embody this approach: Atomwaffen Division and its successors, The Base, and the Terrorgram Collective.
Atomwaffen Division
Part 1 covered Brandon Russell’s conviction and 20-year sentence for the Baltimore power grid conspiracy. Atomwaffen Division is “largely dismantled in the United States,” according to a January 2025 NCITE assessment—but its ideology persists through successor organizations, and its history reveals a pattern.
The ideological godfather of Atomwaffen, James Mason—author of Siege, the foundational text of accelerationist terror—has a documented history with minors. In 1992, he pleaded guilty in Ohio to illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material involving a 15-year-old and received a $500 fine. In 1994, charges involving a 14-year-old in Colorado were plea-bargained to weapons and menacing offenses—technically not a sex offense conviction, though the underlying conduct involved a child. He was released in August 1999. His last confirmed location was Denver government housing in 2019-2020; he is approximately 73 years old. Canada designated him individually as a terrorist entity in June 2021.
Mason announced Atomwaffen’s disbandment on March 14, 2020. The National Socialist Order formed as a direct successor on July 25, 2020. The UK, Canada, and Australia have designated Atomwaffen as a terrorist entity. The United States has not.
A footnote to the FBI’s infiltration of Atomwaffen: Joshua Caleb Sutter served as an FBI informant beginning in 2003, receiving over $140,000 in payments—$78,133 of it specifically for his work inside Atomwaffen. Sutter used FBI money to fund Martinet Press, which published literature promoting the Order of Nine Angles, an occult neo-Nazi network whose texts explicitly endorse terrorism, pedophilia, and human sacrifice.
The Base
The Base represents the most significant resurgence of any organization profiled here since its disruption in 2020. According to the Soufan Center, The Base is "currently experiencing a resurgence, particularly as the U.S. notably shifts its focus away from combatting far-right extremists and terrorists." The Guardian reported experts describe the group as seizing a "window of opportunity" with the new administration.
The organization is directed by Rinaldo Nazzaro, who resides in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he holds citizenship. Nazzaro’s background includes work as an FBI analyst, Pentagon contractor, and DHS employee from 2004 to 2006. He continues to direct international operations. In summer 2024, he recruited a new U.S.-based leader, offering a monthly salary. He also offered veterans $1,200 per month to train prospective members.
Operation White Phoenix—The Base’s Ukrainian branch—represents an unprecedented alignment between a U.S.-origin white supremacist organization and Russian geopolitical objectives. Between March and July 2025, the branch spray-painted its logo at over 100 sites across Ukraine and conducted 11 documented arson attacks. In July 2025, it claimed responsibility for the assassination of Colonel Ivan Voronych, a senior SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) officer, in Kyiv. Ukrainian intelligence subsequently killed the alleged hitmen—Azerbaijani nationals whom Ukraine claims were hired by the FSB. In February 2026, Operation White Phoenix claimed a car bombing in Odesa that killed a border service officer.
The Soufan Center’s assessment: “There is a strong chance this could very well be a Russian intelligence operation.”
In May 2025, The Base solicited cryptocurrency donations—Bitcoin, Monero, and Tether—for a “national training event.” Nazzaro claimed personal contributions exceeding $10,000.
The Base maintains two known U.S. properties. A 100-acre parcel in Silver Creek, Georgia, was owned by Luke Austin Lane, who was convicted for his Base activities; the property was not seized. A 30-acre property in Ferry County, Washington, was purchased in December 2018 by Base Global LLC; a 2024 job listing sought a candidate near Republic, Washington. Neither property has been subject to federal action.
The European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand have designated The Base as a terrorist organization. The United States has not—despite an American founder, American properties, and claimed assassinations conducted while operating under apparent Russian state direction.
Terrorgram Collective
Part 1 mentioned the Terrorgram designation and Dallas Humber’s 30-year sentence. What it didn’t explain is the legal gap in that designation.
On January 13, 2025—the last day significant federal action was taken against any organization profiled in this series and prior to Trump’s inauguration—the State Department designated the Terrorgram Collective as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under Executive Order 13224. Not as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The distinction matters legally. FTO designation under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act triggers the material support statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B—making it a federal crime to provide material support to the organization. SDGT designation primarily enables asset freezing and financial sanctions. The Terrorgram Collective is not listed among the 94 current Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Terrorgram’s publications include “Hard Reset,” a 261-page manifesto containing instructions for manufacturing napalm, thermite, chlorine gas, pipe bombs, and dirty bombs. The collective’s “sainthood” framework gamifies mass violence: saints calendars, trading cards with kill statistics, and a “high score” leaderboard.
The Minneapolis Annunciation Catholic Church shooting on August 27, 2025, was directly connected to this framework. Robin Westman, 23, killed two children and injured 21 others. He wrote “more than ten” on his magazines—a reference to the sainthood threshold for canonization.
A successor platform, FashFront Forum, emerged in mid-2025.
Regional Operations: NSC-131
NSC-131 has been “increasingly inactive since mid-2024,” according to ADL monitoring. The Massachusetts-based organization, with an estimated 30 to 40 members, has been the subject of a civil complaint filed by Attorney General Andrea Campbell in December 2023. The complaint alleges four disruptions of Drag Story Hour events, five or more migrant shelter protests, armed patrols, and civil rights violations. No official update on the case has been released beyond February 2025; a possible default may have occurred.
The organization merits inclusion for two reasons.
First, it illustrates organizational crossover. Founder Christopher Hood’s trajectory: Proud Boys, then Patriot Front (where he served as northeast regional director), then The Base (he appears in a 2019 vetting call), then NSC-131 (founded December 2019). Four organizations in sequence. The boundaries between groups are porous.
Second, NSC-131 provides documented cases for a pattern that emerges repeatedly across this network: members with histories involving children.
Andrew Hazelton groomed a 10-year-old on Instagram. When arrested, investigators found a folder on his phone labeled “1488”—the combined white supremacist numeric codes—containing dozens of videos depicting child sexual abuse. He was sentenced on January 28, 2022, to five years in federal prison. He is scheduled for release in early-to-mid 2027.
Stephen Thomas Farrea, a former Marine and prominent NSC-131 participant, was arrested in May 2024 for possession of child sexual abuse material. He had been active in the organization’s “PEDO SCUM OFF OUR STREETS” campaigns. On October 1, 2025, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to five years with 30 days to serve; the remainder was suspended with probation. He must register as a sex offender.
The Atlantic Nationalist Club has adopted “131” branding in Connecticut, suggesting the model—if not the specific organization—continues.
The Enforcement Vacuum
The 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment from the Department of Homeland Security states that the threat from racially motivated violent extremism “will remain high.” The document was released. The enforcement posture does not match the assessment.
The State Department has banned the term "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism"—and its acronyms "REMVE" and "RMVE"—from official communications. The GAO found that the FBI and DHS had not released their required fiscal year 2024 domestic terrorism assessment; as of January 2026, neither agency had provided information on the status of the next report.
The January 13, 2025, Terrorgram SDGT designation was the last significant federal action against any organization profiled here. It occurred on the final business day of the previous administration.
Consider the enforcement gaps:
Patriot Front operates a 124-acre paramilitary compound. No federal prosecution.
The Base maintains two U.S. properties and claims assassinations in Ukraine while directed from Russia. Neither property seized. No FTO or SDGT designation.
Matthew Belanger, the former Marine accused of authoring the “Rapekrieg” manifesto advocating mass rape as a weapon of racial terror and planning a Molotov cocktail attack on a Long Island synagogue, pleaded guilty to straw purchase firearms charges. He received time served—approximately 12 months of pretrial detention—plus three years supervised release. The manifesto content and synagogue plot were not charged. In October 2024, he petitioned for early termination of supervised release; the court denied the motion, but he remains free.
Enrique Tarrio was arrested in February 2025 for striking a counter-protester at a Capitol rally. The acting U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute.
Cryptocurrency flows to extremist groups totaled over $21 million between 2012 and 2024, according to Chainalysis. Average crypto deposits to European white supremacist accounts increased 270% between 2023 and 2024. The ADL tracked $6.2 million across 324 crowdfunding campaigns between 2016 and 2022. These financial networks remain largely undisrupted.
What This Means
This is infrastructure, not a catalog.
The organizations documented here are networked. They share personnel—Christopher Hood moved through four of them in sequence. They share tactics, targets, and increasingly, professional tradecraft. Half of Active Club chapters created since late 2023 are Youth Clubs. The overlap with federal agencies is not hypothetical. It is documented.
And the enforcement apparatus that might address it has been systematically disabled—by pardons, by terminology bans, by suppressed assessments, by prosecutors who decline to bring cases.
But it is not merely that enforcement has collapsed. It is that enforcement has been redirected.
On September 22, 2025, the administration signed an executive order designating “Antifa”—a decentralized movement, not an organization—as a domestic terrorist organization.
Four days later, on September 26, Patriot Front posted photographs from its first “National Conference” in Texas. Attendees included representatives from at least four countries. They wrote over 100 letters for an imprisoned Australian neo-Nazi.
Robert Rundo was present—under supervised release terms that required federal permission to leave California, barred association with RAM members, and prohibited contact with convicted felons without approval. Either his probation officer approved travel to a white supremacist conference in Texas, or Rundo violated multiple conditions of his release and no one has flagged it. No enforcement action was taken.
In Prairieland, Texas, eight protesters were convicted of material support for terrorism — for wearing black clothes to a noise demonstration outside an ICE detention facility. The Proud Boys, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy, have received no such designation. The Base, designated as a terrorist entity by the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, remains undesignated by the United States.
The infrastructure documented in this article operates in the open. The question is not whether the government sees it.
The question is what it has chosen to see instead.
Stewart Rhodes teaches classes on militia activation. He says the president can call them up.
The infrastructure is in place. The permission has been granted. What remains is the activation.
Next in The Shadow Republic: Part 3—The Training Grounds. Inside the paramilitary camps, tactical courses, and militia networks where these organizations prepare for violence.
Navigating Critical Resistance
Analyses - In-depth breakdowns examining the systems driving democratic collapse—exposing threats, tactics, and timelines to empower informed resistance.
Playbooks - Actionable strategic guides that directly respond to each analysis, providing comprehensive step-by-step resistance plans designed for immediate implementation.
Insights - Timely, targeted pieces highlighting critical events, emerging threats, and essential context—keeping you ahead of developments as they unfold.
Profiles – Investigative deep dives into the individuals driving America’s authoritarian shift—tracking how key figures build influence, shape institutions, and operate without public accountability.
Strategy - Concise tactical guides for active resistance in motion. These pieces distill complex threats into clear pressure points and practical actions—equipping you to disrupt systems, fracture narratives, and apply strategic force where it counts.
Subscriber Fee Transparency: Subscription fees directly support independent journalism, critical research, and resources for resistance.
Prefer a one-time support option?
Thank you as always for your tireless commitment to truth and revealing the underpinnings of "democracy."
I would like to recommend two items that were eye opening for me as a lifelong ancestral survivor of the Holocaust and current activist in California's Carceral system: Eric Lichtblau's "The Nazis Next Door" and this link to the KKK Oath -- which reads like Project 2025. I haven't yet seen major authors like yourself reference this Oath in terms of Miller and other white supremacists.
This movement is the basis of the carceral system, and if I had the chops I would write about it ... but right now I don't, so I am passing it on for your interest, if you have interest.
Thank you for all that you do - these are major works of major import. BLESS YOU!
https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/227kkkmanual.html
Note: 1) To unite white males 2) To create a brotherhood akin in race 3) Full Christian program of Jesus Christ 4) Protect the sanctity of the home ... etc.
Horrifying that they are being embraced by gop 🤬