Belfast violence: What to know about the fascist youth groups known as 'active clubs'

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+ ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Hey there, Scott. DETROW: Let's start with these so-called active clubs. Tell us about them. YOUSEF: Active clubs are white nationalist groups. They are neo-Nazi young men, and they're part of a global network that's been growing quickly in recent years. They emphasize a shared interest in combat sports training. And the purpose of that, Scott, is to train to commit political violence. So now when it comes to the riots in Belfast, active clubs were on social media before and after those riots erupted, and they were highlighting a knife attack that took place in Belfast earlier this month. This was an attack against a white Northern Irish man by a Sudanese asylum seeker. And they were using it to justify collective punishment of ethnic minorities there. And a report in Wired suggested that they may even had orchestrated the street mobilizations. DETROW: Tell me what you found in your own reporting. YOUSEF: Well, so far, I haven't found evidence of that yet, Scott, but there is no doubt that the racial violence in Belfast was inspiring and invigorating to these groups. I spoke with Michael Colborne. He's been tracking active clubs for many years for Bellingcat, which is an investigative journalism group. MICHAEL COLBORNE: They saw masked young men committing political violence in a model that they promote themselves and that they would actually further like to emulate themselves. YOUSEF: And Colborne, you know, what he says is that he sees this rapid mobilization of rioters as something that really ties more directly to Northern Ireland's particular history. DETROW: Tell me more about that. YOUSEF: Well, Scott, for decades, you know, there was conflict in Northern Ireland over whether it should remain part of the U.K. This period is known as The Troubles. And so there is a history there of paramilitary mobilization and violence within certain parts of the population. I spoke to someone who's involved with a group called the Accountability Project, which monitors Northern Irish, far-right anti-immigrant networks on Facebook. She, like others in the group, asked that her name not be used in public reporting about their activities. But she told me that some of those paramilitary figures are active in anti-immigrant networks now. The thing is that the masked rioters who took to the streets this month in Belfast are a younger generation than that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I think the questions that come away from that is, are they connected to paramilitaries? Where's the link between the network that I - that we examine on social media, on Facebook, and the closed comm systems that are used to mobilize young people? YOUSEF: And by closed comms, Scott, she's talking about apps like Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. DETROW: I want to go back to something I mentioned in the intro, that the violence also drew the former head of the Proud Boys to visit Belfast. What's your understanding of why that is? YOUSEF: Right. So Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted and later pardoned by Trump for seditious conspiracy in relation to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, he was in Belfast last week. I spoke with him today. He told me that he was there making a documentary about why the stabbing attack set off violent riots. Tarrio told me that he doesn't condone the violence, but he also told me that he sees the violence as a natural and maybe justified reaction that some Northern Irish are having to a wave of immigration. He also, when we spoke, gave a pass to those in the anti-immigrant movement there who use slogans that are white nationalist. You know, Tarrio acknowledges a very different history between Northern Ireland and the U.S., but it's clear that he sees some similarities between the anti-immigrant sentiment there and the build the wall energy that he said Trump activated years ago in the United States. DETROW: NPR's Odette Yousef, thanks so much. YOUSEF: Thank you. Copyright &copy; 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. 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