Neo-Nazi Fight Club Accused of Trafficking Steroids Across State Lines
August 18, 2023It’s just like any other Tiktok unboxing video but instead of a pleasantly voiced influencer opening up the latest gadget, it features a pissed off neo-Nazi, drugs, and the possibility of doing major jail time.
In a video viewed by VICE News shared in a neo-Nazi group chat, an unseen man expresses disgust while unwrapping a package: “This is the package I was supposed to deliver to our EAC [Evergreen Active Club] guys in Idaho,” he said. “Let's look inside!”
The man throws a repackaged Amazon box onto a bed and uses a knife to open it up. Inside, he shows black athletic gear, and black sweatshirts punctuated with the logo for the Pacific Northwest neo-Nazi cell. But hiding underneath the clothing, he highlights some orange and white boxes, bags full of pills, and a freezer bag full of glass vials.
“Fucking steroids, dude. Fucking drugs,” the man says before pulling out a t-shirt from the bottom of the box. “Oh more evergreen merch buried by the drugs.”
This video could be some of the first evidence that these neo-Nazi fitness groups may be committing major crimes. The Evergreen Active Club is but one cell in an international network of neo-Nazi groups called Active Clubs that were formed around getting fit and training in martial arts. The Anti-Defamation League describes them as a “nationwide network of localized white supremacist crews” that “see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system.”
VICE News was able to identify some of the names of the drugs shown in the video and was able to confirm they are illegal steroids including dianabol and ZyhCG, a drug that increases testosterone production. VICE News was also able to identify bacteriostatic water which is used in steroid use to dilute the drug so it can be injected. Steroids are considered a Schedule III controlled substance in Idaho, meaning that bringing the drugs across state lines can result in five years in prison. The FBI told VICE News in an email they could neither confirm nor deny any investigation into the situation.
If you have any information regarding neo-Nazi organizing or active clubs, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to Mack Lamoureux via email at mack.lamoureux@vice.com or on Twitter at @macklamoureux.
The unboxing video was shared inside a Telegram group chat populated by Active Club leaders across the United States. Active Clubs are one of the fastest-growing neo-Nazi movements in America, with cells in almost every single state. The group can also be found in Canada, France, Australia, and Sweden and you can find an in depth breakdown of the network, how the cells form, and how they recruit and organize in this article. The network is deeply connected to other white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups like White Lives Matter, Patriot Front, and the Hammerskins, the latter of which have a history of crime.
The movement was founded by Robert Rundo, a prominent neo-Nazi with a history of violence, in 2021. Rundo was just extradited from Romania to the United States where he will be facing several conspiracies to riot charges he’s been running from for years.
The Evergreen Active Club is led by a man named Daniel Rowe, a violent neo-Nazi who spent four and a half years in prison for stabbing an interracial couple. A local anti-fascist writeup on Rowe reports that during his time incarcerated, he joined up with a neo-Nazi prison gang. Following his release from prison Rowe continued his racial activism and networking. This eventually led to him forming and leading the Evergreen Active Club in 2023 and becoming a prominent figure in the Pacific Northwest's white nationalist scene.
An antifascist known as FashFreeNW aided in the research of the article on Rowe. They spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity and said the Evergreen Active Club is one of the most connected to Hammerskins. “Those OG skinheads (the Hammerskins) have always been involved in drugs,” they told VICE News. “I’d guess that other (Active clubs) are also trafficking steroids… They certainly use them.”
Violent felons, such as Rowe, are prohibited from owning body armor in the United States, though images of Rowe wearing body armor and drinking beer have been posted on social media and Telegram.
Spanning across several states in the Pacific Northwest, the Evergreen Active Club is one of the more prominent cells in the country. Prolific in its actions, the group routinely can be found postering, banner drops, and showing up to LGBTQ+ events to intimidate protestors. In late 2022, his group organized an MMA tournament they dubbed the Martyrs Day Rumble. Held in a Pasco, Washington, event center on December 3, the “rumble” was in honor of neo-Nazi terrorist Robert Mathews whose group The Order left a bloody trail of crimes in the 1980s.
Physical activity and aesthetics are guiding tenets of Active Clubs (in addition to neo-Nazisim, of course), so the use of steroids by these neo-Nazis is not surprising. A source with knowledge of the inner workings of the network told VICE News that in some Active Clubs steroid use is accepted and encouraged, but the cells are relatively autonomous so it’s not consistent across the board.
Many neo-Nazis have been connected to steroids in the past: Anders Breivik, the neo-Nazi terrorist who killed 77 people in a horrific attack in 2011, wrote in his diary that aspiring mass murderers should begin doing steroids six weeks before their massacre. Christopher Hasson, a member of the coast guard, was arrested and charged with plotting a domestic terrorist attack in 2017. When police raided his home they found not only a trove of neo-Nazi memorabilia but also a container with over 30 vials of human growth hormone. Justen Watkins, a leader of the neo-Nazi terror cell the Base, who was just sentenced to years in prison for multiple charges related to his time in the Base was also charged with having methandienone, an illegal anabolic steroid.
Kris Goldsmith, the CEO of Task Force Butler, a non-profit that gives veterans open-source intelligence tools to combat hate, told VICE News he’s not at all surprised by the steroid use. Task Force Butler just investigated a New England Nazi group and found that one of their more prominent members was juicing. Goldsmith said he’s also heard of several neo-Nazi influencers pushing their followers to juice,even at times giving instructions on podcasts.
"They're all small, insecure men who make a lifestyle out of tormenting others because they're just so insecure with themselves,” said Goldsmith.
Goldsmith said he hopes the news of the Active Club's seeming involvement in moving drugs will push the authorities to take action, adding that “motorcycle gangs started getting treated like gangs” only after law enforcement realized they were involved in drug running.
“When cops start to realize, 'Oh, well, you know, in order for these guys to be all jacked up on steroids, they’ve got to be getting it from somewhere. And more likely that they're getting it from their friends who they trust, wearing the same colors,’ so it's time to start treating active clubs like a gang,” said Goldsmith.
“Hopefully it'll help law enforcement with their shift in the way that they need to start thinking about these Nazi gangs and recognize that they meet the statutory definition of gang. And just because they're white and they call themselves NSC-131, it doesn't mean they're different from MS-13,” he added, referencing the international gang started in Los Angeles by Salvadoran immigrants.
Beyond this unboxing video, Active Clubs like Evergreen have recently experienced a few embarrassing incidents.
In June, a smattering of EAC neo-Nazis gathered at a Pride event in Lewis County, Washington, to attempt to intimidate LGBTQ activists. It quickly turned south for the racists when a neo-Nazis was challenged to a push-up contest and was thoroughly destroyed by one of the Pride attendees on video. At one point as the neo-Nazi's pushups slowed dramatically, the LGBTQ supporter decided to rub it in with a few clapping push-ups.
Just a few weeks later, the Rose City Nationalists, a group that was closely connected to the Evergreen Active Club through a now-defunct neo-Nazi network called 3N, were assaulted and chased off by Proud Boys at an event—something that led to a nationwide schism between the far-right groups.
But despite the embarrassing videos, the infighting, and possible drug running, the Active Clubs are only growing. Odds are incidents like the one in the "neo-Nazi unboxing gone wrong" are going to become more and more frequent.