Missouri Minutemen and white nationalist Active Club learning from each other

A militia organizing in Missouri as modern-day minutemen has adopted a model of networking closely with white nationalist Active Clubs, providing a template for collaboration between such groups across the nation.

Mid Missouri Minutemen (MMM) is a militia in the area surrounding Jefferson City. Its popular Telegram channel has become a place for its members to network with other hard-right groups, including Active Clubs (ACs), a notable collaboration between such groups. Both the minutemen militias and ACs consist of small, local, semi-autonomous groups connected via social media. While the minutemen have presented themselves as benign preparedness groups, the Missouri militia has regularly communicated and recruited in tandem with an AC.

Militia and white nationalist movements have a shared history, but in the past two decades it has become more difficult to find them openly working together. Cooperation between local groups from different ideological movements is dangerous because it effectively boosts numbers of like-minded members for each cause.

Groups within these movements still share many common perceived enemies — Jewish people, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. This mutual hate and the corresponding belief in conspiracy theories provide the opportunity for cooperation. These groups, then, can coalesce to confront a common enemy and leave more difficult ideological differences by the wayside. Renewed cooperation between these movements could strengthen the hard right in a new political era.

In the early 1990s, many of the founders and framers of the militia movement had histories with the hardcore white nationalist movement. This included a significant number that followed Christian Identity, a virulently racist and antisemitic religious movement teaching that Jewish people are the literal children of Satan and that people of color are subhuman.

These early founders recognized the limitations of working within the white nationalist framework. While keeping the antisemitic one-world government conspiracy theories of the white nationalist movement, they tried to mask overt racism and antisemitism by focusing on issues like gun rights, opposition to taxes and property rights. This was done purposely so the militia movement could work with the mainstream conservative movement. The minutemen and Active Club collaboration signals a localized resurfacing of this cooperation.

The importance of social media at the local level

In recent years, numerous small, local militias have sprouted up under the moniker of “minutemen,” a callback to the minutemen regiments of the American Revolution. Minutemen groups operate in plain sight while framing themselves as self-styled preparedness groups supposedly training to help their communities as disaster response teams. This changes when looking into their online footprints, which can reveal them invoking violence against perceived enemies.

In an Instagram post telling followers to prepare for a fight against sleeper cells, rioters and militants burning homes, Ohio-based River Valley Minutemen member Jeremy Daugherty wrote, “You better find the stomach now to be violent.” A Colorado-based militia reacted to a proposed state ban on assault weapons by posting that its passage would cause war.

Social media is an integral part of how both Active Clubs and minutemen militias spread their influence, recruit and communicate with other groups. These groups and their members will often tag one another in posts, sharing notices about training events, photos, tips and conspiratorial media. While not directly part of the minutemen network, militia influencer Reaper Consultation illustrates this activity with its quarterly “Find Your Tribe” posts, which encourage followers to highlight active militias by state. The channel’s most recent Find Your Tribe post included more than 30 comments from people in Texas. While not all states listed included replies, Missouri had five comments from interested prospects. Social media accounts like Reaper Consultation allow for different groups to connect and train with one another on the ground, effectively creating a nationwide network of militias.

In contrast, ACs share material from movement leader Robert Rundo, who has built an aesthetic around mixed martial arts and fitness. The groups’ aim is to build a hypermasculine white nationalist subculture with a clear “nationalist” aesthetic that Rundo promotes through an associated clothing brand and propaganda outlet.

The organizational structure of minutemen militias is like that of white nationalist ACs — loose networks of small groups that are interconnected by a larger movement. Much like Active Clubs, minutemen militias are independent but will use the same symbols and base their training on the same materials across the militia groups.

The local structure of both groups poses a danger to communities, especially in times of disaster. Multiple militias descended on western North Carolina after 2024’s Hurricane Helene, ostensibly to help provide aid to those affected while also sharing dangerous disinformation about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response. Antigovernment conspiracy theories included claims that North Carolina was targeted by a government weather weapon, causing FEMA and National Guard personnel to stop relief efforts in certain areas for fear of their safety. River Valley Minutemen claimed to have both raised money and transported goods to impacted areas. These efforts reinforced militia claims of being community-focused and helped them try to gain traction with locals.

Active Clubs also mobilized after Hurricane Helene to engage with communities on the ground, seizing an opportunity to spread their white nationalist beliefs. In an interview with a white nationalist podcast, a member of the Ohio Active Club detailed his time volunteering. He referred to local first responders as “scum of the earth” and said he saw a “lot of revolutionary potential” for recruiting victims to their white nationalist cause.  

Mid Missouri Minutemen and Heartland Active Club

Mid Missouri Minutemen’s Telegram channel is larger than most other minutemen groups’ social media, with over 1,200 followers. The channel features a litany of antigovernment conspiracy theories, including advocating violence against United Nations observers, violence against minorities and armed revolution. MMM members also appear to have a more explicit white nationalist ideology than similar minutemen groups, with members sharing neo-Nazi memes, including one with the phrase, “GAS THE K-‑-‑-‑- RACE WAR NOW.”

The channel is also a place for members to discuss their beliefs and connect with other hard-right groups, including ACs. Since 2023, the account Prairie Nationalist, the leader of the Kansas City, Missouri-based Heartland Active Club and a self-proclaimed former Marine, has been active in the MMM channel — once posting that, in response to being called a Nazi, “I guess they turned out to be right.” Prairie Nationalist has ingratiated himself within MMM, having the ability to add or remove followers.

The interaction between MMM and Heartland Active Club also aids both groups’ ability to recruit new members. Both minutemen and ACs often have a region where they are active, requiring members to live nearby. In April 2024, Prairie Nationalist, along with another member of the MMM channel, recommended that a new recruit meet and train in person with the Heartland Active Club since he lived outside the area of MMM operations. The recruit indicated he would “join up and see the goings on” of the Active Club. While these groups’ localized structure can make it harder to find new members, the networks they have built make it easier to connect people with groups closer to them geographically.

These smaller cells help followers position themselves as regular community members while secretly harboring extremist beliefs. MMM is no different. Southern Poverty Law Center researchers identified one MMM member as a state employee who is also a Telegram channel administrator for MMM. On social media, he has espoused antisemitic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs. An advocate for homeschooling, he claimed that “kids are being brainwashed by f-‑-‑-‑-‑-‑-.”

Online communication evolved into similar training tactics for MMM and the Heartland Active Club. An April post by Prairie Nationalist announced a long-distance hike with guns and gear, inviting MMM channel members to reach out to him for the location. A post uploaded to the Active Club channel after the event noted “Heartland men” participated in a hike. Images showed participants holding up a flag for the Active Club and dressed in military camouflage. This is a departure from the aesthetic of similar ACs. Guns-and-gear hiking is the norm for militias like MMM, but not for Active Clubs, which focus almost exclusively on fitness around mixed martial arts training. In Missouri, coordination between these groups of different movements appears to go beyond recruitment of new members to also include sharing training strategies and tactics.

Cooperation between MMM and the Heartland Active Club gives both groups ample opportunity to learn from one another and adopt elements they find attractive to their own strategies. This can take the form of how groups train, recruit and share their beliefs.

Image at top: Photo illustration by Joan Wong; source photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images