Within an hour after a horrific knife attack took place in Belfast on Monday night, far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson had shared a video of the incident on X, a post that racked up six million views. Within hours Elon Musk, the owner of the platform, weighed in, agreeing with a post calling for “consequences” for politicians.
By Tuesday morning, supercharged by X, the video was everywhere, and groups on Facebook were organizing protests across Northern Ireland and the UK. Far-right figures in the US and UK continued to pour fuel on the fire online, framing the incident as part of a broader anti-white agenda being perpetrated in Western countries.
By Tuesday evening, violent protests had broken out in Belfast, with masked rioters setting fire to vehicles, kicking in the doors of homes they believed housed immigrants, and setting those homes on fire.
Politicians were quick to criticize Musk and Robinson, who did not reply to requests for comment, for their role in fomenting the violence, but what no one appeared to notice was the role played by the white supremacist Active Club movement and its Youth Club wing in not only stoking tensions, but advising and orchestrating the masked youths who spearheaded much of the violence.
A WIRED investigation has documented how this global network activated within hours of the incident, showing how groups across the US helped promote the violence in Belfast. The movement is already analyzing how the protests played out and using them as a template for others to follow, highlighting the “organisation and professionalism” of those involved.
"Active Clubs, the fastest growing neo-Nazi movement around the globe, never miss an opportunity to exploit a tragedy for their own hateful purposes,” says Wendy Via, cofounder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “The protests in Belfast had hardly started before Active Club senior voices were functioning as a support network for the racist riots and encouraging replication in other countries.”
Around 10:30 pm local time on Monday night, emergency services were called to the Kinnaird Avenue area in north Belfast. Soon after, a video was shared online by an unknown person which showed a horrific knife attack against Stephen Ogilvie, who was left hospitalised with severe injuries to the face and neck, including the loss of his left eye.
Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese man, was arrested at the scene and has since been charged with attempted murder.
After Robinson posted the footage, it quickly gained steam on mainstream social media platforms. US-based X account End Wokeness, which specializes in sharing culture war and ragebait content, shared a screenshot from the video, with the caption: “African migrant just tried to behead a white man in North Belfast, Ireland. Video is too graphic to post.” The post has been viewed over 16M times.
Musk posted dozens of times about the incident in the following days, drawing the ire of politicians in the UK, but away from mainstream platforms like X and Facebook, other groups were also mobilizing and being much more explicit about the reason they believed a strong response was necessary.
Just hours after the attack took place, at 2:19 am on Tuesday morning, a Telegram channel called “White Youth In Revolt”—named after a phrase used across the Active Club and Youth Club movements—shared a screenshot of the video, writing: “Negro invader just attempted to behead a white man in the United Kingdom.”
The account typically shares content from Active Clubs in the US, but given the network’s growing footprint outside of America, it has a lot of followers in Europe.
“To the men of the UK: you must harden yourselves and work together,” the post continued. “Make them terrified they are trapped on an island with you. Reignite your flame.”
In an echo of the infamous 14 words, the group wrote: “Reclaim your homeland and secure a future for white youth. These third-worldist acts of violence cannot continue to take place on our streets.”
Protests were being organized from early on Tuesday morning on other platforms, notably Facebook, and at 11:37 am on Tuesday morning, the Telegram channel of the Northern Irish branch of the active club movement, known as the Ulster Youth Club, advised those protesting to protect their identities. “It is also advisable to protect your identity while attending in case left wing agitators such as antifa attempt a dox campaign as has happened in the past.”
The group warned against criminal activity but wrote that “anger is the only acceptable response to a Somali nearly beheading a fellow European in our capital city.” (The police initially identified the suspect as being from Somalia before later confirming he was originally from Sudan).
The post ended with the words “FOLK FAMILY FUTURE,” a well-known rallying cry among extremist groups the world over
At 12:27 pm the Ulster Youth Club shared the White Youth in Revolt post and two minutes later shared a video first posted by Active Club Finland, This video shows how members should dress when attending protests, including the use of masks, gloves and nondescript clothing. It followed up with another post, writing: “Once again DON’T BREAK THE LAW!”
At 12:47 pm, the group shared even more explicit advice: “No smartphones. No smartwatches. No jewellery. Hats. Gloves. Cover up tattoos. ‘Citizen journalists’ explicitly [sic] not welcome.“ Just after 2 pm, the group shared a post promoting dozens of protests across the UK and Northern Ireland. The post includes the line: “White man, Fight Back!”
At the same, Will2Rise, a hate group founded by Robert Rundo, who also founded the Active Club network, published a newsletter framing the incident in explicitly racist terms with the headline: “White Man Saved by Fellow White Men from Attempted Decapitation in Belfast.” The post continues: “We must be unrelenting in our push for remigration on the cultural level, while we also push ourselves as hard as we can in order to be larger, stronger; more capable in self-defence, more assertive in the prevention of migrant violence, and more tribal-minded.”
Remigration is the racist, far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations which has been embraced by the Trump administration.
Hours later, hordes of young masked men, dressed in the exact clothing suggested by the Ulster Youth Club, were captured on video marching through Belfast. The videos show the groups kicking in the doors of buildings and stopping vehicles.
Will2Rise shared a picture of masked young men in Belfast, writing: “Around 250 armed young white men patrolled the streets, banned phones and filming, and blocked firefighters from putting out the fires they had started. This White boy summer is going to be hot out.”
“The transgressions of our enemies are piled upon them as a funeral pile that will inevitably be lit,” the Ulster Youth Club group wrote in its Telegram channel at 11:14 pm that night.
On Thursday morning, as buildings and vehicles still smoldered in Belfast, members of the Active Club movement were already conducting a postmortem of the activities of the night before, concluding that overall, it had been a massive success.
In another Substack post, the Will2Rise author compares the tactics and methods used during the Belfast riots with the protests in Southampton the previous week in response to the death of Henry Nowak.
“When we compare the Southampton protests to the Northern Ireland protests there is a clear distinction in organisation and professionalism,” the author wrote. “Irish protesters didn’t just stick together when confronting a [police] line; they stuck together throughout the entire evening’s movement and ensured their ranks were tight. In addition, they policed their own ranks and conducted phone searches on both their own and the opportunist videographers to maintain OPSEC by deleting any footage captured that would result in later identification.”
