White Nationalist 'Youth Clubs' Targeting Young Men Have Expanded Beyond US

TLDR

• Youth chapters of white nationalist Active Clubs have been proliferating across the US since approximately 2023.

• In Oct. 2025, the first Telegram channel for a Youth Club outside of the US was created, catering to UK-based young men. 

• The Youth Club Telegram channels with the most subscribers were United Youth, the umbrella channel for the US, and the California and Atlantic chapters. 

• Youth Club Telegram channels are largely a self-contained ecosystem, with channels frequently forwarding messages into one another; when these messages were forwarded elsewhere, it was largely by Telegram channels of adult Active Clubs. 

• Our research found a handful of instances of in-person meetups between members of Youth Clubs and adult Active Clubs.

Introduction 

White nationalist youth Active Clubs — or “Youth Clubs” — are proliferating on Telegram. Our investigation identified 20 total Youth Clubs covering various parts of the United States as well as a channel for a Youth Club in the UK. Our research showed that Youth Clubs on Telegram are largely self-contained ecosystems which often amplify messages among themselves. There is, however, some interaction, both online and offline, between Youth Clubs and adult chapters of Active Clubs, as well as other far-right channels. 

What are Active Clubs? 

The Active Club movement, which originated in 2020, is a global and decentralized network of white supremacist groups, with notable presences in the US and Europe as well as Canada. Active Clubs have a strong focus on fitness and martial arts, offering training sessions as a recruitment strategy and as a frequent and prominent topic in their propaganda. These training sessions are deeply tied to the groups’ rhetoric and ideology, which frames the modern world as degenerate and effeminate. In contrast, Active Clubs extoll hyper-masculinity through fitness as resistance in and of itself, as well as a necessity for white men (enabling them, as needed, to defend their families and the white race). 

Since its inception, the global network of Active Clubs has grown continuously through a shared organizing principle that any group of white men can create their own chapter, without the need for approval from any form of centralized leadership. However, all Active Clubs use highly consistent branding in their propaganda and frequently promote posts from other groups in the network.

In early 2025, youth versions of Active Clubs — or “Youth Clubs” — emerged in various regions of the United States. These chapters recruit individuals under the age of 18 through propaganda campaigns promoting workout sessions and other social events.¹ Describing themselves as [sic] “white-nationalist, fascist, and anti-Semitic,” youth chapters are often more extreme and explicit in their rhetoric than some adult Active Clubs, which tend to moderate their public posts to avoid attracting attention. 

In mid-October, a Telegram channel for a UK-based Youth Club went online — the first channel of its kind that our researchers identified as operating outside of the United States. 

Youth Active Clubs on Telegram

Over the course of our investigation, we identified Telegram channels associated with 20 Youth Clubs: 18 for specific regions of the US, one an umbrella organization for all of the US, and one in the UK. Like adult Active Clubs, these groups explicitly state which locales they serve and use the phrase “youth club” in their name and branding, with channel names such as “New England Youth Club.”

The Telegram channel serving as an umbrella account for US Youth Clubs is named “United Youth” and contains a directory of sorts, listing 15 other Youth Clubs:

1. New England Youth Club

2. Atlantic Youth Club

3. Chesapeake Youth Club

4. Carolinas Youth Club

5. Deep South Youth Club

6. Lone Star Youth Club

7. Heartland Youth Club

8. Midwest Youth Club

9. Great Lakes Youth Club

10. Great Plains Youth Club

11. Rocky Mountain Youth Club

12. Sagebrush Youth Club

13. South West Youth Club

14. Pacific Northwest Youth Club

15. Kalifornian Nationalist Youth

Our researchers also uncovered three additional Telegram channels, which appeared to be associated with US-based Youth Clubs:

1. “Pennsylvania AYC Updates,” which seems to be a subgroup of “Atlantic Youth Club”

2. “Great Plains Youth Club,” listed by United Youth and using the handle @greatplainsyouth, appears to have been superseded by another Telegram channel of the same name, using the handle @GPYouth

3. “Sunshine State Youth Club,” a channel which went online on Oct. 14, 2025 (and is not listed in the United Youth directory, likely due to its recent inception)

We also found references to six additional Youth Club-linked Telegram channels that appear to have been removed or otherwise no longer exist:

1. North Florida Youth Club

2. South Florida Youth Club

3. Deseret Youth Club

4. SplitRiverYC

5. FrontierYouth

6. DeepSouthYouth (a distinct channel from the Deep South Youth Club listed earlier)

The currently-online, location-specific Youth Clubs we identified represent all but two states: Hawaii and West Virginia. It also appears that Telegram channels associated with chapters in Louisiana and Mississippi did once exist, though those channels have since disappeared.

On Oct. 14, 2025, the channel “Albion Youth Club,” catering towards young men in the UK, went online — the first Youth Club our researchers have identified from outside the United States.

Caption: The first post from Albion Youth Club, explaining their inspiration from US-based Youth Clubs — included is a variation of the white nationalist Celtic Cross, a symbol widely used by Active Clubs.

Analysis

For this report, we investigated the United Youth umbrella channel, the 15 online channels listed by United Youth, the Pennsylvania AYC Updates channel, the GPYouth channel, the Sunshine State Youth Club channel, and the Albion Youth Club (a total of 20 channels). 

The full query we used in our investigation was:

username:("NewEnglandYouth" OR "AtlanticYouth" OR "ChesapeakeYouth" OR "CarolinasYouth" OR "DeepSouthYC" OR "AlamoYouth" OR "HeartlandYouth" OR "midwestyouth" OR "GreatLakesYouth" OR "greatplainsyouth" OR "rockymountainsyouth" OR "SagebrushYouth" OR "SouthWestYouth" OR "PacificNorthwestYouth" OR "KaliNatYouth" OR "UnitedYouthXIV" OR "AtlanticYouthPA" OR "GPYOUTH" OR “sunshineyouthxiv” OR “albionyouthclub”)

Subscribers

The number of subscribers for these various Youth Club Telegram channels varies widely. The largest we identified was United Youth, with over 1,000 subscribers at the time of writing. United Youth appears to be the nationwide umbrella organization for Youth Clubs. 

The largest regional chapters were the California chapter Kalifornian Nationalist Youth and the Atlantic Youth Club (covering New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). While each of these had roughly 400 members, many of the channels are significantly smaller. Of the remaining 17 channels, the average number of subscribers was ~76; the smallest channel we surveyed had 11 subscribers. 

To visualize this, we created a chart looking at the participantscount field for our 20 channels of interest. The participantscount field tells us the number of participants — or subscribers — to any Telegram channel. 

Caption: Number of subscribers to each of 20 Youth Club Telegram channels that we identified. Each bar represents one Telegram channel. Graphic created using Flourish.

Timeline 

Of the Youth Clubs that we identified, the first of the still-existing channels came online in Feb. 2025. Using Open Measures’ Timeline feature to visualize these 20 channels’ activity throughout 2025, we found that the volume of messages posted on these channels has steadily increased.

Caption: Posts per month for the 20 Youth Club Telegram channels, from Jan. 2025 through Nov. 2025. 

It is almost certain that at least some of these Telegram channels have previously existed in some form. For instance, on Feb. 24, 2025, the channel Kalifornian Nationalist Youth posted their first message, indicating that Telegram had banned their prior channel the night before in a “massive ban wave which took down tons [of] pro-White . . . channels.”

Caption: The first message posted in the Kalifornian Nationalist Youth Telegram channel in Feb. 2025.

We were interested in learning more about when these Youth Club channels were created. From previous investigations, we knew that the first Telegram message indexed for each channel corresponded to the moment a channel went online.

Sometimes, the operators of these channels posted text immediately; in other cases, channels were online for a few days before there was any activity. For instance, New England Youth Club went online Feb. 21 but did not post their first message until Feb. 25, 2025. In contrast, the Kalifornian Nationalist Youth Telegram channel, seen in the screenshot above, posted immediately when their channel came online. 

Below is a table showing the dates and times that various Youth Club channels went online: 

This data shows instances of Youth Club Telegram channels being created in clusters. Notably, eight Youth Club Telegram channels were created within days of each other in Feb. 2025, and the Sunshine State Youth Club and Albion Youth Club channels were created within an hour of each other in Oct. 2025. This activity could suggest that, despite the decentralized nature of Youth Clubs, there may be some coordination behind the creation of their associated channels. 

Forwarding Data 

To better understand how Youth Clubs fit into the larger ecosystem of international Active Clubs and other American far-right activity on Telegram, we examined how the messages posted by the 20 Youth Clubs we identified were forwarded into other Telegram channels of interest. 

Telegram channels with similar viewpoints regularly amplify one another by forwarding each others’ messages between channels. For example, Telegram channel A might publish a post that Telegram channel B perhaps agrees with or finds interesting. The operator of Telegram channel B may then forward the post from Telegram channel A into their own channel (channel B). Looking at this forwarding activity can give researchers insights into how various Telegram channels interact with one another. 

Examining Origin Channels of Forwarded Messages

There are many ways to track these forwards using Open Measures’ Telegram datasets. One such way is by looking at the forwardfromchat.username field. This field tells us a forwarded message’s channel of origin.

Expanding on our earlier example where Telegram channel A’s content was forwarded into Telegram channel B, the forwardfromchat.username would identify channel A. This field thus allows us to examine which Telegram channels within the Open Measures dataset forwarded messages from the 20 Youth Clubs channels we identified.

Youth Club to Youth Club Activity

Using the forwardfromchat.username field in the Open Measures Activity tool, we used the following advanced search string to find results from Jan. 1 through Nov. 30, 2025: 

forwardfromchat.username:("NewEnglandYouth" OR "AtlanticYouth" OR "ChesapeakeYouth" OR "CarolinasYouth" OR "DeepSouthYC" OR "AlamoYouth" OR "HeartlandYouth" OR "midwestyouth" OR "GreatLakesYouth" OR "greatplainsyouth" OR "rockymountainsyouth" OR "SagebrushYouth" OR "SouthWestYouth" OR "PacificNorthwestYouth" OR "KaliNatYouth" OR "UnitedYouthXIV" OR "AtlanticYouthPA" OR "GPYOUTH" OR “sunshineyouthxiv” OR “albionyouthclub”)

Caption: The top 15 channels that forwarded content originating from one of the 20 Youth Club Telegram channels we identified.

Unsurprisingly, we found that the Youth Clubs we identified primarily forwarded content from other identified Youth Clubs. This shows us that these groups, while decentralized, still interface with and support one another (and that when it comes to forwarding information, they are largely a self-contained ecosystem). 

Youth Club to Non-Youth Club Activity

We were also interested in which channels forwarded content from Youth Club channels that were not Youth Club channels themselves. We examined this by refining our previous query and adding:

AND NOT channelusername:[all youth clubs]

Below is the resulting search string: 

forwardfromchat.username:("NewEnglandYouth" OR "AtlanticYouth" OR "ChesapeakeYouth" OR "CarolinasYouth" OR "DeepSouthYC" OR "AlamoYouth" OR "HeartlandYouth" OR "midwestyouth" OR "GreatLakesYouth" OR "greatplainsyouth" OR "rockymountainsyouth" OR "SagebrushYouth" OR "SouthWestYouth" OR "PacificNorthwestYouth" OR "KaliNatYouth" OR "UnitedYouthXIV" OR "AtlanticYouthPA" OR "GPYOUTH" OR “sunshineyouthxiv” OR “albionyouthclub”) AND NOT channelusername:("NewEnglandYouth" OR "AtlanticYouth" OR "ChesapeakeYouth" OR "CarolinasYouth" OR "DeepSouthYC" OR "AlamoYouth" OR "HeartlandYouth" OR "midwestyouth" OR "GreatLakesYouth" OR "greatplainsyouth" OR "rockymountainsyouth" OR "SagebrushYouth" OR "SouthWestYouth" OR "PacificNorthwestYouth" OR "KaliNatYouth" OR "UnitedYouthXIV" OR "AtlanticYouthPA" OR "GPYOUTH" OR “sunshineyouthxiv” OR “albionyouthclub”) 

Caption: The top 15 non-Youth Club Telegram channels that forwarded content that originated in one of the 20 Youth Club Telegram channels we identified.

From these results, we can see that many — though not all — of the non-Youth Club Telegram channels forwarding Youth Club-originated messages are adult Active Clubs. More specifically, the official New England Active Club channel forwarded content from Youth Clubs over 30 times, the Pennsylvania and Pacific Northwest Active Clubs forwarded Youth Club content more than 10 times, and many other adult Active Clubs occasionally forwarded Youth Club content as well. 

Apart from Active Club Telegram channels, other Telegram channels that forwarded content from Youth Clubs included various iterations of the frequently-banned white nationalist channel “The Western Chauvinist” and the youth chapter of Patriot Front (@patriotyouth2). These results give us a sense of which adult-centered Telegram channels are paying attention to the Youth Clubs (possibly as potential future targets for recruitment, for example). 

Offline Interactions

While adult Active Clubs may not significantly interact with Youth Clubs online, our researchers found multiple instances of real-life meetups between Youth Clubs and adult Active Clubs through photos shared on Telegram. For instance, on Oct. 6, 2025, the Chesapeake Youth Club channel posted a photo of four individuals posing with a Chesapeake Youth Club flag and stating that the Youth Club had “met up and trained” with Chesapeake Active Club.

Caption: Post from Chesapeake Youth Club indicating that they have had in-person meetups with the Chesapeake Active Club.

Our researchers found several other similar examples throughout this investigation. 

Conclusion 

While Youth Clubs, like all Active Clubs, are nominally decentralized, our examination into when various Youth Club channels were created raises questions about background coordination between these groups. As evidenced by photos of in-person meetups between Youth Clubs and adult Active Clubs we found on Telegram, this online interest has already spilled over into the offline world.

The forwarding activity between Youth Club channels and other Telegram channels illustrates that these groups are largely self-contained (i.e., Youth Club channels primarily share messages with other Youth Club channels). However, the non-Youth Club channels forwarding messages from Youth Clubs were often from other adult Active Clubs (and sometimes other far-right accounts), indicating these groups’ interest in Youth Club activities.

The proliferation of Youth Clubs in the US — and their expansion into the UK, with the recent creation of Albion Youth Club — raises concerns about the free spread of white nationalist ideology targeting young men. Our research thus far suggests that we will continue to see new Youth Clubs spun up across the US and around the world (as adult Active Clubs already exist in various countries). Given these groups' extremist and potentially violent ideologies, Open Measures will continue to monitor these trends in the interest of public safety.