Body, Battle, Brotherhood 2.0: The Organizational Logic of Active Clubs – An Exploratory Sequential Mixed-Methods Study on Far-Right Community Formation

Active Clubs represent a globally expanding form of right-wing extremism that combines militant neo-nazism with modern lifestyle aesthetics and combat sports. This study reconstructs the hidden organizational logic of this phenomenon, investigating whether a constitutive element exists that structurally synchronizes these local cells. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design—triangulating Grounded Theory, Topic Modelling (LDA), Social Network Analysis (SNA), and Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a corpus of N = 3 144 Telegram, podcast, and Substack entries was analyzed. The results reveal a significant evolution in right-wing extremist community building: Active Clubs adapt the tactic of "groupuscularization" but overcome its fragmentation through a rigid narrative framework. The SNA identifies "Militant Masculinity" as the exclusive structural bottleneck linking abstract ideology with concrete practice. Furthermore, the fsQCA proves the existence of an autonomous "lifestyle path," where the mere performance of aesthetic and combat-related codes is sufficient for radicalization, independent of traditional organizational ties. The study defines this mechanism as "White Nationalism 3.0, a somatization of ideology that constitutes a low-threshold "Camaraderie 2.0," posing novel challenges for prevention strategies.