MMA and Neo-Nazis
Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:23 am
A Russian neo-Nazi football hooligan is trying to build an MMA empire across Europe
Jul 26, 2018
The photograph looks like any typically awkward celebrity-fan encounter. A stocky, crew-cut man, his face locked in an obliging grin, plays along for the camera, flanked by two smiling admirers. Each has an arm draped around the man’s back, the other fist raised in the classic boxer’s pose.
You’d be forgiven if you don’t recognize the man in the middle: He’s not a pro-athlete, a movie star, or a musician. To most people, he’s virtually unknown. But for the two young Californians pictured on either side of him, who proudly posted the photo to their social media, there’s no question they’re in the presence of an idol: Denis Nikitin.
Nikitin is a feared Russian neo-Nazi, hooligan, MMA fighter, entrepreneur, and the kingpin of Europe’s extreme-right MMA scene, which analysts say is one of the most dangerous currents in the continent’s rising right-wing movement. And that’s precisely why the young men from California had flown across the Atlantic to meet him. They were on a pilgrimage to mix it up with some of the continent’s key far-right networks, with Nikitin as their guide.
“He seems to be connected in almost every European country through his fighting and hooligan activities,” Robert Claus, a far-right researcher based in Hannover, Germany, who has followed Nikitin’s rise closely, told VICE News.
The young Americans’ travels, documented extensively on social media, took them to a neo-Nazi mixed martial arts tournament in Germany; to a far-right fight club in Ukraine (its motto: “One of you is worth more than any number of them”); and in Rome, the headquarters of the far-right CasaPound movement, an organization that sees itself as the modern descendant of Benito Mussolini’s Fascists.
The trip, with its intimate look inside Europe’s far-right underground, was a highlight for the young Americans, but for Nikitin it was business as usual.
“He seems to be connected in almost every European country through his fighting and hooligan activities.”
Capitalizing on the growing popularity of mixed martial arts and its appeal to the far-right hooligan scene, Nikitin has steadily built a white nationalist MMA empire across Europe, with connections spanning from Russia to Britain. Nikitin’s network keeps expanding, analysts told VICE News, thanks in no small part to his shrewd use of social media and the appeal of his branded streetwear line, known as White Rex. In his rare interviews, Nikitin has outlined his ambitious vision for White Rex as an all-encompassing lifestyle brand — a sort of Nike for Nazis — that promotes his old, ugly ideology as something strong, healthy, and aspirational.
“His narrative is very violent, very explicitly neo-Nazi. He’s talking about the return of the white man, the ‘reconquista’ of the living space of the white man from refugees and immigrants,” Pavel Klymenko, a London-based researcher of far-right movements in the football scene, told VICE News.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/435 ... oss-europe
Germans too.
https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2018/6/14/1 ... ature-news
Jul 26, 2018
The photograph looks like any typically awkward celebrity-fan encounter. A stocky, crew-cut man, his face locked in an obliging grin, plays along for the camera, flanked by two smiling admirers. Each has an arm draped around the man’s back, the other fist raised in the classic boxer’s pose.
You’d be forgiven if you don’t recognize the man in the middle: He’s not a pro-athlete, a movie star, or a musician. To most people, he’s virtually unknown. But for the two young Californians pictured on either side of him, who proudly posted the photo to their social media, there’s no question they’re in the presence of an idol: Denis Nikitin.
Nikitin is a feared Russian neo-Nazi, hooligan, MMA fighter, entrepreneur, and the kingpin of Europe’s extreme-right MMA scene, which analysts say is one of the most dangerous currents in the continent’s rising right-wing movement. And that’s precisely why the young men from California had flown across the Atlantic to meet him. They were on a pilgrimage to mix it up with some of the continent’s key far-right networks, with Nikitin as their guide.
“He seems to be connected in almost every European country through his fighting and hooligan activities,” Robert Claus, a far-right researcher based in Hannover, Germany, who has followed Nikitin’s rise closely, told VICE News.
The young Americans’ travels, documented extensively on social media, took them to a neo-Nazi mixed martial arts tournament in Germany; to a far-right fight club in Ukraine (its motto: “One of you is worth more than any number of them”); and in Rome, the headquarters of the far-right CasaPound movement, an organization that sees itself as the modern descendant of Benito Mussolini’s Fascists.
The trip, with its intimate look inside Europe’s far-right underground, was a highlight for the young Americans, but for Nikitin it was business as usual.
“He seems to be connected in almost every European country through his fighting and hooligan activities.”
Capitalizing on the growing popularity of mixed martial arts and its appeal to the far-right hooligan scene, Nikitin has steadily built a white nationalist MMA empire across Europe, with connections spanning from Russia to Britain. Nikitin’s network keeps expanding, analysts told VICE News, thanks in no small part to his shrewd use of social media and the appeal of his branded streetwear line, known as White Rex. In his rare interviews, Nikitin has outlined his ambitious vision for White Rex as an all-encompassing lifestyle brand — a sort of Nike for Nazis — that promotes his old, ugly ideology as something strong, healthy, and aspirational.
“His narrative is very violent, very explicitly neo-Nazi. He’s talking about the return of the white man, the ‘reconquista’ of the living space of the white man from refugees and immigrants,” Pavel Klymenko, a London-based researcher of far-right movements in the football scene, told VICE News.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/435 ... oss-europe
Germans too.
https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2018/6/14/1 ... ature-news
