The Low Countries File
The Low Countries File
Five nationalist fight clubs in the Netherlands. A Flemish club run by a former member of parliament. A youth group the Dutch security service calls far right. What a six-month undercover investigation found on both sides of the border.
In February 2024 four newsrooms published the results of six months spent inside the far-right fight clubs of the Netherlands and Belgium. Reporters trained in the gyms. They read along in the Telegram channels. They interviewed the officials whose job it is to watch these groups, and they came out with names, criteria, and a map of who talks to whom across the border.
What follows is that record, set down without commentary. The reading of it, against the 2021 film Je Suis Karl, runs as a separate essay; the wider international network, country by country, runs on The Maculate. This document is the evidence the other two rest on.
A six-month joint investigation (De Groene Amsterdammer, Bellingcat, and the Belgian weeklies Knack and Le Vif) built on undercover infiltration on both sides of the border. Reporters trained inside a Belgian club, read along in Telegram groups, and interviewed national-security officials. The Weerbaar members' names were fictionalised; their real identities were known to the editors. The framing throughout is Fight Club: the displaced young man offered belonging and a body in exchange for an ideology introduced only once he's too embedded to leave.
Belgium / Flanders: fighters already fused with the party
Belgium is the case where the fight club and the political party have effectively merged. The self-styled "eindbaas" (final boss) of the Flemish club Weerbaar is Dries Van Langenhove, former Vlaams Belang parliamentarian, founder of Schild & Vrienden, longstanding associate of Thierry Baudet. Since leaving national politics he has poured himself into the club, in Opwijk; several members are also active for Vlaams Belang, and a Dutchman recruited at a Forum voor Democratie event trains there too. Knack's Brecht Castel went undercover inside Weerbaar and described members steeped in conspiracy theories, flirting with Nazi symbolism and weapons, with a hardened hostility toward migrants, with experts warning of a real radicalisation risk. The context: Van Langenhove and six other Schild & Vrienden figures stood trial after a Pano exposé revealed thousands of racist, sexist, and Holocaust-denying messages; prosecutors sought two years, calling him the leader and instigator of a racist and negationist system.
The Netherlands: five clubs, and an intelligence warning
In the Netherlands the investigation identified at least five nationalist fight clubs, two flying the "Active Club" name directly. The AIVD has publicly warned about the growing international networks; one named Dutch group, Active Club Dietsland, marched in the Warsaw black bloc and sets membership criteria that read like parody until you realise they're sincere.
- Sober: no drinking, no smoking
- "White" of blood, mind, and soul
- Daily "self-improvement" / "self-purification"
- Trains in a combat sport (e.g. kickboxing)
- Holds a "pro-white" worldview
- Bonus: taller than 1.85 m, heavier than 80 kg
A TikTok listing these drew 12,000+ views; the January 2024 recruitment call was read 4,000 times in a day. Dutch clubs keep warm ties with Germany's Third Way, training ringside at its events; Leiden extremism scholar Jelle van Buuren notes the overlap with White Lives Matter and the way training doubles as preparation for an "inevitable" coming civil war.
Geuzenbond: the connective tissue
The Geuzenbond (founded 2018; NCTV-classified far-right) has perhaps twenty members but disproportionate reach. Chairman Thomas Deveson connects the Dutch and European scene, pushing "remigration," the forced ethnic "purification" of Europe, and networks with Patriot Front (US), Voorpost and Schild & Vrienden (Belgium), and Sellner's Action Radar Europe. In August 2025, a 24-year-old identifying as a member was arrested near Amsterdam on suspicion of preparing a right-wing terrorist offence and possessing firearms.
The Gelderland thread
The Geuzenbond is entangled with the GNSV, a nationalist student association operating on Dutch campuses: Leiden, Utrecht, and Radboud in Nijmegen. In April 2024, Omroep Gelderland reported the Radboud chapter, despite documented far-right ties, remained permitted to organise on university grounds. This is where the transnational abstraction touches an actual lecture hall in an actual Dutch province, and it runs through student politics.