Second Sons Canada, the group whose masked members held a "Got bones?" banner over the Trans-Canada Highway near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on 27 September, sent members to Texas in March to train with an American fight club, compete at a tournament run by the white nationalist group Patriot Front and pose in a Patriot Front clubhouse beside Robert Rundo, the convicted American who built the active club movement. Its founder, Jeremy MacKenzie, wrote on X on 28 September 2025: "Arm up now, as fast and as much as possible."

An internal Public Safety Canada brief says the active club movement poses a risk of "extreme violence" in Canada. It counts more than 30 of over 200 known chapters worldwide in Canada and says Second Sons, a similar far-right group, has more than 15.

MacKenzie wrote on X on 4 June 2025: "Its war or you accept being subjugated and replaced by india. Those are your real options, Canada ... Arm up while you can, however you can." Canada's Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre named MacKenzie in February 2022 as one of the key ideologically motivated violent extremist adherents at the Ottawa convoy protests.

Kamloops RCMP are investigating the 27 September march under file 26-32569. Supt. Jeff Pelley said the banner, displayed by men who hid their faces, was "a cowardly attempt to avoid accountability" for messages meant to intimidate. Prime Minister Mark Carney said the "cowardly act" was "abhorrent" and had "no place in this country". MacKenzie replied on X two days later: "Thank you for confirming that an honest question is considered 'hate' by Ottawa."

Fort Worth, March 2026

Second Sons members trained with the Lone Star Active Club at a commercial gym in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and at a private facility the club uses, then travelled with it to American Muscle 2, a combat sports tournament Patriot Front organised at Dixie Republic, a Confederate merchandise store in Travelers Rest, S.C. Second Sons members competed. Michigan's Great Lakes Active Club posted photos of its members with the Canadians holding an Alberta flag. Patriot Front wrote that it is "dedicated to the reconquest of the nation", and its website says: "Our nation is European in racial character."

Rundo appears in a photo of three men in Second Sons gear posted by the Texas club. The photo was taken in a Patriot Front clubhouse in a Fort Worth suburb, in a home owned by a known Patriot Front figure; the man's watch and the position of a Sonnenrad tattoo on his elbow match Rundo's. The trip was the first time Second Sons had shared images of members travelling to the US.

Rundo is on supervised release. He pleaded guilty in September 2024 to conspiring to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act, admitting that he and others trained for and carried out assaults at California rallies in 2017, and was sentenced on 13 December 2024 to time served. His conditions include electronic monitoring and an order to stay away from gatherings of his former group, the Rise Above Movement.

Alex Vriend, Second Sons' vice-president, hosted Rundo on his podcast in February 2026 and discussed cooperation between Canadian and US groups. "I'm hoping to get some of our guys at some of the American events," Vriend said.

"It's very significant that we're seeing Canadians travel across the border," Steven Rai of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue told CBC. "They want to establish a homeland for white people only." Rai said fight tournaments help such groups "strengthen real-world bonds" and build "durable infrastructure". Michael Colborne of Bellingcat told CBC his concern was "a radicalization of their existing ranks towards political violence".

Patriot Front's hidden network

Patriot Front secretly controls about a dozen active clubs, according to a leaked internal report and audio messages verified by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch in May 2025. The report lists nine "subsidiary recruiting projects", including the Parker County Active Club and another club in central Texas, and seven "cooperative" clubs in places including Montana and Portland, Oregon. "It serves as a way to hide some of the Patriot Front's movements," Jeff Tischauser, the report's author, told CBS News. The Lone Star Active Club is not named in the leaked list.

Hatewatch found that the leaked spreadsheet lists Will2Rise and Media2Rise, Rundo's clothing brand and propaganda outlet, at a location labelled "command center". Graham Whitson, a member of Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau's inner circle and his roommate in 2022, opened a bank account for Will2Rise with a projected monthly income of $10,000, according to a leaked banking document, Hatewatch reported. Hatewatch concluded that Patriot Front, Rundo's two brands and the nine subsidiary clubs appeared at some point in the past three years to have been overseen by Rousseau's inner circle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Kieran Morris, another member of that circle, berated Rhett Loftis, the Parker County club's founder, in audio messages in early 2024 for sending a recruit he called "non-European". "I have what I consider the correct, righteous position, that is total absolute chauvinism of our primacy and supremacy and domination," Morris said.

Rousseau founded Patriot Front after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, taking most of the members of Vanguard America after James Alex Fields, who carried a Vanguard America shield at the rally, killed Heather Heyer with his car. A jury later found Vanguard America liable for $1 million in the Sines v. Kessler civil case. Police in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, arrested Rousseau and 30 other members in a U-Haul truck carrying riot gear near a Pride event on 11 June 2022 and charged them with misdemeanour conspiracy to riot.

More than 400 gigabytes of Patriot Front chats, videos and documents leaked in January 2022 showed membership applications accepted with "ideology: national socialist" and members recruited while still minors. Most of the group's banner drops were on highway overpasses or other places visible to traffic, the chats showed. Rousseau wrote that one member brought "two fully loaded pistols" with extra ammunition to the group's December 2021 march in Washington. Members told the owners of a campsite they rented before that march that they were Christian youth affiliated with Turning Point USA, and Rousseau had a member call 911 from a burner phone, posing as a concerned citizen, to secure a police escort.

Joffre Cross, a Texas Patriot Front member, was convicted in 2020 of possessing a rifle and about 1,500 rounds of ammunition as a prohibited person and given 57 months. The Army discharged Cross in 2007 after he sold narcotics and stolen Army equipment to an undercover FBI agent posing as a white supremacist.

A federal judge awarded $2.75 million in January 2025 to Charles Murrell, a Black musician whom Patriot Front members attacked during a march in Boston in July 2022, after Rousseau and other members refused to comply with court orders to appear. Rousseau and a Minnesota chapter leader settled in March 2025 over a mural destroyed at a Fargo market, paying damages and apologising to the city's migrant community. Patriot Front members posted more than 5,000 pieces of racist propaganda across the US in 2024, the SPLC counted.

A militant model

The FBI's 2018 complaint against Rundo said the Rise Above Movement "represents itself publicly as a combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist white supremacy/identity movement". Its members trained in combat and attacked counter-protesters at three California rallies in 2017: a "Make America Great Again" rally in Huntington Beach on 25 March, a pro-Trump rally in Berkeley on 15 April and an "Anti-Islamic Law" rally in San Bernardino on 10 June. At the two Trump rallies, RAM fought on the side of Trump supporters against people protesting Trump. Rundo punched a police officer twice in the head in Berkeley after being ordered to stop attacking a "defenseless person", according to an arrest warrant.

Benjamin Daley, Michael Miselis, Thomas Gillen and Cole Evan White, all RAM members, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot over assaults at the Charlottesville rally in August 2017; Daley received 37 months, Gillen 33 and Miselis 27. Rundo served 20 months in prison for a 2009 stabbing of a member of a rival gang in Queens, Alexander Ritzmann of the Counter Extremism Project wrote.

US District Judge Cormac Carney twice dismissed the federal case against Rundo, most recently on 21 February 2024, when he wrote that prosecuting only the far right implied the government believed "it is permissible to physically assault and injure Trump supporters to silence speech". The Ninth Circuit reversed both dismissals.

Rundo launched the active clubs in 2021 from Serbia, promoting what he called "white nationalism 3.0". Ritzmann wrote that the strategy appeared aimed at building "a shadow or stand-by army" that "can be activated when the need for coordinated violent action on a larger scale arises". Clubs were told to hide Nazi symbols and not to talk about "the Jews and history" when recruiting. "A group of strong white men is a fascist statement in itself," Rundo said, according to Ritzmann.

The Middlebury Institute's counter-terrorism centre, CTEC, wrote in 2023 that the clubs follow neofascist and accelerationist principles and train in mixed martial arts "in preparation for war against their perceived enemies", and that their propaganda is often placed "in locations that receive significant traffic, such as a large banner over a well-traveled freeway". Art Jipson, a University of Dayton sociologist, wrote in August 2025 that figures from the Atomwaffen Division and The Base helped found the network, which has a core of 400 to 1,200 men in cells often smaller than a dozen. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism counted 187 clubs in 27 countries. Two US clubs have posted members at tactical military training, one in full military gear with semi-automatic rifles, Ritzmann wrote.

Rundo spent the years before his arrest in southeastern Europe. He attended the Day of Honour in Budapest in February 2020, where neo-Nazis commemorate the breakout of Nazi forces from the Soviet siege of the city, and worked with Serbian ultranationalist groups including People's Patrol, a vigilante group that began by targeting migrants. A Telegram channel used by Rundo and his associates praised Ratko Mladic in June 2021, a day before a UN court upheld his genocide conviction. Serbia expelled him in February 2021. Romanian police arrested him in Bucharest on 31 March 2023 carrying falsified identity documents, and he was extradited that August.

Four members of Sweden's active club were jailed in Stockholm in November 2025 for between three and three and a half years over hate-crime assaults on three immigrants. After Trump's inauguration in January 2025, three US active clubs posted messages backing mass deportation. One read: "Resist replacement. Connect now to join the fight."

Fighters on both sides of Russia's war

Denis Kapustin, a Russian-born neo-Nazi known as White Rex, co-hosted the Active Club Podcast with Rundo from January 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The two men met at the Kampf der Nibelungen, a neo-Nazi combat sports tournament in Germany, on 20 April 2018, Hitler's birthday, Ritzmann wrote. The European Union barred Kapustin from the Schengen zone for 10 years in 2019.

Kapustin founded the Russian Volunteer Corps in 2022, a unit of Russians fighting for Ukraine that has raided Russian border regions, and Moscow designated him a terrorist in March 2023. Ukraine's military intelligence agency said on 1 January 2026 that it had staged his reported death to expose a contract killing ordered by Russian security services and had collected the US$500,000 set aside for it. "I'm glad that the funds allocated for ordering your assassination went to support our fight," the agency's chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said. Kapustin's current condition could not be independently verified.

Christopher Pohlhaus, a former US Marine who leads the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe, recorded a podcast with Kapustin in July 2021 and said in 2023 he would take a squad to Ukraine to fight alongside him. "I love Denis and I want to do everything I can to help him succeed," Pohlhaus wrote to The Intercept. FBI agents arrested Andrew Takhistov, 18, of East Brunswick, N.J., in July 2024 for soliciting attacks on electrical substations; court documents said he planned to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, which he said was "openly National Socialist".

Rundo travelled to Kyiv in April 2018 and trained with members of the Azov movement. An FBI complaint said Azov's military wing "is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations". Olena Semenyaka, who hosted the Americans, told RFE/RL there had been no military training.

Leading members of the Russian Imperial Movement founded the Rusich sabotage unit, which has fought for Russia in eastern Ukraine since 2014, Ritzmann wrote, and German neo-Nazis reportedly trained at a Russian Imperial Movement camp near St. Petersburg. Two Swedes who trained there in 2016 later bombed a site near a migrant centre in Gothenburg. Canada listed the Russian Imperial Movement as a terrorist entity in February 2021.

Inside Canada

Second Sons made its public debut in Dartmouth, N.S., in March 2025 with a banner reading "Our People Our Home Our Future" and says it has members in 10 provinces. MacKenzie wrote in January 2026 that thousands had applied, that fewer than 15 per cent reached a vetting stage that includes a background check, and that members included retired soldiers and Special Forces members, professional fighters, first responders and pilots. Evan Balgord of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network told CBC the group claimed about 2,000 sign-ups in October 2025 alone.

Square Butte Hall, near Millarville, Alta., hosted the group's national gathering in July 2026, where more than 60 members did army crawls while MacKenzie led a chant about fighting the Taliban. "The reason you tribe and train is not about...the exercise. It's not about the boxing. The reason that you engage in tribe and train is to practice organizing," a Second Sons leader said in a 2025 livestream quoted by ISD. "If you can organize 100 guys to go for a hike...then you can organize 100 guys to go to a protest."

About 100 members rallied outside CBC offices in Regina and Ottawa in October 2025 with a banner reading "CBC Hates White People". Members held a banner reading "Indian Trucks Kill Canucks" over a highway in Orillia, Ont., in January 2026. Halifax police attributed a demonstration in Bedford South around 30 May 2026 to the group, which said it was one of eight across the country that day.

At least 10 Second Sons members marched through Sudbury, Ont., on 31 May 2026 and hammered a six-foot white cross reading "Silent Slaughter" into the Crosses for Change memorial to people who died of drug overdoses, without the knowledge of the city or the memorial's manager. A video of the visit, posted to the YouTube channel of the Plaid Army, the streaming community from which Diagolon grew, blamed "senseless border policies" for the opioid crisis while flashing screenshots of South Asian people accused or convicted of drug trafficking. "It's about covering yourself in the cloak of respectability and it's part of an overall strategy, which has been around decades, called 'mainstreaming,'" Tony McAleer, a former neo-Nazi organiser who left the movement in 1998, told CBC. "There are some very serious white supremacist groups that are definitely training to commit violence," Brad Galloway of Ontario Tech University's Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism told CBC.

Pelley said Kamloops officers were called to Chief Eli Larue Way, near the former school, at about 7.25 a.m. on 27 September. Members left after police engaged them; photographs show more than a dozen masked men later marching to the Pacific Way overpass, where one mimed digging below the banner. Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc announced in May 2021 that ground-penetrating radar had found more than 200 potential unmarked burials near the school; the areas have not been excavated, and the nation now calls the findings anomalies. "We have endured fear, and we will not be intimidated," Kúkwpi7 Rosanne Casimir wrote to members. MacKenzie reshared a doctored image on Telegram on 29 September showing members holding the banner in front of Auschwitz.

Second Sons absorbed Montreal's Frontenac Active Club in October 2025. Frontenac had trained with Nationalist-13, a Hamilton-area active club that calls itself the only "openly National Socialist" organisation in Canada, has chapters in four provinces and has hosted members of US active clubs. Its members demonstrated in Grimsby, Ont., in January 2026 for the release of Joel Davis, an Australian neo-Nazi jailed for calling on supporters to rape a politician. Smaller Canadian clubs include the Toronto Pioneers, a descendant of Active Club Canada, the Loyalist Pioneers, the Manitoba Active Club and Ordo Atlantica, according to ISD.

"Arm up"

Second Sons' leaders have said in podcasts and livestreams hosted on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Rumble that "the Nazis were right", have called official Holocaust statistics the product of "propagandists" and have said Canadian politicians should be executed as traitors. Richard Moon, Law Foundation Chair at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Law, told CBC that several of the statements would constitute hate speech under the Criminal Code.

MacKenzie said on his RageCast in September 2025: "I think 'remigration' sounds too nice. 'Rounded up,' 'forced out,' bye-bye." In a June 2024 episode he said: "Give me some guys and some weapons and we'll f***ing get rid of them. We'll take them up ... 'Get in the truck. You're going to the airport.' 'Make me.' 'OK.' Bang! 'Anybody else not want to go to the airport? ... I only had to shoot one, see? Easy.'" He has called on police to deport Indians "at gunpoint".

"The race war is here," Vriend said in an October 2025 livestream, referring to the group's martial arts training and military-style drills. MacKenzie wrote on 14 September 2025: "Arm yourselves. Today. If you're worried about the law, you're worried about the wrong things." Neither the RCMP nor prosecutors have publicly said whether they examined his posts. MacKenzie has posted a photo of himself giving a Nazi salute on Telegram.

Vriend said of a 2025 incident in which a man grabbed a flag from the leader of a "Canada First" demonstration that the leader should have speared the man in the face, cross-checked him and punched and kicked him in the head. "Is he arrested? Yes. Does he catch a charge? Yes. Is it the end of his life? No. Does that immediately become a symbol of resistance for all Canadians? Yes," Vriend said.

"Remigration for Second Sons is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing," Rai told CBC. "And their agenda, quite explicitly, is ethnic cleansing in Canada," Balgord told CBC.

What the security agencies found

Commissioner Paul Rouleau found in February 2023 that the presence of members of Diagolon, the online network MacKenzie led before Second Sons, at both the Ottawa convoy and the Coutts, Alta., blockade was the most troubling connection between protest sites. His report cited CSIS evidence that Vriend collected donations for protesters' travel to both places. The RCMP described Diagolon to the inquiry as an "extremist, militia-like organization".

RCMP officers who searched trailers near the Coutts blockade seized long guns, handguns, body armour and ammunition; one vest bore a Diagolon patch. A jury acquitted two protesters of conspiring to murder police officers in August 2024 but convicted both of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose. The US State Department wrote in its terrorism report for 2022 that Diagolon was a Canadian far-right "extremist" group.

The RCMP concluded that many former members of the Atomwaffen Division, a listed terrorist entity, joined the now-defunct Active Club Canada, and that members of that club had ties to the Vinland Hammerskins, a violent racist skinhead gang. RCMP and Public Safety findings concern the active club movement and do not tie Second Sons itself to the Hammerskins or Atomwaffen. ISD describes Second Sons as the largest and most influential network in a movement that has drawn people from Diagolon, racist skinhead groups and designated terrorist entities.

Matthew Althorpe, a Niagara-region man, was arrested with Kristoffer Nippak in December 2023 on charges of distributing Atomwaffen and Terrorgram material, after which Active Club Canada's public channels went dark. Althorpe pleaded guilty in October 2025 to terrorism offences, including writing Terrorgram manifestos calling for mass-casualty attacks and infrastructure sabotage. He also led an active club in southern Ontario, giving members militia-style training, according to ISD. An Ottawa judge convicted Patrick Gordon Macdonald, known online as "Dark Foreigner", in April 2025 of terrorism offences for Atomwaffen propaganda; CAHN alleged he belonged to a Canadian active club and collaborated with Rundo.

White Boy Posse, a gang that began in northern Alberta and uses Nazi symbols, has sold cocaine from Yellowknife to Saskatoon and Medicine Hat; a joint RCMP and Edmonton police investigation led to 35 arrests in 2008 and 2009. No evidence ties White Boy Posse or the Vinland Hammerskins to Second Sons, and court and police records reviewed through 1 October 2026 show no drug or organised-crime charges against Second Sons or its leaders.

Soldiers, police and guns

MacKenzie describes himself as a 14-year army veteran. Second Sons accepts former members of the armed forces if they can show they no longer serve. Hamilton Police Service suspended Const. Renato Greco, a 23-year member, with pay in August 2025 over posts that included support for Second Sons; the outcome has not been made public.

RCMP officers searched a home in Pictou, N.S., in January 2022 and found five restricted firearms, one unrestricted firearm, prohibited magazines, ammunition and body armour. Every charge against MacKenzie in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Quebec had been stayed or withdrawn by June 2024, and none ended in a conviction. MacKenzie said "Let's rape her" about Anaida Poilievre, wife of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, during a Telegram stream in September 2022 with Vriend as his guest; the RCMP investigated it as a rape threat, and MacKenzie later told the Toronto Star he apologised if he had offended her.

A company and its money

Second Sons recruits sign a non-disclosure agreement with 16130623 Canada Inc., a federal corporation under the Canada Business Corporations Act that the agreement describes as a "media organization that creates, develops and publishes content". Federal registry documents list MacKenzie as director and Vriend and Alex Cabana as shareholders. Cabana is an Afghan war veteran once affiliated with Veterans 4 Freedom, a group formed by central figures in the 2022 convoy protests. The company's financial filings for 2025 and 2026 are overdue, and the registry has sent it a notice of intent to dissolve unless it files them immediately.

A former Canadian Armed Forces member who applied told CBC that recruiters made him pull down his shirt to show he wore no wire, had him leave his phone face up on the table, asked him to say racial slurs as a test and spent much of the meeting saying Jewish people were evil and Hitler's philosophy was "genius". "They advertise themselves as one thing," he said. "And then as soon as I met them … the sheets were pulled down and it was a whole other thing that was disgusting." Two La Presse journalists who applied under a false name received 17 questions about their names, family history in Canada and political beliefs and were contacted on Telegram by Beauvais-MacDonald, the former Frontenac leader, who has called himself a Nazi online and praised Hitler. He told La Presse that Second Sons is neither a militia nor a violent extremist group.

Vriend said in a September 2025 livestream that "in Canada, it is illegal to discriminate based on immutable characteristics like race" and added: "We are an organization that takes members based on meritocracy. Can you read between the lines?" "Calling for the execution of a politician is not a legitimate activity of any company, let alone a media company," Richard LeBlanc, a professor of governance, law and ethics at York University, told CBC. Moon told CBC the agreement risked "a chilling effect" on members speaking "to the media or the legal authorities".

A GiveSendGo page for MacKenzie, set up by former People's Party of Canada candidate David Freiheit, raised $16,327 from 270 donors. MacKenzie solicits money through Rumble, Kick, Substack, Gumroad and a ko-fi account named "diagolon", and Diagolon sold merchandise through an online store called "The Grift Shop". "The far right has always been a 'buy my merch' kind of thing," Galloway told Sudbury.com. Applicants pay a fee and accepted members pay $20 a month, according to the group's website. Vriend has said in livestreams that the leaders are not paid and rely on fan subscriptions, and the group says it is setting up a "support shop".

Farage, remigration and foreign campaigns

MacKenzie, Vriend and fellow streamer Derek Harrison paid £141, about $260, through Cameo in 2024 for a video by Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK, promoting their Road Rage Terror Tour; Farage recorded it 10 days after winning his seat in the British election of 4 July 2024. The buyers asked for a "pep talk" to persuade Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, who had said she was "appalled" by the tour, to attend, and asked Farage to open with its subtitle, "They have to go back". Farage opened the video with those words and said: "You never know, you might walk out saying, 'Road Rage Terror Tour is the best thing that ever happened.'" Within three hours the group had edited the clip and was circulating it. It later appeared in a video in which a Diagolon leader makes shooting gestures and says, "I just saw you were brown and I couldn't help myself," and in another beside slides that appear to be AI-generated, depicting Jewish men as drug dealers "stealing our birthright".

A spokesperson for Farage told The Guardian he used the platform "in good faith and without knowledge of the individuals involved beyond what is written for him". A Diagolon representative told The Guardian: "We used him for a laugh and to cause him this trouble as a consequence for being lazy and stupid enough to say anything for a dollar." Farage sold more than 4,300 Cameo videos from 2021, earning at least £374,893, including one in 2025 for a man jailed for 16 months over the 2024 riots in England, whom he told to "keep acting in the right way", and he used or alluded to the anti-immigration slogan "If in doubt, kick them out" more than 20 times. Farage suspended his Cameo account. Steven Rai told National Observer that such leaders try "to capture these temporary moments of proximity to power and then amplify them".

Dallas Brodie, leader of OneBC and its only sitting member of the B.C. legislature, responded warmly at an October 2025 town hall in Penticton when a young man urged her to connect with fans of MacKenzie and Second Sons, which he called "a fraternal-type organization". "I really thank you for bringing this up, because one group that's really been left behind are our young men," Brodie said. "They are being dumped on." Wyatt Claypool, OneBC's communications director, told The Tyee that Brodie then knew MacKenzie only for his opposition to COVID-19 restrictions and now opposes Second Sons' "extremist views and racist/antisemitic rhetoric". Claypool wrote on X that Brodie is a "pro-Israel conservative politician" who opposes the Dominion Society's remigration rhetoric.

Brodie was expelled from the Conservative Party of BC in March 2025 after mocking residential school survivors. OneBC released a video in December 2025, Making a Killing, that accused First Nations governments of lying about unmarked graves at former residential schools; the Union of BC Indian Chiefs called it "racist misinformation". Kerry-Lynne Findlay, leader of the Conservative Party of BC, wrote in August 2026 after dining with Brodie that the two had "so much common ground".

Daniel Tyrie, leader of the Dominion Society of Canada, met Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner at a Remigration Summit in Porto in late May 2026 and said Sellner was the movement's "godfather". Gregory Bovino, the former US Border Patrol commander-at-large, attended the same summit with AfD lawmakers and told the organisers their ideas "mirror each other". Canada denied Sellner an electronic travel authorisation before a Dominion Society conference in Hamilton on 29 August 2026; Britain has banned him permanently. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network says Vriend joined the Dominion Society and that Tyrie has appeared on multiple livestreams with Second Sons leaders; MacKenzie denies any connection.

Trump wrote on Truth Social during his second term that he was reversing an "invasion" and that "It's called Remigration." The State Department proposed an "Office of Remigration" in a plan submitted to Congress. Vice-President JD Vance met AfD leader Alice Weidel in Munich in February 2025, the highest-ranking US official to do so, after Elon Musk, then a Trump adviser, endorsed the party.

Farage joined Trump onstage at a 2016 rally in Mississippi, and Trump said at his final 2024 campaign rally that Farage was a "spectacular man". Farage told BBC Panorama in June 2024 that he had admired Putin "as a political operator" and that "we provoked this war" in Ukraine. Nathan Gill, Reform UK's former leader in Wales, was jailed in November 2025 for 10 years and six months for taking bribes to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament; Farage has said he did not know.

Trump dined with Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022 and said he did not know him. In November 2025 Trump defended Tucker Carlson for interviewing Fuentes: "You can't tell him who to interview." Fuentes told viewers in March 2022, "We continue to support czar Putin in the war effort." MacKenzie and Harrison were members of a Discord server run by Canada First, a group whose leader, Tyler Russell, later toured with Fuentes, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Sellner received €1,500 in January 2018 from Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques in 2019, and US authorities cancelled his visa-free travel permit over the contact. Sellner said he knew nothing of the attack plans.

US prosecutors charged two RT employees in September 2024 over about US$10 million routed to Tenet Media, a company co-founded by Canadian commentator Lauren Chen, which paid right-wing influencers and produced 50 videos focused on Canada. The Justice Department did not accuse the influencers of wrongdoing. Meta removed a network in 2024 that posted as "United Citizens for Canada" and portrayed Canadian Muslims as a threat; Meta linked it to STOIC, a Tel Aviv political marketing firm, and Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was reported to have commissioned it, which the ministry denied. Global Affairs Canada's Rapid Response Mechanism corroborated "elements" of the reports but could not "decisively attribute this network to a state actor". CSIS director David Vigneault said on 6 February 2022 that there were "no foreign actors identified at this point supporting or financing this convoy", according to a summary filed with the Public Order Emergency Commission.

The listing question

Canada lists 90 terrorist entities, including Blood & Honour and Combat 18 since June 2019, the Atomwaffen Division, The Base, the Proud Boys and the Russian Imperial Movement since February 2021, and the Terrorgram Collective since 10 December 2025. Listing allows authorities to freeze a group's assets and prosecute people who knowingly participate in or contribute to its activities. The public safety minister recommends a listing under section 83.05 of the Criminal Code, and cabinet approves it on reasonable grounds to believe a group has carried out or facilitated terrorist activity.

"It made no sense that a group that trained with machine guns...was allowed to operate in Canada," Mustafa Farooq of the National Council of Canadian Muslims said when the Three Percenters were listed in 2021. Hasan Alam, a lawyer and board member of the BC Civil Liberties Association, argued that terrorism listings extend powers long used against Muslim and other racialised communities. "We do not lack the tools, we have lacked the political will," Alam said in an interview published by the association.

Australia listed the National Socialist Network as a prohibited hate group on 15 May 2026, making it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison to support, fund, train, recruit for or join it. Tony Burke, Australia's home affairs minister, said the group had "phoenixed" under new names and that the law lets a renamed group be relisted through a simplified process. "Say they make the terrorism list, right? Well, that can be changed pretty quickly to something else, and it's the same guys," Galloway told Sudbury.com.

Second Sons, Diagolon and the active clubs are not listed entities in Canada.

An open file in Kamloops

Marc Belanger of the Greater Sudbury Police Service's major crime unit told CBC in June 2026 that Second Sons "itself is not illegal" and that police would act "if those extremists get to that point where they're actually actioning their message into violence".

Kamloops RCMP asked the public on 28 September for information, photographs or video of the march. Pelley said police would continue to engage the group as part of an ongoing investigation.

Const. David Tucker of the Kamloops RCMP, who has been on unrelated paid leave for more than a year, posted online that the march was "a couple dudes silently [holding] a sign with a cheeky phrase" and questioned whether political officials had orchestrated it. Pelley said officers are accountable "for their actions and behaviour at all times", including on social media, and that internal processes were under way. Tucker pleaded guilty to mischief in December 2024 over unjustified force during a 2023 arrest and received a conditional discharge. "This is bigger than an individual, and the issue is about maintaining public trust," Casimir said. Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc council has adopted a zero-tolerance resolution on white nationalist hate.

"If you think you've got people on-side, you don't hide your face," B.C. NDP leader David Eby said.

Kamloops Coun. Dale Bass said she had told the local RCMP detachment months earlier that a Second Sons chapter was active in the area.

Kamloops RCMP had made no arrests by 3 October 2026, six days after the march and three days after the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Second Sons is not a listed terrorist entity, its federal company faces a notice of intent to dissolve over unfiled financial statements, and Rundo, whose release conditions bar him from gatherings of his former group, appears with its members in a photo taken in a Patriot Front clubhouse in Texas.

Who's who

  • Jeremy MacKenzie: Founder of Second Sons and, before it, Diagolon, which the RCMP called an "extremist, militia-like organization". Army veteran, 2003 to 2017. Flagged by ITAC in February 2022. Every criminal charge against him stayed or withdrawn by June 2024. Director of 16130623 Canada Inc. Bought the 2024 Farage Cameo video with Vriend and Harrison. Member of a Canada First Discord server, according to CAHN. No documented Russian, Israeli or US government tie.
  • Alex Vriend: Described as Second Sons vice-president on 1 October 2026; reported to have left by CAHN. Shareholder of 16130623 Canada Inc. Hosted Rundo on his podcast in February 2026. Collected convoy travel donations, according to CSIS evidence before the Rouleau commission. Reported by CAHN to have joined the Dominion Society, which MacKenzie denies.
  • Alex Cabana: Shareholder of 16130623 Canada Inc.; Afghan war veteran once affiliated with Veterans 4 Freedom.
  • Derek Harrison: Streamer and co-buyer of the Farage video. Member of a Canada First Discord server, according to CAHN.
  • Robert Rundo: Born in Queens in 1990; served 20 months for a 2009 stabbing of a rival gang member, according to the Counter Extremism Project. Founder of the Rise Above Movement and the active club movement. Met Kapustin at a neo-Nazi tournament in Germany on Hitler's birthday in 2018. Told 60 Minutes "there's fun in fascism". Assaulted a protester at a "Make America Great Again" rally in Huntington Beach in March 2017. Trained with Azov members in Kyiv in April 2018. Worked with Serbian ultranationalist groups and attended neo-Nazi commemorations in Budapest and Sofia in 2020; expelled from Serbia in February 2021. Lived in Serbia and Bulgaria, arrested in Bucharest in March 2023, extradited that August. Pleaded guilty under the Anti-Riot Act in September 2024; sentenced to time served in December 2024. Photographed with Second Sons members in Texas in 2026.
  • Denis Kapustin: Russian-born neo-Nazi, founder of White Rex, co-host of the Active Club Podcast with Rundo from January 2021. Barred from the Schengen zone in 2019. Founded the Russian Volunteer Corps in 2022 to fight Russia; designated a terrorist by Moscow in March 2023. Ukraine's GUR said in January 2026 it had staged his death to foil a killing ordered by Russian security services. Recorded a 2021 podcast with US Blood Tribe leader Christopher Pohlhaus.
  • Nigel Farage: Reform UK leader. Recorded the 2024 Cameo for the Road Rage Terror Tour for £141. Campaigned with Trump in 2016. Said in June 2024 he had admired Putin "as a political operator". His former Wales leader, Nathan Gill, was jailed in November 2025 for pro-Russian bribes.
  • Martin Sellner: Austrian identitarian and main promoter of remigration. Took €1,500 from the Christchurch killer in 2018. Banned from Britain, refused a Canadian travel authorisation in August 2026, US visa-free travel cancelled in 2019. Married to American video blogger Brittany Pettibone. Organised the Porto Remigration Summit in May 2026.
  • Daniel Tyrie: Leader of the Dominion Society of Canada. Met Sellner in Porto in May 2026. Booked Sellner as keynote for a Hamilton conference on 29 August 2026.
  • Gregory Bovino: Former US Border Patrol commander-at-large. Left Homeland Security in 2026 after deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis immigration raids. Attended the Porto summit with Sellner and AfD lawmakers.
  • Nick Fuentes: US white nationalist. Dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022. Told viewers in March 2022 he supported "czar Putin". Described by Pence as an antisemite and Holocaust denier. Toured with Tyler Russell, according to GPAHE.
  • Tyler Russell: Leader of Canada First, a breakaway from a Proud Boys chapter, according to CAHN. Moved to the US.
  • Maximilian Krah: AfD politician. Questioned by the FBI over alleged Russian-linked payments, which he denied. Former aide Jian Guo jailed in September 2025 for spying for China.
  • Lauren Chen: Canadian co-founder of Tenet Media, which US prosecutors say received about US$10 million routed from RT. Not charged.
  • Thomas Rousseau: Former Vanguard America leader who founded Patriot Front after Charlottesville. Patriot Front organised the American Muscle 2 tournament in South Carolina that Second Sons members attended in March 2026; its Fort Worth-area clubhouse hosted the Rundo photo. Arrested with 30 members near an Idaho Pride event in June 2022. Patriot Front controls at least a dozen active clubs, according to the SPLC, and was ordered by a federal judge in January 2025 to pay $2.75 million to a Black musician its members attacked in Boston. Its inner circle oversaw Will2Rise and Media2Rise, Rundo's brands, Hatewatch reported.
  • Christopher Pohlhaus: Former US Marine and leader of the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe. Recorded a podcast with Kapustin in July 2021 and said in 2023 he would take a squad to fight alongside him in Ukraine. Linked to January 6 rioter Riley June Williams.
  • Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald: Former leader of Montreal's Frontenac Active Club, absorbed by Second Sons in October 2025. Contacted two undercover journalists on Telegram.
  • Andrew Takhistov: New Jersey man arrested by the FBI in July 2024 for soliciting attacks on power substations; planned to join Kapustin's Russian Volunteer Corps.
  • Patrick Gordon Macdonald: Ottawa man convicted in April 2025 of terrorism offences for Atomwaffen propaganda; alleged by CAHN to have belonged to a Canadian active club.