A Nashville-area paramedic has become one of the most visible faces of a far-right fight club network that extremism researchers say is training men for what they call a coming “neo-Nazi militia.”
Tristan Rettke, who works as a licensed EMT for a Nashville-area ambulance service, has spent months quietly building a name for himself in the so-called Active Club movement, according to a NewsChannel 5 investigation. Fighting under the name “Sporty,” Rettke has shown up in videos and photos from staged combat events tied to Active Clubs, a loosely connected web of white nationalist fight clubs that has been spreading across the country, including into Middle Tennessee.
Rettke isn’t new to public attention. Seven years ago, while attending East Tennessee State University, he drew headlines for showing up to a Black Lives Matter protest wearing a gorilla suit. Since then, he’s shown up repeatedly in reporting tied to white nationalist combat exhibitions, including an event last fall billed as “Slaughter Smokey Mountain,” where he trained alongside a Russian street fighting group, and another this spring at a compound in Virginia involving other white nationalist fighters. There’s no indication Rettke has broken any laws.
The Active Club movement traces back to Robert Rundo, a self-described fascist who was featured recently on 60 Minutes and who has tried to sell the movement as little more than young men getting in shape together. That framing sits uneasily next to Rundo’s own record. He served two years in federal prison for planning and taking part in riots at California political rallies, and he’s been caught on camera assaulting a protester. Rundo has described the fight clubs as a launching point for what he calls a “fascist cultural revolution.”
Researchers who track the movement say that language isn’t just talk. Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser with the Counter Extremism Project who has studied Active Clubs for years, said the group’s own members compare themselves to Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Stormtroopers. In his view, the fitness angle is a cover story. “It’s the strategy to build a neo-Nazi militia,” Ritzmann said, adding that members believe they’re preparing to protect a future white supremacist leader.
Rettke’s local ties run deeper than one gym. Video shows him entering a Texas fight escorted by Sean Kauffmann, who leads the Tennessee chapter of the Active Club movement. Kauffmann has been described by watchdog groups as a Holocaust denier with a history of violence and a large weapons stockpile. He’s currently being held in a Perry County jail awaiting trial on a domestic violence charge after his bond was revoked last December.
Other footage shows Rettke competing this year in an event called “Spring Brawl,” posing afterward alongside someone displaying a flag for the violent white supremacist gang known as the Hammerskins. He’s also appeared in photos with Thomas Rousseau, who leads the white nationalist group Patriot Front, and attended the opening of a Patriot Front training compound in East Tennessee near Tellico Plains.
Kristofer Goldsmith, who runs a nonprofit training military veterans to monitor extremist groups, said the combat training itself is the point. He said members are conditioning themselves, physically and mentally, to be capable of hurting other people, comparing it to military-style preparation. “It is far easier for a white supremacist to go punch someone in the face if they’ve spent months punching their friend in the face for practice,” Goldsmith said.
Researchers say the danger isn’t hypothetical. After a stabbing in Belfast involving a Sudanese refugee, masked mobs tied to the same online extremist circles attacked immigrants and burned homes and businesses. Rundo’s network celebrated the violence online, and one channel associated with the group even published an “OpSec” guide, save the disclaimer that it was “for educational purposes only,” explaining how the Belfast rioters avoided arrest.
What worries watchdogs most is recruitment of teenagers. One young man identified in the exhibition footage, Logan Gulbranson, was first encountered years ago as a teen at a Franklin, Tennessee, candidate forum. He later sent a photo of a swastika tattoo. Ritzmann said recruitment is exactly why gyms hosting these fighters matter. “The main aspect would definitely be recruitment,” he said.
When confronted outside a jujitsu gym near Nashville’s Armory Drive, Rettke declined to answer questions about his involvement or Rundo’s rhetoric. But after the investigation raised questions, the gym’s new owner, Nick Britt, said he’s banned Rettke from the facility. “Things like that don’t fly anymore,” Britt said. “We’re inclusive, and we’ve got every color under the rainbow, and every one of them is my brother.”