Neo-Nazis from the Pennsylvania Active Club posing alongside graffiti calling for mass deportations (Credit: Telegram)

Welcome to Sports Politika, a media venture founded by investigative journalist and researcher Karim Zidan that strives to help you understand how sports and politics shape the world around us. Our mission is to offer an independent platform for accessible journalism that raises awareness and empowers understanding.

If you share this vision, please consider supporting us by joining our community and becoming a paid subscriber.

Following Donald Trump’s inauguration this month, neo-Nazis trained in combat sports have rallied around the president’s promise of mass deportations. While some are engaging in targeted hate campaigns aimed at intimidating non-white immigrants into leaving the United States, others are openly calling for violence.

Driven by factions of the Active Club movement—a decentralized network of neo-Nazi fight clubs—these groups are organizing demonstrations and spreading graffiti to promote mass deportations. In California, the SoCal Active Club shared a post featuring an image, apparently from a Trump rally, edited to include the Celtic Cross—a hallmark of Active Club symbolism—on signs reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW.” Meanwhile, NorCal Active Club shared a photo of members posing in front of graffiti bearing the same slogan.

The Tribal Active Club Arizona called on followers to “stoke the flames” of mass deportation in order to hold “leaders accountable from the local to the national level.” Others called on the U.S. to “close the border.”

“Resist replacement,” read one of the posts. “Connect now to join the fight.”

Meanwhile, members of the neo-Nazi Patriot Front group—another group that trains in combat sports—marched with anti-abortion activists at the 52nd annual ‘March for Life’ rally in Washington on Jan. 25.

This new wave of neo-Nazi activism and participation underscores their increasing integration into the current brand of right-wing politics, as well as their boldness in operating publicly as Trump returns to office. These groups also continue to grow at an alarming rate, further emphasizing how Trump is emboldening white supremacists around the world.

How did these Active Clubs rise to prominence? To understand the current surge of neo-Nazi fight clubs, it’s essential to explore the movement’s purpose, the central role of combat sports, and the influence of its controversial founder.

The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of Robert Rundo

Robert Rundo posing beside a “Free RAM” mural in Serbia (Credit: Telegram)

Robert Rundo rose to prominence in 2017 when he began instigating violence with those opposing their ultra-nationalist ideology at political rallies alongside members the Rise Above Movement—a California-based white supremacist group that touted itself as the “premier MMA fight club of the alt-right.” The group, which Rundo co-founded, infiltrated protests in Huntington Beach, Calif., Berkeley, Calif. and the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

While several of Rise Above Movement’s most prominent members were indicted on rioting charges related to the Unite The Right rally, Rundo’s case was dismissed and he left the United States to reside in Eastern Europe, where he began encouraging his followers to form their own “Active Clubs,” a term he coined to describe decentralized fascist fight clubs that prioritize physical preparedness for an upcoming revolution, identity formation, white supremacist activism, and the recruitment of disaffected white men to their cause.

Having learned from his previous mistakes with RAM, Rundo dictated that the clubs were to remain small and localized. This would make it more difficult for the media and law enforcement officials to shut down the entire operation.

“Even if the system and their dogs manage to put out one fire, it will lead to minimal results,” he wrote on the official Active Club Telegram channel in 2020.

More than a dozen men wearing black masks and sunglasses – obstructing any open source investigators from easily identifying them – appeared in a Telegram video in front of city hall in London, Canada, in June.

“Mass deportations now,” the men yelled in unison, holding up banners with the same slogan. “No blood for Israel.”

While this type of scene with masked men chanting is a relatively common occurrence in the US, this incident in Canada illustrated the underbelly of a surging global movement: neo-Nazi “active clubs”, American-born neofascist fight clubs, are rapidly spreading across borders.

London, a larger Canadian city in what is a rust belt in the province of Ontario, has had a long history with the Ku Klux Klan dating back to the 1920s and a racist murder of a Pakistani-Canadian family in 2021. But the arrival of an active club, which has also shown itself in other nearby towns and cities like Toronto (the country’s largest metropolitan area), is a relatively new development.

“Welcome to Hamilton, our city,” one Telegram post from the same Canadian active club wrote with its symbol posted on a sticker beside a sign for one of Ontario’s largest cities. “Folk-Family-Future!”

Around the world, Canada isn’t the only country being introduced to these clubs, which are fitness and mixed martial arts groups operating out of local gyms and parks that espouse neo-Nazi and fascist ideologies. Already proliferating across the US in a number of states, active clubs openly take their historical cues from the Third Reich’s obsession with machismo and their modern inspiration from European soccer hooliganism.

Recent research published by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has shown that since 2023, these clubs are newly sprouting in Sweden, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, the UK, Finland and for the first time, in Latin America with two chapters in Chile and Colombia appearing.

According to the GPAHE research, there are now chapters in 27 countries, with new youth wings – akin to Hitler Youth-styled clubs – are surging stateside and abroad, “metastasizing” across western countries and recruiting young men into toxic, far-right ideologies encouraging race war.

“The Active Club model was designed by Rob Rundo,” said Heidi Beirich, founder of GPAHE, referring to an infamous neo-Nazi and New Yorker who pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiracy to riot at 2017 political rallies in California.

Around that time, Rundo was also the leader of the Rise Above Movement, a neo-Nazi gang that had four of its members charged for their role in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, but later pivoted to spreading the idea of active clubs among followers as the new nerve centers for fascistic indoctrination and recruitment.

“As far as we can tell, Rundo isn’t directly involved with chapters of the movement in a systematic way, but the chapters are inspired by him and the ideology he stands for,” said Beirich.

Beirich explained that although Rundo isn’t likely to have a hand in these groups, it meshes with his original vision of active clubs being “autonomous and local”. But many of these chapters of active clubs in countries with large populations of white people – some of whom openly have gravitated towards racist, nativism in recent years – promote each other as a global struggle and are linked in a network of accounts on the Telegram app.

One set of accounts, in particular, that have become the sort-of tastemakers among neo-Nazis online, have promoted several local active club chapters across the world and applauded those they think are creating the effective models to emulate.

The same accounts admire the work of Thomas Sewell, a well-known and violent Australian neo-Nazi, who has been promoting active club-styled groups in his country:

“Their organization should be what every dissident group across European civilization seeks to emulate,” said one admiring post about Sewell and his crew.

Beirich said Sewell, who previously admitted to have personally tried to recruit the Christchurch mass shooter to one of his past groups, is aligned with Rundo’s politics.

“Sewell, just like Rundo, is a violent neo-Nazi recruiting new members to prepare for violence against both political enemies and the communities he targets, such as immigrants, Jews and the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, adding that he was “hosting MMA-style training and tournaments” to attract new followers.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship and the combat sports that fall under its purview, have become a locus for the far right. Likewise, Sewell and Rundo have promoted learning these sports as a means of becoming street soldiers, akin to modern-day brownshirts, for their movement.

Other organizations, which are more obviously political and engaging in public displays of activism, have seen this model of trained violence as a means of recruiting and solidifying their ranks. Patriot Front, an American proto-fascist hate group known for public marches and propagandizing natural disasters, has outwardly linked itself to the active club movement.

Its leader, Thomas Rousseau recently posted a group image with himself and others doing “grappling and striking” training at a martial arts gym in north Texas.

Beirich described how members of Patriot Front “often work closely with Active Club chapters” including participating in their mixed-martials training. On Telegram, active club chapters regularly share Patriot Front propaganda.

“Join Patriot Front if you are in America,” one active club adjacent account posted on Telegram, with nearly three thousand views.

Since 2023, the number of Neo-Nazi Active Clubs worldwide has increased by 25 percent

Since publishing Neo-Nazi Active Clubs Spreading Globally, Allying with Similar Extremists, and Taking to the Streets in October 2023, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has found that the Active Club (AC) movement is continuing to expand globally. The first ever Latin American chapter has been established in Colombia, Germany and the U.S. have seen an explosion of chapters, and a new dangerous form of Active Club dedicated to recruiting teenagers has arisen in the U.S.

There are now 187 active AC chapters in 27 countries, up from 149 chapters in 21 countries in late 2023. That represents a growth of 25 percent in a short time. Half of the new groups are “Youth Clubs” that specifically recruit teen boys aged 15 to 18. As with all movements, there is an ebb and flow to the far-right, and in this case, the Active Club movement. Another 37 chapters GPAHE documented in 2023 have either had their social media accounts deleted, have not posted to their accounts since January 2025, or lack other evidence showing they are still functioning. GPAHE also found another nine accounts that were active at one time during this period, but are no longer active. It is unclear whether any of these groups have truly disbanded, simply been deplatformed, or are operating underground (see data in PDF).

Active Clubs are part of a transnational white supremacist movement that engages in physical training, practices mixed martial arts (MMA), and spreads hate propaganda in anticipation of what they believe is an impending “race war.” Conceived by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo and Russian neo-Nazi Denis Kapustin, the Active Clubs refer to themselves as “White Nationalism 3.0,” an international, decentralized movement of groups working towards the fascist ideal of becoming physically-fit “ubermensch” and a common goal to strengthen the white nationalist movement. Rundo has stated that the Active Clubs are akin to the “minutemen in the early stages of the revolutionary war,” and are bound together by a “leaderless resistance.” The symbol used by most of the Active Clubs is a variation of the Celtic Cross, a well-known neo-Nazi symbol.

Not all of the groups counted in this report use the name “Active Club,” or its prominent symbols, but they employ similar aesthetics, and exist primarily as white supremacist fight clubs. Regardless of having varying names, these organizations are deeply integrated into the Active Club movement, regularly meeting with Active Club groups for MMA matches and spreading the propaganda of fellow AC chapters on their pages.

The significant growth of the movement, made up primarily of young white males, poses a threat to democracy and marginalized communities. ACs have significant ties to neo-Nazis and other far-right extremist groups across North and South America and Europe and are prepping for anticipated racial violence. The Active Clubs are well connected to other white nationalist and extremist groups at the local level, including those with a penchant for violence, such as the white supremacist groups Proud Boys, White Lives Matter (WLM), and Patriot Front in the United States, the antisemitic Action Française and racist Identitarian groups in France, and the neo-Nazi Hammerskins in Canada, Sweden, and Germany.

Active Clubs Spreading Their Global Reach

GPAHE tracks ACs through their Telegram channels and other online accounts. Based on the creation dates of the groups’ social media accounts, GPAHE has found that a significant number of new chapters were created in the past two years, with 30 chapters appearing in 2024 and 20 chapters appearing in the first six months of 2025.

At the Plaza at 300 Ashland Place in downtown Brooklyn, patrons mill around a large yellow shipping container with black triangles painted on its side. A nod to the flying geese quilt pattern, which may have served as a coded message for enslaved people escaping to freedom along the Underground Railroad, the design and container serve as a bridge between the past and the future of the African diaspora. At the center of the art project by the Brooklyn-based transmedia artist Stephanie Dinkins, a large screen displays artificial intelligence (AI) generated images that showcase the diversity of the city.

Commissioned by the New York-based art non-profit More Art and designed in collaboration with the architects LOT-EK, the AI laboratory If We Don’t, Who Will? will be on display until 28 September. It seeks to challenge a white-dominated generative-AI space by highlighting Black ethos and cultural cornerstones.

During a time when society has become increasingly reliant on AI, Dinkins wants the models to learn the history, hopes and dreams of Black and brown people to more accurately represent US demographics. She sees her work as shifting the AI landscape, which has been trained on biased data and encapsulates a worldview that is not reflective of the global majority. Black people are underrepresented in the AI field, with Black workers composing just 7.4% of the hi-tech workforce. Research has shown that lack of representation in AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes, such as predictive policing tools that target Black communities and tenant screening programs that reject renters of color.

“What stories can we tell machines that will help them know us better from the inside of the community out, instead of the way that we’re often described, from outside in, which is often incorrect or misses a mark in some way, or knows us as a consumerist body, not as a human body,” Dinkins said. “I have this question: ‘Can we make systems of care and generosity?’”

At the AI laboratory, one image on the screen is of a young Black girl with an afro hairstyle who stares at the viewer, her steady gaze belying her artificial nature. QR codes stationed around the public art project lead to an app where people are invited to submit their own personal stories or to answer prompts such as “what privileges do you have in society?” People around the world can also answer questions through the app. A ramp leads to the inside of the container, where after a few minutes, a large screen displays a generated image that reflects the information that patrons submitted in the app. Images that appear on a loop until another response is uploaded are mostly portraits of people of color, even if the person who submitted it is not one themselves.

Dinkins programmed the generative art to prioritize Black and brown worldviews and figures. She did so by fine-tuning different AI models, programs that recognize patterns through datasets. Dinkins and her team of developers fed the models images by the Black photographer Roy DeCarava, who captured photos of Black people in Harlem. They also programmed it using African American Vernacular English so that the models would learn to recognize its tonality and better generate images based on the stories of people who use it. She also created imagery of okra, a main ingredient in the dishes of enslaved Africans and their descendants, which are displayed in the portraits as a talisman that she sees as connecting the past and present.

“We’re in this AI technological landscape that is changing our world. I don’t have a clue how it can do well by us if it does not know us,” Dinkins said. While she empathizes with the public’s desire to protect their privacy in the AI era, she said, “We also have to have those spaces where we say this information isn’t for ourselves. It should be shared because it is a way that we are current, training and nurturing the technology that we are living under.”

Democratizing AI

Dinkins, who was named one of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023 by Time magazine, is a self-proclaimed “tinkerer” without formal technology training. She became interested in AI more than a decade ago after coming across a YouTube video of a Black woman AI robot, Bina48, which depicts Bina Rothblatt, co-founder of the not-for-profit Terasem Movement Foundation, which researches ways to extend human life.

Her ongoing project Conversations With Bina48, which began in 2014, features recorded video interviews of her talking with the robot. She later created her own AI system that served as a Black American family memoir. In her project Not the Only One, Dinkins created a voice-interactive device that spoke to passersby and was trained on conversations that she had with her niece and aunt.

Dinkins’s projects are a step toward democratizing AI by bringing technology to underrepresented people in spaces where they normally would not have access to it, said Louis Chude-Sokei, a Boston University English professor. There is a long history of algorithms outputting racist or sexist material because they are trained on the internet, which is teeming with racist and sexist stereotypes, said Chude-Sokei, who specializes in literature as well as technology and race.

“What Stephanie wants to do is [pose the question]: ‘What if we can start to train different algorithms to respond to different datasets that have liberating content or socially just content?’” Chude-Sokei said. “Let’s just take a hold of the datasets and create different patterns for it to recognize and see what kind of conclusions it will produce based on different materials and different patterns.”

Dinkins and other artists of color focusing on technology are shifting the paradigm of the AI landscape, he said, by putting the tools into the hands of the global majority. “There’s a much larger reorientation of the social world, the political world, the cultural world that’s happening with AI,” Chude-Sokei said. Dinkins’s work, he added, embraces a philosophy she coined called Afro-now-ism, which she defines as taking action toward a better world today. It’s a “celebration of seeing technology, not as this horrific thing that we have no control over”, Chude-Sokei said, “but something that we can engage in very joyful, creative and positive ways, while at the same time, being aware of the dangers”.

For Beth Coleman, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in technology and society, it’s imperative that AI models be trained on a wide range of datasets to ensure that they produce an accurate representation of the world. Dinkins’ work, she said, interrogates which voices are included in technical systems.

“There’s a good spirit of ‘how can we build a better world together?’ in Stephanie’s work,” Coleman said, “and at this moment in time that feels pretty revolutionary.”

Welcome to Everything is Fine!—a bi-weekly round-up post that highlights some of the more absurd sport-politics stories that you may have missed amid the never-ending news cycle. This post is available to free subscribers and is presented by Sports Politika, a media venture founded by investigative journalist and researcher Karim Zidan that strives to help you understand how sports and politics shape the world around us.

If you share this vision, please consider supporting us by joining our community and becoming a paid subscriber. We are currently running a special offer whereby you can secure a subscription at a fixed, discounted price.

Get 20% off forever

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)—Canada’ national public broadcaster—published an investigation this week uncovering some of the fascist fight clubs operating across the country.

Known as “active clubs,” this decentralized network of white nationalists and neo-Nazis has been spreading over the past few years, with Canada becoming a hotbed for some of the most notorious groups. The activities of these groups range from martial arts training to public protests and vandalism campaigns.

The CBC visual investigations team was able to uncover the location of their training sessions by matching up distinctive features of the inside of boxing clubs, such as padded walls. Some of the gyms were places that children practiced martial arts as well.

The entire investigation can be read here.

Over the past five years, active clubs have emerged as the fastest growing right-wing extremist network in the world. As of January 2025, Sports Politika has found more than 125 cells spread across the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe. The Global Project Against Hate puts it closer to 187.

Active clubs are present in at least 35 U.S. states, five Canadian provinces, and 10 European countries, including Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Some of the clubs focused on small-scale training sessions and spreading white supremacist propaganda in their local towns. Some Canadian active clubs welcomed members of the Atomwaffen Division, allowing the terrorist group to organize under a different name. The groups have been involved in political intimidation and violence, both in the United States and abroad. In October 2023, members of the Tennessee Active Club escorted far-right mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson and her husband to an event. In France, where at least 50 active clubs reportedly operate, members of the militant neo-Nazi groups were involved in an attack on an asylum center near Nantes in 2023.

Active Clubs have also been recruiting from among active and former members of the military. Last year, The Guardian reported that an active club based in California counted several U.S. military members among them, including a lance corporal machine gunner currently in detention on insubordination charges.

So why are neo-Nazi fight clubs growing in popularity? The answer lies in the violent nature of MMA and other combat sports, and their ability to thrive within it. Over the years, fighters with links to the far-right have been involved in some of the world’s most recognizable promotions, including the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Meanwhile, The rapid growth of MMA in the U.S. and abroad has created a steady stream of potential recruits and a built-in system to network both nationally and internationally. This ready-made system is being infiltrated by the far right and is utilized to radicalize youth into joining their ideological warfare.

While much of the attention has centred on the U.S. following Trump’s return to office, a CBC investigation revealed the extent to which active clubs have proliferated in other countries, including Canada—where they not only exist, but operate in plain sight.

Get 20% off forever

News

Sudan’s domestic football league has returned home for the first time since civil war erupted in 2023.

The Sudan Football Association (SFA) has launched the Sudan Elite League—a month-long, eight-team competition that will decide which clubs qualify for continental tournaments in the 2025–26 season. No matches are being staged in the capital Khartoum, which has been badly damaged by the civil war, with games instead being played at Atbara, 320km north of Khartoum, and Ad-Damer, 430km to the north east of the capital.

The civil war began in April 2023, when tensions between the Sudanese military (SAF), under army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, led by his former deputy chief Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, plunged the country into a state of all of war. Urban centres such as the capital Khartoum were transformed into battlefields, destroying critical infrastructure and creating the world’s largest displacement crisis.

Over the course of the war, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed—figures vary widely from 20,000 to 150,000—while more than 13 million have been displaced, including at least 2.5 million who fled to neighbouring countries. The civil war has also been marked by horrific atrocities such as sexual violence, torture, mutilation and ethnic cleansing. A cholera outbreak also killed hundreds more civilians over the past few months.

Much of the reported war crimes have been committed by the RSF, a fighting force that grew out of the Janjaweed militias used by the government in counter-insurgencies responsible for the genocide in the Darfur region. Human rights organizations have since documented the Janjaweed’s systemic killing of mostly non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, as well as their use of rape and sexual violence as a tool of genocide.

More than 500,000 children have died due to malnutrition, with widespread hunger, famine, and disease outbreaks have been reported to the United Nations Security Council.

Amid the ongoing war, football seems to offer a rare moment of fleeting joy for Sudan. In November 2024, the country secured qualification for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON)—an extraordinary achievement given the circumstances.

The next AFCON will take place between December 21, 2025 and January 18, 2026.

Last week, Donald Trump attended the final of the Club World Cup alongside several members of his cabinet, as well as FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino. The two presidents later presented the trophy to Chelsea, who celebrated their defeat of European champions Paris St-Germain. Traditionally, the team celebrates alone on the podium, but Trump remained front and center—confusing Chelsea players and prompting FIFA president Gianni Infantino to try and steer him aside.

Reports later revealed that the version of the trophy awarded to Chelsea was a copy of the original trophy, which remains in the Oval Office. According to Trump, he was told he could keep the trophy for himself.

“I said, When are you going to pick up the trophy? [They said] ‘We’re never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We’re making a new one,’” Trump said in an interview with official Club World Cup broadcaster Dazn on Sunday. “And they actually made a new one. So that was quite exciting, but it is in the Oval [Office] right now.”

The incident marked the latest example of how Trump has used sports as a form of soft power during his second term in office.He attended the Super Bowl in February, appeared at the Daytona 500, and received standing ovations at two separate UFC events since taking office.

His lengthy trophy presentation at the Club World Cup marked a strange conclusion to a tournament that was entirely bankrolled by the Saudi Arabian government. Next up is the 2026 World Cup, which will likely face several significant obstacles presented by the Trump administration. These include travel bans on countries that are participating in the event, threats of ICE raids, visa delays, and crackdowns on dissent.

Caster Semenya, the celebrated South African runner and two-time Olympic gold medalist, won her case at Europe’s top human rights court this month, with the court ruling that she had not been given a fair trial when she contested a policy that required her to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete in women’s sport.

Semenya had challenged regulations imposed by World Athletics, the global track and field governing body, that bar women with certain Differences of Sex Development (DSD) from competing in the female category unless they undergo medically unnecessary intervention to lower their natural testosterone levels. These regulations have long been criticized as scientifically dubious, invasive, and discriminatory.

Semenya welcomed the European court’s decision, describing it as “great for me, great for athletes”. “We need to respect athletes, we need to put their rights first,” she added.

The Palestine Olympic Committee announced that a training camp for the national team was recently held by the country’s jiu-jitsu federation in the West Bank districts of Ramallah and Al Bireh. This is part of their strategy to maintain athletes’ readiness for international and continental qualifications.

President Ghassan Abu Matar noted that the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank has prevented several national team players from joining the camp due to the challenging transportation conditions between cities and governorates. The national federation plans to organize a central tournament when conditions permit and will continue to hold weekly training seminars.

Bahrain opens World Snooker Championships

More than 250 players, referees, and officials from 26 countries gathered last Sunday at the Bahrain Conference Centre at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to inaugurate the World Snooker Championships, which will take place over two weeks in the Kingdom’s capital, Manama.

The event was organized under the patronage of Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Bahraini prince behind Bahrain’s various sporting ventures, including an MMA organization and fight club named after him. Outside of combat sports, Bahrain has also made a habit of naturalizing foreign athletes in order to boost their Olympic medal count. These are among the kingdom’s efforts to compete with its more influential neighbours in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In the words of Sheikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa, Vice President of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, organizing such major events in Bahrain highlights the Kingdom’s ability to host global tournaments, enhance its reputation as an international sporting hub, attract top athletes, and contribute to tourism and economic activity.

What I’m Reading

There was nothing noticeably unusual in the apartment, nothing that might help the detective with his investigation. It was an unassuming place, just two rooms and an entryway. The most surprising thing about it, in fact, was how ordinary it looked, given that it had just been the scene of a heinous crime. Even the bed was only as ruffled as you might expect after a good night’s sleep. But the man lying there wasn’t asleep. He was dead.

The destruction of Gaza grinds on – ‘war’ seems an inadequate term, if not an obscene obfuscation, of such a lopsided struggle. The majority of its inhabitants have been forced into a sliver of land in the south, amounting to about 15 per cent of the territory. Potable water is scarce, baby formula impossible to find; raw sewage floods the streets; drones circling overhead produce a relentless, unbearable din. During the war with Iran, the IDF killed hundreds of people in Gaza waiting in line for food from the misleadingly named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is based in the US, backed (and possibly funded) by Israel and staffed by security contractors. The GHF distribution sites are located near military zones and require long, difficult journeys to reach, made still more arduous by hunger. According to Shehada, ‘it is now etched in people’s minds that trying to get food is a death sentence.’ Massacres that would have caused a scandal a decade ago are now an almost daily occurrence.

When you hear Ameen Khayer’s powerful, bellowing yet tender voice, it’s hard to imagine that he just happened upon a career in music. In fact, he had no idea that he had any musical talent at all before he met his current bandmate, Thorben Diekmann. After an impromptu jam session one evening in their shared apartment, Diekmann heard Khayer sing for the first time and convinced him to try making some music together. The two would go on to start the band Shkoon, which would propel them to international success, selling out concerts from Berlin to Beirut.

Most worldwide soccer fans know the names of famous African players but would have a much harder time recognizing the names of the top clubs in the African countries in which those players were born. The Club World Cup saw four African teams testing themselves against some of the best clubs from around the world: South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns, Morocco’s Wydad Casablanca, Tunisia’s Esperance Sportive de Tunis and the continent’s most successful club of all time, Egypt’s Al Ahly.

ICYMI

Married…with Jiu-Jitsu Karim Zidan · Jul 12 10 years ago, I published my first longform—an interview with actor Ed O’Neill on the role Brazilian jiu-jitsu played in his life and career. Republished exclusively for Sports Politika subscribers.

Read full story

Sports Politika is a media platform dedicated to the intersection of sports, power and politics. If you like what you see, upgrade to a paid subscription ( or gift a subscription if you already have your own). We would appreciate if you could also like the post and let us know what you think in the comment section below.