MMA gym owners, coaches ID’d at secretive neo-Nazi event in B.C.

Some of the country’s most prominent white supremacist groups gathered in Vancouver this summer for a secretive neo-Nazi conference that also included martial arts gym owners, coaches and trainers.

Held at the Scottish Cultural Centre in the city’s south end, the event was organized by a group called Exiles of the Golden Age and discussed the formation of “Männerbunds.” On the group’s social media accounts, they describe these as “disciplined groups of men” who can rebuild our world “amidst the coming wreckage.”

CBC News’s visual investigations unit obtained video of attendees and organizers entering the event. The video was gathered by the non-profit Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), which studies far-right extremism in Canada.

One conference speaker, a founding member of the white nationalist group Wolves of Vinland, talked of an ongoing “war” in society that is both cultural and physical. Another speaker said the Männerbund formations must be based on principles that are “ethnically exclusive.”

The CAHN video reveals the gathering included individuals with longstanding ties to the neo-Nazi movement and members of white supremacist nationalist group Second Sons Canada, an example of an “active club” previously reported on by CBC News. Active clubs are white supremacist groups that organize combat training, often in public parks and privately owned gyms.

“I find it extremely alarming that there would be any extremist group or, you know, fascist fight club, showing up in Vancouver,” city councillor Rebecca Bligh told CBC.

“Any group [whose] foundational premise is violence against others based on race or … ethnicity is not welcome in Vancouver.”

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said it was significant that Exiles was able to bring together so many different individuals and groups in a “unique” event that was heavy on philosophy.

“The white nationalist movement used to be very fragmented and had a lot of infighting,” Balgord said. “The reason that we’ve been warning about the size and the threat of the white nationalist movement in Canada right now is because they have managed to sort of figure out a unified and coherent strategy. And they are successfully recruiting large numbers of people doing it.”

Experts say Exiles of the Golden Age is an example of a “folkish” group, a philosophy that incorporates Germanic or Norse pagan traditions with white supremacist and neo-Nazi elements.

The “Exiles of the Golden Age” name appears in a passage from The Lightning and the Sun, a 1958 book by Savitri Devi, a notorious neo-Nazi writer who espoused a cyclical view of history where humanity will once again enter a “golden age” after going through a period of darkness and decay. 

The Lightning and the Sun is dedicated to Adolf Hitler, whom Devi describes as “the Man against time” and the “god-like Individual of our times.” An advertisement for another conference organized by Exiles last year invited “all men against time.”

The group’s Telegram channel also features pictures of a pagan ceremony to mark the changing of the seasons that included swastikas.

“If you see a swastika in the middle of a picture, at that point, that’s Nazism,” said Catherine Tebaldi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg who specializes in modern white supremacist movements. “Many symbols have multiple meanings and different interpretations, but some of them just become very regimented, very fixed. And this is one of them.”

In a speech at the Vancouver event, a conference organizer identified by CAHN and verified by CBC as B.C.-based boxing coach Lane Pommer discussed “Indo-European first principles.” He said those principles are “ethnically exclusive, both biologically and spiritually.” He also said “we need an ethnic religion.”

Amarnath Amarasingam, an associate professor of religion at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and an expert in extremism, said “folkish” groups like the Exiles see “a fusion between their religious sense and their racial sense.”

In a statement to CBC News, Vancouver’s Scottish Cultural Centre, where the event was held, said it had been told the event was a “book release gathering.”

“We do not, and would not, knowingly rent our venue to any group or individual that promotes reprehensible ideologies like hate in any form, including white supremacist organizations,” said Darryl Carracher, the centre’s executive director. 

He said the centre was reviewing its booking policies.

The event also featured a display of books and a talk from the owner of Imperium Press, which describes itself as an “illiberal and folkish” press. The company publishes a number of controversial, far-right texts, including owner Mike Maxwell’s The Cultured Thug: A Guide to Radical Right-Wing Thought and a book by Martin Sellner, a prominent white nationalist activist from Austria.

In previous reporting on Second Sons and active clubs in Canada, CBC News spoke with gym owners whose facilities had been used by the groups for training. Those gym owners said they had no idea of the ideology espoused by the groups booking their spaces.

Researchers have long warned about the “infiltration” of the martial arts community by neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements.

Among the attendees at the Exiles event, CAHN identified a number of gym owners, coaches and trainers who serve a diverse clientele, including children. CBC’s visual investigations team used social media profiles, open source information and resources such as Darkside and OSINT Industries — searchable databases that include information pulled from the open web and past data breaches — to corroborate the findings.

Lane Pommer, who was an organizer and speaker at the event, was listed as a coach at Westshore Boxing Gym on Vancouver Island. Soon after CBC reached Pommer for comment, his profile was taken down from the gym’s website.

Reached via text for comment, an owner of Westshore Boxing Gym said they weren’t aware of Pommer’s background and that he is no longer part of the gym.

“Our gym promotes an inclusive and respectful environment that welcomes people of all backgrounds who respect others and our code of conduct,” said co-owner Alexandra Strickland.

Ron Pearce, who owns the martial arts club Foundry Combat Sports in Duncan, B.C., was also at the event. Pearce hung up on a CBC journalist after being asked about his attendance and didn’t respond to other requests for comment.

Another attendee was Karl Storness-Bliss, co-owner of strength training company Brokkr Strength Systems. He frequently trains out of Mission BJJ, a gym in Mission, B.C. that opened in 2023, where he used to be an assistant children’s coach.

Storness-Bliss, identified using his distinctive tattoos, can also be seen in Instagram photos wearing a motorcycle helmet with the Nazi SS symbol on the back, and with a tattoo on his stomach of an SS Totenkopf (“death’s head”) symbol.

Reached by phone, Storness-Bliss denied attending the event. But a comparison of photos taken at the Exiles event and those from his personal training confirms it, as he appears at the EOTGA conference with matching tattoos and the same shirt seen in social media photos.

Kieran Summersgill, the owner of Mission BJJ, said he’s “blown away” by the revelations about Storness-Bliss, who had told him he was attending a jiu-jitsu seminar in Vancouver.

“It’s crazy because my gym has so many diverse backgrounds — Indians, Filipinos… it definitely wouldn’t be a place for a white supremacist to hang out,” said Summersgill, adding Storness-Bliss hadn’t been coaching kids there for more than a year.

Summersgill said that he told Storness-Bliss to leave the gym. 

Karim Zidan, founder of Sports Politika, a media company that specializes in the relationship between politics and sports, said CBC’s findings show mixed martial arts have become “the common ground between all these entities.”

“This is the real-world proof that mixed martial arts really does serve as this common denominator amongst these various groups,” said Zidan. “It suggests something far more sinister, that this is deeper and more widespread than we may have initially considered.”

After CBC News started reaching out to individuals spotted at the event, a post on the Exiles’ Telegram channel recommended attendees not respond to CBC’s requests for comment. The group said in the post “there is absolutely nothing wrong with attending an event like this, or with the ideas discussed there.”

The RCMP would not comment on the event or individual attendees “to protect the integrity of our criminal investigations and preserve our ability to investigate … Safeguarding Canadians from ideologically motivated violent extremism remains a priority.”

The Exiles conference featured attendees from several active clubs in Canada. At least three attendees wore the uniform of the recently formed Second Sons Canada, which pitches itself as a “men’s nationalist club” and prominently features white supremacists among its leadership. Second Sons Canada is run by Jeremy MacKenzie, the founder of Diagolon, who this year filmed himself making a Hitler salute in a video shared on Telegram. 

“This gathering is a kind of alliance-building exercise,” said Amarasingam.

The conference was also a connecting point between Canadian groups and the international movement. The event was supposed to feature in-person speeches by two speakers: Swedish YouTuber Marcus Follin and the American Paul Waggener. Follin, who has been described as a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League, said in a video posted online that upon arriving in Canada, he was detained and questioned by border authorities, before choosing to turn around.

The Canada Border Services Agency declined to comment on specific incidents at the border due to privacy legislation.

Waggener is co-founder of the pagan group Wolves of Vinland, which has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. He elected not to attempt to enter Canada and also spoke virtually at the conference.

“Make no mistake, we are at war,” Waggener said in his speech. “And the war is physical in many ways for some of us, but it’s also cultural and it’s a war for the mind.”

Also present at the event were Robertson de Chazal and Josh Bruce, co-owners of the white supremacist clothing brand Vinland Battlewear, according to corporate documents.

De Chazal’s name was part of a prominent hack of neo-Nazi websites by the group Anonymous in 2012. In a photo supplied by CAHN, he is pictured wearing a shirt of the group Vinland Hammerskins, a neo-Nazi organization.

Many conference attendees were seen wearing Vinland Battlewear clothing. Numerous posts on the company’s Telegram channel show neo-Nazi imagery, including one featuring a picture of an SS officer who worked at Auschwitz lighting a Christmas tree with the caption, “The torch still burns. The days of everlasting light will come again.”

De Chazal did not answer CBC’s questions when reached by phone. 

Bruce did not respond to CBC’s request for comment. 

Evan Balgord of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said the Exiles conference is more proof that white nationalism is on the rise in Canada.

“Whether you want to judge it by the number of supporters of the white nationalist movement, by their capacity for fundraising, or by the number of people who are signing up for their more militant groups, the white nationalist movement in Canada has never been larger.”

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