Neo-Nazis have forgotten the first rule of fight club
Neo-Nazis have forgotten the first rule of fight club
Karim Zidan delves into the "European Fight Night" far-right event that took place last weekend in Hungary.
On May 6, 2023, more than 100 neo-Nazis with a penchant for combat sports descended on the small village of Csókakő, Hungary to take part in an international gathering of far-right extremists dubbed “European Fight Night.”
The event claimed that the show would be “the biggest radical nationalist event since coronavirus” and boasted 16 bouts with fighters representing more than a dozen countries.
However, what began as a secretive gathering and networking opportunity of European extremists was quickly exposed after one of the fighters failed to maintain the veil of secrecy.
European Fight Night was initially scheduled to take place at a secret location in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. The secrecy was essential, as similar far-right events had been banned elsewhere in Europe and many of the participants belonged to violent neo-Nazi groups. This included the three primary organizers: the locally-based Legio Hungaria, Germany’s Kampf der Nibelungen (also known as KdN), and Pride France.
Founded in 2013, Pride France is part far-right lifestyle brand, part neo-Nazi fight club. According to its mission statement from 2014, Pride France “is a brand for nationalists that focuses on an underground range, sport wear, and pagan. Whether to go out, to train in the gym, or practice your boxing training ‘Pride France’ will be there to help you.”
The brand maintains an online store that sells streetwear, as well as fight gear such as rash guards, gloves, and shorts, all of which are emblazoned with neo-Nazi symbolism. Some of Pride France’s most popular clothing items included its HTLR women’s t-shirt, and others that include slogans like “White Division” and “Defend Your Tradition.” The brand even has a “Halloween” shirt depicting a smiling KKK caricature with a noose and a flaming torch, as well as a selection of children’s clothing with similar white supremacist slogans.
The man at the helm of Pride France is Tomasz Szkatulski, a far right extremist linked to various neo-Nazi groups including the international Blood and Honor network. Szkatulski has reportedly been arrested on numerous occasions, including a conviction for attacking a homeless man because he was of African descent. He was also reportedly involved in neo-Nazi militant attacks on the customers of a gay bar in Lille and has used his Pride France platform for homophobic attacks in the past as well.
Szkatulski’s body is riddled with anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi tattoos, including a White Power tattoo across his neck, the face of leading Nazi Rudolf Hess and several swastikas peppered across his body. Szkatulski has used Pride France as a platform to promote his own extremist views and to integrate himself into the expanding network of neo-Nazi groups, mainly through hosting and sponsoring MMA events across Europe. He is also regularly fights for “King of the Streets,” and organization that hosts unsanctioned brawls at secret locations in Sweden and posts them on YouTube.
KdN was once the most prominent far-right combat sports organizations in Europe. Founded in 2013, the group held events for more than six years, growing from 150 attendees in their inaugural show to more than 800 in 2018.
While the group presented itself as nationalists with a shared interest in combat sports, the group ‘s founders are also connected to members of the “Hammerskins,” an internationally recognized network of racist skinheads with a brutal history of violence.
KdN was officially banned by German authorities in 2019. The group attempted to host a scaled-down show during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 but a police raid led to less than half the planned bouts being broadcast. KdN attempted to host a second show in 2021 but were forced to abort plans after German authorities caught wind of the show.
By 2022, a German court upheld the ban on KdN events, further restricting the group’s influence in Germany. Unable to host events in their own country, KdN turned to Hungary and a small yet prominent ultranationalist group known as Legio Hungaria. .
The group was founded in 2018 by Béla Incze, a former assistant to a far-right member of Hungary’s parliament who reportedly lost his job after assaulting a police officer. The group grew in notoriety after vandalizing a Jewish community centre in 2019. The following year, the group organized a “Day of Honour” in Budapest that commemorated an attempted breakout by besieged Nazi forces in 1945. They referred to the Nazis and their collaborators as “heroes.”
Several months later, the group announced they would be hosting a “nationalist sports camp” aimed at radicalizing young Europeans. The camp is open to “comrades” between the ages of 14 and 18, as long as they shared a “proper worldview“. According to the Legio Hungaria website, the teenagers were to be trained in martial arts, and take part in strength and endurance workouts. The ad also featured an image of a a group of young men with neo-Nazi tattoos playing tug-of-war.
“Importantly, this is not a plain sports camp, but is specifically for the nationalist environment and is held in that spirit,” the application read.
The “European Fight Night” event was supposed to be Legio Hungaria’s coronation as the leading far-right fight club in Europe. Even Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, viewed the event as “this year’s replacement event for the right-wing extremist martial arts tournament ‘Kampf der Nibelungen’, which has been banned in Germany since 2019.” The agency added that there are “clear personal, ideological and organizational parallels” between the two neo-Nazi fight clubs.
German authorities have since tried to ban numerous neo-Nazis from traveling to Budapest on the basis of this assessment from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. However, nearly two dozen right-wing extremists took legal action against the enforced bans and were granted permission to exit the country by a local courthouse.
While the event was not officially banned in Hungary, it faced resistance from local officials and was forced to move from Budapest to an undisclosed location on the eve of the event.
The veil of secrecy did not last long, however.
Michael Colborne, a journalist with Belingcat who has done a significant amount of reporting on far-right fight clubs, was able to expose the exact location of the event thanks to a public Instagram post from German far-right extremist Benjamin Moses, who was in attendance. Using open-source geolocation search tools, Colborne identified the location as Csókakő.
However, no police action was taken against the event. György Főrész, the mayor of Csókakő, later claimed that he no indication that the event would be neo-Nazi showcase.
"I would like to inform the public that neither I nor the municipality I represent consciously accepted the event considered neo-Nazi called European Fight Night," Főrész wrote on Facebook.
While the event went ahead as scheduled, aerial photos showed less than 100 attendees in total, which is less than KdN drew for its inaugural show a decade earlier.
Despite the relatively poor turnout at the event, Pride France founder Tomasz Szkatulski released a statement claiming that despite Germany’s attempts to ban neo-Nazis from traveling to Hungary, the event was attended “more than 400 people.” (Author Note: Does this look like 400 people to you?)
While far-right extremists have long utilized combat sports to train for violent confrontations, build community with like-minded bigots, and to recruit disenfranchized youth, many of these groups face a similar dilemma of attempting to expand their reach and influence without exposing their identities and drawing attention from their local governments. The more active these groups are on social media—a strategy used to spread propaganda and find new recruits—the easier it is for activists and researchers to identify the group’s members.
This is partially what occurred with European Fight Night. The three neo-Nazi fight clubs involved all had prominent members who were known to researchers and local authorities, who in turn exerted pressure on their extremist activities. Coupled with fighters posting compromising pictures of a secret event, it came as no surprise that one of the largest gathering of neo-Nazi fighters in several years was exposed before it had even begun.
As it turns out, those same neo-Nazi fighters had forgotten the first rule of fight club.
About the author: Karim Zidan is an investigative reporter for Bloody Elbow focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. His is also a contributor to The New York Times and The Guardian.
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Wild how economic anxiety makes people do shit like this.