You're listening to a stage talk titled Identifying Far -Right Fashion. This week we were joined by my colleagues Michael Colburn and Juri van der Waard. We discussed the meanings behind some far -right symbols, why merchandise is such an attractive element to far -right groups, big and small, and how investigating these financial structures can give you an insight into their secretive internal structures. You can find links to all the resources mentioned in the talk in
the podcast description. This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Mar, on Thursday the 23rd of October 2025 in the BellyCat Discord server. Hello and welcome to this week's Stage Talk. Today we're diving into the fashion of fascists. Exploring why creating the latest garb with their messaging or symbol on it is important to far -right groups. Well, you've got to look fabulous while spreading hate, right? Speaking to this is Bellingcat researchers Michael Coburn and
Eurovan Devide. Michael is known around these parts as somewhat of a far -right guru. He's spent years mapping out transnational networks and building research into these extremist organisational structures, identifying those driving the movements forwards. Yuri has worked on a wide variety of topics, but his focus on human rights abuses in Africa have led him into the world of groups like Wagner and Rusevich, Russian paramilitary groups associated with far -right ideologies.
In his latest article, he identified the man helping to sell Rusevich merchandise from key chains to sticker packs that depict Alexei Miltryakov, an infamous Russian neo -Nazi, and a figure Bellingcat revealed last year may have committed a war crime. Michael and Yuri will unpack why merch is important to these groups and how you can identify a far right tee versus an ordinary logo. As we talk, please make sure to add your questions in the chat box via the message bubble icon in the top
right corner of your screen. And as I just mentioned, this is being audio recorded. So please note within your question, if you do not want me to read your username out. Okay, Michael, it's your time to shine. I will shut up. And I believe
we're starting with you. Thanks, Charlie. Yes, thanks Charlie and thanks everyone for taking the time to to come to this I have ten minutes I could talk for much Much longer than that, but I will be disciplined and keep myself to ten minutes talking about this so Far -right fashion those words. Well, first of all far -right
fashion. It is a thing What I'll mostly be talking the brief presentation are is this phenomenon of specific brands that are worn by far -right and neo -Nazis, but also a bit of symbolism that they use, but also some of the more mainstream brands that they co -opt. It's more of a European phenomenon than it is in the United States or in the so -called English -speaking world that's starting to change. So just wanted to say that
for a bit of context before diving in. The why of far -right fashion, I've mentioned it exists, but why does it exist? Well, the number one reason to mention, but maybe actually not the most important reason, is money. Selling clothes, selling merch, selling anything can be a source of revenue for
the far -right. That being said, however, a lot of the kinds of brands that I look into and I research, they are even some of the ones that I may not mention by name in a few minutes, but you'll see some pictures of these are small brands are not going to be bringing in a lot of money. These are brands that are bringing in usually tens of thousands of dollars or euros, particularly,
or anything like that. They might be bringing in maybe a few thousand, maybe not even that, but they see it as part of It's not it wouldn't be the only revenue stream odds are if you're running or if you're running one of these far -right fashion brands There are you have other revenue streams like hosting events concerts things like that and also For example getting your own members to give you money to for for your propaganda Thinking of a specific group
in the United States with that one and also another reason related to money why far -right fashion is a thing or why, I guess, entrepreneurs want to be far -right entrepreneurs get into starting up a fashion brand. Well, it's a bit of status on the far -right. It can give them a bit more profile within a movement, make people within a movement see, oh, such -and -such is doing good things for quote -unquote us. He's making cool stuff. It's usually going to be a he, I'll
mention that. And it gives them a bit of status as well. However, I would argue the more important reason, essentially the more central reason as to the why of far -right fashion is that it's about identity. Particularly in the times that we live in, fashion is... more than ever a fundamental component of identity building, consolidating identities, both as an individual and in a group. And that's certainly the case across the board. We're not just talking about the far right here.
What I would argue is more important for the far right, the kinds of folks who are behind some of these brands, it is one, yes, money, but it is really more about trying to build a culture. It's about trying to not to build an identity that is, that keeps, keeps the old garden or keeps people excited or group identity. It's also something that they deliberately do to try to, well, bring the youth in. And especially given that fashion for youth is even an even
greater part of identity formation. This is why they do it. It's a strategy. And this is a quote from somebody who's affiliated with a far right fashion brand. This is an exact quote from theirs about the strategy behind fashion, quite literally being something to look good, to attract more of the youth. They are that transparent about it. Moving on quickly, more about the why. One of the reasons why, to answer that question,
why. Not just why, but the... Answering the question of how the far -right not just uses fashion, but what it communicates with using fashion. They do so in several key ways. They do this thing called, we would call it game playing. Plausible deniability is another way to think about it. Basically having a shirt with symbols
on it and a slogan. That is, maybe it doesn't have to look that extreme, but maybe only a few of us nerds recognize the hateful ideology behind the symbol or what's even being alluded to or referenced in the symbol. They try to claim some, basically play games and play this plausible deniability game. It's like, oh, well, it's just an ancient Slavic sun symbol. It's nothing more
than that. And they do that so that... for lack of a better way to put it, to take a bit of the heat off themselves and to sort of, you know, get more, relatively more into the mainstream.
That relates to this phenomenon of double speak, which refers to in studying the far right where there is a front stage, how the far right presents itself to a much more public audience and the backstage and with the game playing, these kinds of people can stand on the front stage and say, oh, there's nothing extreme about this symbol or this slogan. But in the backstage, the proverbial backstage with all their bodies, they all use and relate and under relate to and understand
that symbol. Or that said, those sets of symbols references the same way. And also it functions as a sort of secret handshake. Now you might not know what the specific brand is that might be on a shirt, maybe without even a symbol on it. You might not know what some of those symbols being referenced are. But the other guys, they do. It's a matter of, same with a lot of subcultures. It's a way of recognizing who is, quote unquote,
one of us, who's friend and who's foe. And that's something that further helps build and then solidify identity. And to quote one of the academic articles, which I think has been or will be, I'm giving everybody a reading list. It's not very long.
This is a quote from one of the articles. The whole approach of far -right fashion is inculcating this deliberately produced style of confusion where, for example, people spend two days on blue sky in the internet trying to figure out whether somebody's tattoo is a Nazi symbol or not, or whether they knew it was a symbol or not, or et cetera, et cetera. If you don't know
what I'm referring to, you're in luck. Related to this, another key component of far -right fashion is basically being Nazis without quote unquote, looking like Nazis. I think a lot of us in our countries and our societies, no matter how old or young we are, because of movies, because of popular culture, we often have an image of what somebody on the far right or what a neo
-Nazi looks like. We all think they might look like the character in American history acts, skinhead with Doc Martens and white laces and the kinds of people do still exist. But most of the contemporary far -right extremists, they play a more clever game than that. They always deliberately try to be a bit more subtle than that within boundaries. Sometimes they're more subtle, sometimes they're not. And as you'll see, they use some lesser known symbols as well,
symbols people won't know. Just checking for time here. All right. I'm just going to have all these up on the screen here. So I won't go into detail on all of these right now, but Essentially, there are larger Far -right fashion brands. I'm only going to name some of these larger ones. Some of them, maybe you've heard of Thor Steiner is one of them. European Brotherhood is another.
However, there are smaller, more local or national brands that exist only in some countries or in some parts of Europe, particularly, or some regions. But there are also, there's also long been of the far right co -opting mainstream brands like Fred Perry. I don't know if you can see the polo shirt that I'm wearing. There's a reason why
I'm deliberately wearing it today. There are some mainstream brands that have often been associated with football casual subcultures or other subcultures for decades that the far right has co -opted. Some of them they've co -opted for a long time. But the key thing to keep in mind with these co -opted brands is that they're often associated with other subcultures or no subcultures at all.
Like for example, not to get into too much detail, but those, like the brands that I have up there, Fred Perry, Lyle and Scott and New Balance, those are the same kind, a lot of the same kinds of brands that left -wing or anti -fascist communities wear as well in some countries. But sometimes they are wearing the same brands, maybe not always
the same colors, but the same brands. And within the sort of corpus of far -right brands, there are some that are maybe less explicit or barely or not at all, where sometimes it might even be hard to use the terminology far -right to describe them. However, sometimes there are varying degrees of subtlety or lack of subtlety even within a particular brand's product range. And then there are some brands that are much, much
more overt and much less subtle. And lastly, this is probably not surprising given that we are talking about the far right. The vast majority of this clothing is for men. There are far right brands who produce clothes for women. They are just awful. I won't editorialize too much to be on that. And this is my last slide. I'm just going to slide over here, no pun intended. Turn on my laser pointer with a few minutes without going over too much. If you're watching this
live, you can see what's on the screen. I'll just try to quickly verbally explain some of these. Up here on the top left is a shirt from European Brotherhood, their brand, their initials in a sort of sun cross or almost Celtic cross type symbol. This might look pretty subtle, but the coordinates that are on the shirt are the coordinates for Vellelsberg Castle in Germany. which was a castle that the SS took over in which Heinrich Himmler intended to turn into a sort
of cult -like headquarters. Very obvious what they're going for there. These pair of shorts below is from a far -right fashion brand that's affiliated with the active club movement. Roman numerals for the 14 words and neo -Nazi slogan, which I'm not repeating, and also stylized fasces up on the... center here, this sort of patch from a France -based far -right or neo -Nazi
fashion brand. That style of patch is meant to emulate Waffen -SS imagery, and it also uses black, white, and red colors of the old German Empire flag, colors that were also used by the Nazis. There are historical nuances I don't have the time to get into here. And below, a lot of what you'll see with the far -right is even co -opting logos of other brands here. just riffing off the North face logo with a shirt that says
the white race. Up here, a Canadian brand with what are called, again, not to get into too much, there's more subtlety than this, but what are called life and death runes that were runic symbols that were co -opted by the SS. This hoodie, this gray hoodie, it is something sold by a Serbian brand. And without getting into detail, it is referring to an anti -Bosnia or chant that is
essentially a genocide triumphalist slogan. It's three words, but they've only printed the first two on the shirt because everybody knows seeing those two words in the Serbian or Balkan context what the next one is. This is a Thor Steiner shirt. Again, game playing here. A big white polar bearer with a slogan. It's okay to be white again. Ha ha. I've seen this with a great white shark, I think from the same brand and then Moving on more quickly, there's another Thor Steiner
belt down here with runes. Runes were very much co -opted by the Nazis, and they're very much used in non -Far -right contexts as well. And lastly, to help lead into what Yuri is going to be talking about, these two brands here are related to stuff Yuri has written about. Up here is a shirt from the Hatecore brand, Fake Cross. And even though it is a Russian brand, it says Light and Proud in English. Not very subtle.
And then this shirt here is a shirt sold by people affiliated with the neo -Nazi Rusich military unit fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine. It's got a kolovrat, which is another pagan symbol that sometimes, I don't think that often, is used by non -far -right or non -neo -Nazi people. But with these guys, it's very clear that this is the context that they're using it. a nice Odo rune, another co -opted rune of Volknut, another co -opted symbol that is also used in
more mainstream context. And then in Russian, what it says here is, we sow death, we reap victory. So pretty clear what's going on here. So that is the end of my comments. And so I will stop sharing my screen. Stop sharing. Oh, thank you, Michael, for your insights. Um, so I'll do an introduction explaining, uh, one of the investigations that I did. Uh, it was the previous one, the previous investigation, uh, we did a few months
ago. Um, and maybe after I'm done, uh, talking about this, I'll have some time to talk about the more recent article. Um, but anyway, um, so I will talk about the man named, uh, Raman Morin. I'm sorry. I'm, I'm a little bit sick. So if my... My voice sounds a little bit strange, that's why. So, Roman Morin, he, we found out, is the administrator of a pro -Wagner telegram channel called White Uncles in Africa. And he also sells neo -Nazi merch under the brand Hatecore,
Hatecore with an 8. That's one of the shirts that Michael showed belonged to that brand. How did this start? I already knew of them before, but I started investigating them in the summer of 2024. It was sometime after July 25th, because back then a big ambush happened in Mali, where many Wagner mercenaries and Malian soldiers died. That was a really, really big event. The ambush was carried out by Tuareg forces and in collaboration
with Janim, a jihadist organization. So many Russians died there and there were some or many pro -Wagner telegram channels that had the latest updates on what happened, but one really stood out and that was the White Uncles in Africa group. So that incident led to me taking a closer look at them, at the group. And I quickly noticed that they were rapidly growing and that they started selling t -shirts and merch as well. Some had clear neo -Nazi motifs. So it was from
that same brand, Hatecore. They created a t -shirt that was specifically for this group with texts such as white uncles in Africa, in both English and Russian. So more importantly, right? They started sharing or they would also share lots of gory and graphic content and even more so than other channels. And that was another thing that sparked my interest in them. Um, cause they were really glorifying whatever Wagner was doing in Mali. And, uh, yeah, they also would share
instructions on how to join Wagner, right? Which nowadays, um, kind of is disappearing at least in Mali, um, and becoming something else right under the Russian government. Right. Okay. Um, so yeah, it was clear that... They were sharing lots of footage that degrades their enemies. For example, decapitated corpses of presumably their enemies and insinuating that some of their Mayan partners had practiced even such things as cannibalism on their enemies. the Malian armed
forces, but people from volunteer groups. Yeah. So why do I talk about that? Well, all of that was shared kind of jokingly by these people, right? By white uncles in Africa. And it seemed to me that it was partly intended to attract men to join their cause or at least become supporters. And when I spoke to Maureen, he personally confirmed to me that he joined Wagner after he had seen a video of torture, killing, burning and decapitation of a Syrian deserter by Wagner fighters in Syria
many years ago. So he said that he is in favor of justice and that's what attracted him to Wagner. So, yeah, sharing that kind of footage may also constitute the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity, according to some experts I spoke to. And there is also an article by the AP that said that the ICC was investigating such cases and also cases of disseminating this type of material. And in particular, they mentioned this group
white uncles in Africa in their article. But the rest of the presentation, I will focus a bit more on hatecore because through that brand, I was able to establish who Moirin was. And it's also an interesting way to see how they operate and how this, let's say, propaganda works. So I started this investigation with the goal of finding out who was behind white uncles in Africa,
right? But really what helped me crack this case was that the person behind white uncles in Africa, Raman Morin, was also selling neo -Nazi merch from his brand, Hatecore. So actually when I came across Hatecore, I first knocked on the door of Michael to ask his opinion on it, but it was pretty obvious even to me. that it was a neo -Nazi brand because of some of the shirts that they were selling, the motifs on them, like the Black Sun or the Kolovrat, things like that.
So Hatecore is a grassroots project that Morin started more than a decade ago for fun, according to what he said himself. Because when I spoke to him during the write -up reply phase... He said that for him, it wasn't really about the money, but you know, it was some kind of hobby. He liked to do it and his customers and friends also liked it. So there was a lot of information out there from that decade long history of the
brand. Some of it he had tried to hide, but a lot of it was still out there and kind of hidden in plain sight. White uncles in Africa... kind of pretended that the founder of hatecore and the admin of white uncles were two different people, right? Or they kind of insinuated that, but they also dropped some breadcrumbs every now and then, and that allowed us to connect
the dots, right? So they would share... promotional images of their t -shirts and say things like, the owner of Hatecore is a good friend and a former Wagner fighter. Oftentimes the person in these promotional images was the same guy. So I was able to tell that because of his build, right? And most importantly, the tattoos. In some pictures, they would blur the tattoos, right? But you could still analyze it because of where the tattoos were located on the body, like on
the same arm, forearm, hand, right? In most recent images, he had blurred his tattoos and he was generally speaking more secretive. But I found other social media where Hatecore was promoting their products and they were... or are active on Telegram, but most importantly on VK and YouTube. VK is kind of the Russian Facebook. So the latter two social media platforms were very important for me because they contained history that went back years and years. In the case of YouTube,
almost like 10 years. VK was still active when I started. investigating it it is still active today but they removed lots of pictures but back then the history would go back really years and years all the way back to i think 2016 the youtube channel had died down but it was still online right so they hadn't uploaded anything new since 2016 but at least they didn't remove the old videos So that was important for me because I was able to find old pictures of the man I later
learned to be Ramon Morin. The pictures there, they weren't censored. So you could clearly see some of the dews that he had back then, and you could clearly see his face. Morin had also left his personal email address. Uh, in the YouTube contact details and true that I found his real name because he had also used it to register as an individual entrepreneur at the Russian tax offices, right? So if you want to sell stuff, um, and pay taxes, then you need to register
and he used that same, uh, email address. Now I tried to confirm that Maureen was the person I was seeing in old pictures and videos, right? So that took me a while because Morin in newer stuff would also use aliases, nicknames, but most commonly he would go by Andrei Maskov. So I had to confirm that his different personas were really him. I had to connect that also to him, like his physical appearance, his face.
I was finally able to confirm that Morin was Moscow's, the admin of hatecore and not just an associate by finding his parents' social media profiles, where they were using their real names and they would also tag Morin. So I was able to confirm that. And then at that point, I wanted to connect him to white uncles in Africa, right? So I already had the hunch that the admin of or one of the admins of white uncles in Africa and Maureen, that they were the same people,
the same person. But yeah, I had to prove that somehow. Luckily Maureen slipped up a couple of times. So on the white uncles page, they would share an image of a man with someone called Alexei Molchakov. Charlie spoke about Alexei Molchakov. He is the current commander of the neo -Nazi paramilitary group Rusich. So you might know Molchakov because he is quite infamous and the group is infamous as well. And both he and the group are under international, mostly Western
sanctions for stuff they did. not only in Ukraine, but they were also in Syria, in the Central African Republic and Libya, and there they were acting as part of Wagner. So Ruzic is very controversial, as I said, and one of their former commanders, Jan Petrovski, is currently in jail in Finland for war crimes committed in Ukraine in 2014. So in that picture, they said that the white uncle's admin, the guy whose face they had blurred, was meeting with Molchakov to donate some equipment,
right? And around the same time, Ruzic also promoted hatecore and white uncles in Africa gear on their own channel. So they were kind of doing each other a favor, right? Um, all right. So, uh, the admin, Spoiler, Maureen, right, appeared in that picture with Melchikov. I had a hunch it was him because of some of the clothes he was wearing and particularly his gray blue New Balance sneakers that he had worn in several
different pictures. Um, so yeah. Uh, I still had to prove that, but then around New Year's, um, they shared another image and video of the admin, again, Maureen. And Maureen was congratulating the subscribers, right? Like wishing them a Happy New Year. And Maureen wore a mask, shades and a hatecore baseball cap to hide his identity.
Um, but yeah, in the video, they forgot to blur certain keyframes where you could see his tattoo on the back of his hand and here on the side of his left hand between his pinky and his wrist, where you could figure out what was written there. It was the VDV. VDV is the Russian Airborne Forces, like that unit or that part of the of the Russian military, right? And on that other hand, he had
a hate -core tattoo. So that was really good for us because both tattoos matched with tattoos from older pictures where he didn't hide his face, right? And where you could see also the same tattoos, the hate -core tattoo and the za vedeve tattoo. So after finding that, we still had to confirm that he was a former Wagner fighter. So for that, We contacted Candice Rondeau and Ben Dalton from the New America Project Foundation,
I should say. And they have access to a bunch of internal Wagner documents from, I think, 2021 and before. And then there, they found that someone with the same full name and birthday appeared in their records. I had only given his name. in his date of birth, but then they provided me with his passport number and some other details. So I cross -referenced and yeah, I found out
that that was the same guy. So at that stage, I had enough to contact Moiding himself to ask him a few questions and to lay out what we found about him. And that's when he admitted that he was indeed the hate core admin. First, he didn't really want to admit that he was also the admin of white uncles in Africa. But I explained how I knew it was him. And then he confirmed as well. And yeah, well, he confirmed almost everything.
He confirmed he served in Libya, but he said that he couldn't talk about ongoing things, right? I suspect he might have been active in Mali as well, but that's one of the things he wouldn't tell. So he denies being a neo -Nazi, interestingly. So I asked about the black sun symbol he tattooed on his elbow, and that was heavily featured in some of the clothes he sells. But he said that
was just an Asian pagan symbol. So I noticed that Maureen deleted some images from his Telegram profile, but he kind of doesn't care anymore. Sometimes nowadays you see posts by him where, for example, he is selling a certificate that he got with a medal from the Russian government. It was a medal for Odvago, which means like medal for courage. And the certificate had his complete name there. So I guess nowadays he doesn't care
too much. But he removed a bunch of other things from his profile, like stuff where he was kind of insinuating that he was active in Mali. I wasn't able to confirm whether he was the one taking those pictures or if it was someone else. But yeah, so a few things remain unclear. Months after I published... The AP came out with the aforementioned article and also Jeune Afrique published an article about White Uncle's premium Telegram channel where they were selling the
more graphic content. And after the latter came out, Telegram banned the premium channel. So I guess that's good, but the open channel is still active and hatecore is still active as well. Do you mind if I cut in here Yuri, just because of time and perhaps we can explore the
second article within the questions. I actually have a question based on what you were just talking about and thank you so much for going through your research and Michael also beforehand going through some of the reasons why these merchandise exist and what they look like. When it comes to investigating groups like this, do these financial offerings, these merchandise structures, are they a good way in to discover organizational hierarchies and people who are potentially quite
centrally involved in the organization? So in Morin's case, you kind of eventually found out that he was the admin for the White Uncles in Africa. But in the Rusich case with Romanov, he denies being anything other than just a salesman. How often is it that the person who's behind the merchandise sales is so entrenched within the organization? Is it often quite a good way in to these hierarchies of these secretive organizations? I think it's difficult to tell because I worked
on two articles like that. Like this one in the Aromanov one that we published a few days ago. And in those two cases, it appears to be the case, right? But maybe Michael has more information about that because he has been doing this for longer. Right. The short answer to your question,
Charlie, is yes. I really think that when I think about some of the different brands that I've personally spent a lot of time researching or investigating, or that I'm familiar with, even to the point of going into their shops, or just
being familiar with smaller ones. In a lot of cases, finding out, and sometimes it's not at all hard because they literally don't hide it, but figuring out who's behind one of these brands can often really be somebody who already has particular status within a movement or within a sort of far -right cultural sphere. In other words, they're not usually a nobody. They usually
have, even if not a formal affiliation. they will have some connections with some specific parts of the far right or with other groups within it. And so in short, yeah, if one wants to figure out a bit more about a particular country's scene, even if it's very small, if they've got one of these kinds of brands, look into that and it might be able to be a window into understanding a bit more about the context and the broader
network. You mentioned how the white uncles in Africa, the main Telegram account could close down. I've been thinking about consequences. Very Charlie, just one small correction. The main Telegram channel is still up, but the premium one where people had to pay to view the query content, that one is... That one was taken down. I wanted to ask about the consequences of reporting on merchandise that's associated with far right
groups. Has that been any cases that you're aware of where... you've found products online or other organizations have found products online reported about those products and those products have been taken off for sale. For example, I know a couple of years ago, we covered some merchandise being sold on Amazon that was then taken down. Is there any consequences for these kinds of sellers? Is there any rules or regulations that prevent what can be sold on t -shirts, for example,
or on... merchandise in general. Sure. I go first and then you, Michael. I think you're trying to speak, but I cannot hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. So just quickly in my case, right, I reached out to ozone .ru, which is kind of like the Russian Amazon. They didn't do anything. Telegram. didn't do anything until Joan Afrique did the other article about the premium channel. I'm trying to think, VK, it's still there. Other social media, I think it was mostly also because they
are in Russia, right? In Russia's, I think most platforms are kind of closing their eyes for this kind of stuff. even though it's like, as far as I understand, against their laws. In my case, I have seen and I'm familiar with where some of these brands, they still will sell their products on a website, but they're prevented
from using particular payment processors. So kind of related quite a lot to Colina's work where making it difficult for them to process payments, even if it's from a small group of like -minded people, that puts a dent in the kinds of things that they want to do. Then there can be some cases where if there's media coverage about a particular product or set of products that generates a negative reaction, they sometimes have stopped selling it or they've been told
you can't sell this anymore. The example I'm aware of is from Serbia. The example of the shirt that I, the hoodie that I had in my presentation, the one that I'm just not saying, saying the chant, but you know, genocide triumphalist slogan, two thirds of it. And even in Serbia, even for the Serbian stays, the whichever departments, Stepped in and said that violates a law you cannot
sell a shirt and they took it down. So there can be short -term Maybe not always hugely damaging consequences for particular kinds of media coverage. But so when this kind of coverage adds up Yeah, it makes it it can put a bit of a dent in in in what they're trying to do Bishop says in the chat, I think the only rules at least in North America, as long as the brand is not overtly spreading hate speech throughout its brand is
okay. Whether or not the community circles the way it spread hate, that isn't necessarily put upon the brand itself. So there's a guess based on my understanding of law in North America. Interesting to see if any reporting has been done on social media advertisements. For example, a lot of these brands have profiles for the brands as well on social media. It would be interesting to see if any of them have done any promotions.
uh, and whether those are, uh, taken down by the likes of X or Instagram, for example, um, all of those, that's where often merchandise is advertised. Just pitching, investigating ideas. This is kind of related, particularly on Instagram. And I'm not the only person who's observed this over the past year or more, but a lot more, more of these kinds of groups operate. It's not like
Telegram, but they can operate. In other words, what I'm getting at, they can post a lot more content that I don't remember seeing on Instagram before 2024, especially before 2025. There's a lot more far right organizing, broach selling, propagandizing on Instagram than I think a lot of people are aware of. Absolutely. And if you're interested in monitoring some of these things, we do have a space within here called hashtag far right monitoring where I know Michael spends
a lot of his time. So please do check that out channel out. And if you have any questions, by the way, please get them in. We've got about 15 minutes left. What are some organizations that are consistently monitoring far right activities, particularly far right merchandise or fashion or symbol use that other people within this survey or listening to this podcast might want to check out. What are the organizations that you monitor that you think do great reporting? For me, there's
several. In terms of a resource, one of the probably the better resources right now in terms of hate symbols is the Right now, I always mix up their name. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, GPAHE, they have developed a pretty wide ranging
database of symbols. We are actually, myself, are actually working on a sort of smaller glossary or encyclopedia of symbols, almost like a visual dictionary of some of the symbols that I've talked about, a lot of which incorporates photos that I've taken of graffiti and stickers and street art and fashion over the past decade. So eventually some more of our work will become reasonable. But in terms of a lot of the best monitoring of these kinds of groups, it does differ by country.
I've worked with Expo in Sweden. Expo's first editor was Stieg Larsson and Expo has long done great work and has actually been kind of an inspiration for the kind of work that I've wanted to do, the kind of journalism that I've wanted to do. There are individual journalists, journalistic outlets who maybe focus a bit more on the far
right from time to time. There are organizations that research, but they also do their own kind of lobbying or, you know, maybe sometimes you call more activism, like maybe Hope Not Hate in the UK is an example of that. There are also, of course, without getting too much into politics, there are, I mean, a lot of research, again, depending on the country, there are anti -fascist activists who research the far right. And sometimes, especially in say Germany, they produce their
own magazines. Now, of course, if in those kinds of communities, uh, there's quote unquote, activist, a partisan element involved, but very easy to do as cause I spent my life doing it. And I think we've, a lot of us spent our lives doing it, reading sort of, you know, somebody's research on a fiery group. Maybe for them it comes from some partisan quote unquote act. activist perspective, but especially doing it using open sources and showing your work and being ethical about it.
They're resources and they're sources that mainstream conventional journalists use. So that speaks to it. Yuri, do you have any that you want to shout out just for on this subject? No, not really. I think I've been focused more on just Russia. angle, right? And I think my interest in this came from somewhere else and then I kind of rolled into this. So I don't really have other examples of groups doing this on a larger scale. Yeah.
So in short, Yuri, what you're saying is unlike me, you have a life outside of researching the FARA and good for you. That's good. Well, I'm I'm going to tell you one thing. I'm really tired of looking at these kinds of folks, right? I think I need a break from Bruce Hitch and Wagner guys, neo -Nazi Wagner guys. I really need a mental health break in do something else just
for a little while. I can speak to that. I can understand that where for anybody who may be, anybody listening who maybe has an interest in you know, researching or monitoring or writing about these kinds of groups or wants to start doing it. One thing that I would stress to always keep in mind is even if at first you think you're, you know, you think you're going to be able to let like, you know, water flow off you like a duck's back that you can go and look at all these
telegraph channels. constantly all the time. Maybe you're looking at stuff that even isn't explicitly violent, but maybe it's full of hateful, hateful, hateful rhetoric. What I've found over doing this kind of work for years is that when, when you spend time, too much time, you get sort of buried in their world or this world that they've
created. You can just, you just. Yeah, even if it is not always explicit like if like if I opened on my telegram right now where I follow all from different accounts a lot of very not nice stuff Even after like nowadays even after a few minutes
ten minutes of going through. Oh, here's what this group posted about recently then there's you just Like it's just like you feel like in your head you're looking or you're seeing are these hateful people think everybody is out to get them and that they you know And it can be
hard, hard to, hard to deal with. And so it doesn't, this, the key thing for me, for anybody who wants to not have their quote unquote beat like me, but if they even, you know, looking at things on the side or maybe a specific article or investigation, be cognizant of the fact that you need to pace
yourself and take mental breaks from it. Even when you maybe at the time don't think you need to, don't spend day and night, day and night, day and night constantly looking at this kind of stuff because to put it in an informal way, it's going to fry your brain. And it's not, you know, even in very small ways, it could be not
fun looking at some of this kind of crap. If I can just be that blunt, looking at some of this kind of crap, you know, during a work day for me, you know, it can, it can, it can ruin the rest of the day because it's Even like, I'm not going to say that's on the level of trauma, but it's, it can, viewing some of this content, some of the language, just the hateful world that some of these groups and channels and whatnot have constructed, it can bring you down too.
And so like I said, pace yourself with it. You might want to, or feel the need to take a look at any of that kind of stuff on a particular day. doesn't mean you're not doing your job or you're not committed to it, you just got to take care of yourself doing it, even if it isn't like the most, quote unquote, extreme kind of content or particularly kind of extreme visual or violent
content. And as you said at the beginning, Michael, about some of the reasons behind merchandise being sold, it's not just a financial reason for these groups, but also it's a sense that of brotherhood of we're an army of people. or wearing the same kind of uniform. It might be a secret uniform, it might be a secret handshake, but it does have this, when you manage to flood yourself with so much content, it does have this ability to make you think, oh, wow, there's quite
a lot of them. There's quite a lot of people within this movement that, yeah, it has its persuasive techniques and that can be quite gut wrenching, particularly if you've seen some of the more extreme information that they're sharing and thoughts and feelings that they're sharing in
these groups. I wanted to ask about safety actually, if you're infiltrating some of these groups or if you're looking at looking down the financial structures of these merchandise sellers, what are some of the steps you can take to protect
yourself as a researcher? I think especially with investigating or trying to even just find out information about some of these brands is that, you know, it can depend on the country, but wherever they are, sometimes they will, I mean, not sometimes, I think for the most part, they will be incorporated and depending on the country. That means you can very easily, you know, get the basic financial information, maybe not. So in other countries that you can find
out. with a public registry search, you know, who, who the agent is behind particular like LLC or, you know, or, or whatever, whatever terminology who might be behind your brand. So one fortunate thing is that it, that side of things can be easy. Uh, on the safety side of things, what I can say is that this doesn't just relate to
fashion. I found that the invest investigations that I've done that seem to have got some of these people the most upset are investigations where I'm reasonably certain one of the major
impacts was human lose money. And that something to keep in mind for anybody who might be wanting to investigate the far right or other kinds of related actors, whether, you know, anti -vax type people or any anybody who kind of of that ilk is despite all the principles or rhetoric they might like the sound when if you end up making debts in the money that they're bringing in even if it's not very much they don't like it and that's just a safety consideration to
keep in mind you can maybe write other articles that embarrass them in some way or make them look look silly. They won't like that either. But if you like, for example, when I, when I wrote about for belly got the, this, uh, a European fight night in 2023. And it was essentially because of my article that the venue pulled out the day before. And so these guys had to run around and find some place in the, you know, in some small town, an hour away from Budapest, some little
field. And it means certain that because of that article and the consequences of it, that lost their money. And that's why at their actual event, I can't see what it says on the flyers, but they put flyers of my face, so I don't think they were happy. And that's something safety wise to keep in mind. Sorry, Yuri, did you have anything to add? No, not really. I think it's too... employ some of the same techniques that you employ on them yourself to see what they could potentially
do. I think some of the far -right people aren't necessarily the brightest, but others, right? Especially if there is like a state involved, right? Like state -sponsored far -right groups, like the case of Rusage. In those cases, you have to be a bit... more careful, I think. So try to see if you can talk to yourself and try to take measures and get advice from people who know more about online safety, cybersecurity, but also physical security, if you're really
worried about this. I wanted to ask one question from the audience just to wrap. I know we're on time, so I'll make it quick. Argyle's just asked, I've been noticing local groups here in the US creating their own bespoke clothing. Are there some more common clothing manufacturers these groups might be using instead of, say, screen printing their own? And just to add, Michael
earlier gave us a really good reading list. I will be including that reading list in the description of this podcast so you can read up more on this topic yourself there. I was typing out a response to that, but now I don't have to type it out, especially in the US context, but also literally. I would say a lot of local dollar groups, they are getting relatively cheap things wholesale and finding some sort of friendly provider to
do the pressing or the stitching. I wrote an article just over a year ago about how the brand affiliated with the active club movement, which is based in the United States. Uh, one of the places where they wholesale, not just wholesale wholesale, but where they actually get the printing and stitching done. So far as I can tell is in Bulgaria. So they were, and even in Bulgaria, they are probably getting those wholesale shirts
and shorts and whatnot. They're probably getting even getting them even cheaper from Turkey or somewhere like that. Cause right on the border. But yeah, I think on local levels, if they're trying to, they're probably not taking the time to screen print all of these things themselves.
I know of smaller brands like very, very small brands in the, in some European countries or cities where they, yeah, they, they've got a sympathetic So who runs a kind of shop or somebody who doesn't know what they're doing, uh, to, to do the, to do the work for them, like in even getting a graphic designer, you know, friendly graphic design, you're part of the quote unquote movement, uh, and go from there. And that's an
investigation in itself. Um, I just wanted to end just by reiterating if you are going to investigate particularly local groups, groups that are local to you. Please, please be careful and take into consideration some of the points that we've just mentioned in terms of safety. Thank you, Yuri. Thank you, Michael, for your time today. If you want to continue these kinds of conversations, as I mentioned, hashtag far -right monitoring
in this space is the place to be. We also have hashtag disinfo and propaganda as well, which often overlaps. In two weeks' time, we'll be back with another stage talk. But for now, thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Stage Talk. If you'd like to catch a Stage Talk live where you can ask the guest questions, join the Bellingcat Discord server by visiting www .discord .gg slash
Bellingcat. The music you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer Self and is courtesy of Artlist.