The ultra-right in Bulgaria, fashion and relations with Russia

11 October 2024 9 minutes Author: Cyber Witcher

We tell how the far-right movement “Active Club” in Bulgaria uses fashion to attract young people and promote their ideas. It also shows the organization’s ties to Russia and other countries, which helps spread extremist views. Bulgaria is becoming an important center for the far right, influencing politics and international relations.

Let’s start

A far-right fashion brand associated with the white supremacist Active Club movement creates its products in a streetwear store located in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria.

This decentralized movement, founded by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, uses fitness, martial arts and fashion to attract young men and teenagers to radical right-wing ideas. Through their Will2Rise (W2R) brand, created in conjunction with Active Clubs, they normalize fascist ideas and prepare their followers for physical violence against those they perceive as enemies.

Studies of far-right webshops have shown how the sale of fashion clothing and merchandise promotes racist ideas among young people, provides funding for hate movements and strengthens links between far-right groups internationally.

Geolocation carried out in 2023 revealed that almost all of the latest W2R brand products, including clothing, flags and stickers, originate from a small shop in Stara Zagora. The store was also found to be affiliated with other international far-right movements, including a Canadian far-right brand and participants in far-right sporting events, as well as one of the most prominent active clubs in the US.

W2R had no comment on these findings.

Old ID, new story

In February 2023, Robert Rundo was hiding in southeastern Europe, avoiding federal charges in the United States for his involvement in violence during rallies in California in 2017 and 2018. Rundo has already been in the spotlight several times for his activities in the region, and in November 2022 he was located in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

However, he continued to publish materials. In late February 2023, the exact location of two photos published by Rundo on the W2R Telegram channel was determined. Despite attempts to hide the details and change the background, it was possible to establish that these photos were taken in Stara Zagora, one of the largest cities in Bulgaria, located less than 100 kilometers from Plovdiv.

Link to publication

How we geolocated these Will2Rise photos to Stara Zagora

These photos can look almost impossible to geolocate, especially if background details, such as signage, are deliberately blurred. It is also unclear if the photos show Rundo himself, as the man’s face was obscured.

But there are many details here. Here’s how we found this place:

We assumed that the location was somewhere in Bulgaria since we geolocated Rundo to the country a few months ago, so we started our search there.

We noticed that the streets in the second image appear to be laid out in a square grid with a one-way street. This allowed us to limit the search areas to parts of Bulgarian cities with a similar grid.

We reviewed Google Street View images from these parts of Bulgarian cities to rule out possible overlaps:

  • – Google Street View images from major cities, including Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna – cities we knew from previous geolocation and research that Rundo had visited – did not show similar-looking streets, suggesting that the site was likely in a smaller Bulgarian city.

  • – The city of Stara Zagora, however, had a similar grid layout – with one-way streets that include left-turn-only intersections – to that seen in the second photo posted by Rundo.

Google Maps image of street layout in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Google Maps image of street layout in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria

After searching for images using Google Street View in the central part of Stara Zagora, with an emphasis on intersections with left turns on one-way streets, a match was found for the location of two photos. The determination was made based on the location of street signs and special features of the building.

Sources: Telegram, Google Maps

A little more than a month after Rundo was located, he was arrested in neighboring Romania and extradited to the United States. In September 2024, he pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to planning and participating in the 2017 riots in California. He is due to be sentenced in December 2024 and currently remains in custody.

In mid-2024, while revisiting the site, it was noted that newer images had appeared on Google Street View. As of February 2023, there was a cafe at the location, but images from August 2023 showed that the cafe had been replaced by a streetwear store called “GK Style”, promoting its website and social media accounts in the storefront.

March 2023 Google Street View image from a geolocation site in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Google Street View image from August 2023 showing a streetwear store on the site of a former coffee shop on the same site

For our friends at W2R

On its home page, the Bulgarian streetwear store notes that it makes clothes for “more than 300 companies” and provides a large layout with its customers’ logos. These include several football teams from Bulgaria’s top division, as well as the Bulgarian Football Union (BFS), which is the governing body for football in the country and is affiliated with FIFA and UEFA. BFS did not comment on this.

The Bulgarian streetwear store also boasts a few less conventional “firms” among its clientele, including:

  • Will2Rise (W2R), a far-right fashion brand founded by Robert Rundo, is closely associated with the Active Club movement.

  • The far-right martial arts event, which took place in early 2024 north of Dallas, Texas, was organized by W2R and the white nationalist group Patriotic Front, which also has ties to the Active Club movement.

  • A Canadian far-right fashion brand associated with the international neo-Nazi group Hammerskins, whose German branch was banned in September 2023. The brand’s logo also appeared in a video posted in March 2023.

  • SoCal Active Club, which organized another far-right sports event in southern California in August 2024 with participants from the US and Canada.

SoCal Active Club had no comment on this event.

His Instagram posts show that he also worked for the official shop of the neo-Nazi ultras group SW99 from Sofia (the Levski club), as well as for an ultras group in Pirin whose logo includes the Nazi symbol Totenkopf. This logo appeared on a jacket promoted on the Bulgarian store’s social media, but was blurred out, presumably to avoid being blocked on the platforms.

GK Style did not respond to specific questions about its relationship with these clients other than W2R. A representative of the store stated that the logos on their site are randomly placed and that they have never made products for W2R, but only shot promotional photos and videos for design samples. He also insisted that he has no ties to far-right organizations.

However, the store’s 2024 Facebook and Instagram pages were filled with photos of clothing they claim to have designed for W2R, with numerous mentions of the W2R name, including posts about items made for “our friends at W2R.” (According to the representative, they refer to every customer who orders products from them as “friends”.)

An Instagram post from a Bulgarian streetwear store in March 2024.

Merchandise the store has created for W2R includes t-shirts, polos, hoodies, shorts, flags and stickers promoting the Active Club movement. More than a dozen individual items were found posted on the store’s social media pages with clear indications that they were for W2R or featured its branding.

Researching the W2R website revealed about 20 more items that were also believed to be designed by GK Style, as most of them used identical or very similar photos to those posted on the store’s social media pages.

In addition, several other products that were not featured on the Bulgarian store’s social media could be found on the W2R website and in Telegram posts. It was also possible to identify the model in these photos thanks to his tattoos – this is Georgy Kolev, the owner of the Bulgarian store GK Style.

Left: a photo of the owner of GK Style from the brand’s Instagram. Right: Photo from the product listing on the W2R website.
Left: a photo of the owner of GK Style from the brand’s Facebook. Right: Photo from the product listing on the W2R website

The tattoos by which Georgy Kolev was identified included a compass on his right bicep and the stylized number “1878” on his right knee.

In several cases, W2R posted items for sale on its Telegram channel, which had been posted on the Bulgarian store’s social media just a few days or weeks before. For example, on March 19, 2024, the store’s Instagram posted photos of polo shirts that the store called “for our friends at W2R.” Ten days later, on March 29, 2024, W2R posted an ad for sale of these polos on its Telegram channel, using the same photos as the store.

Recently, on August 20, a Bulgarian store posted a photo of a sleeveless hoodie and t-shirt for W2R. Four days later, on August 24, 2024, W2R began promoting these items as “new” on its website, using cropped versions of the same photos.

Screenshot of an Instagram post from a streetwear store.
A screenshot of the same item and an identical photo on the W2R website, four days after being posted by the Bulgarian streetwear store

GK Style claimed that they were only creating promotional materials — photos and videos of clothing samples that were designed for W2R — and noted that they did not charge for it. The representative explained that they did not make clothes for W2R because when they asked W2R for invoices and other documents, the company did not agree to work on such a scheme, and therefore they refused to cooperate further.

The representative also added, “We don’t see anything wrong with doing projects for them.”

Days after GK Style and W2R were approached for comment for this story, W2R announced a new line of merchandise on its Telegram channel and website, including two new W2R-branded vests.

Photos from the W2R website advertising new vests for sale made by owner GK Style in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria; these products were first announced on September 29, 2024 in the W2R Telegram channel.

We were able to identify the model of the new vests used by W2R as the owner of GK Style due to his prominent tattoos, particularly on his right bicep. Also, thanks to the large gate visible in one of the photos, it was possible to geolocate the location of the photos to the city of Stara Zagora.

The information was taken from Bellingcat’s open sources

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