American racist and white supremacist Robert Rundo extradited from Romania to US to face charges

Co-founder of Rise Above Movement to face charges in Los Angeles in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017

By Edward Era Barbacena 

Source: The Guardian 

Robert Rundo, the infamous American neo-Nazi and co-founder of the now-defunct Rise Above Movement, was extradited to the USto face charges in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017.

Rundo was extradited from Romania to the US on Tuesday, after being apprehended in a Bucharest gym in late March on an American warrant.

Rundo was scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon alongside Robert Boman and Tyler Laube for their activities in the Rise Above Movement, a white supremacist organization that, according to the indictment, represented itself “publicly … as a combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist white supremacy and identity movement”.

They are accused of conspiring to violate the anti-riot act for their roles in riots at political rallies across California in 2017. Rundo and Boman are also charged with one count of rioting each.

If convicted, Rundo, Boman and Laube face up to five years in prison. In 2019, the RAM co-founder Benjamin Daley and two other members, Michael Miselis and Thomas Gillen, were convicted on conspiracy to riot counts for attacking counter-protesters in 2018.

Tuesday’s extradition marks the second time Rundo has been returned to the US in handcuffs: in 2018, he was arrested in El Salvador by local authorities while attempting to travel to Ukraine. He was placed on a no-fly list by American law enforcement and was turned away by British authorities from Heathrow airport in fall 2018 while attempting to transit to Ukraine, according to a podcast episode Rundo recorded in 2021.

Rundo’s ascent in the far-right universe of influencers has been a circuitous one. A former small-time gang member from Flushing, Queens, who served time in New York state prison for stabbing an MS-13 rival in 2009, Rundo already dabbled in white supremacist ideology but dove in headlong once he moved to southern California in 2016.

After founding the Rise Above Movement with Ben Daley late that year, he trained in combat sports, harassed immigrants’ rights protesters at rallies, hung slogans from banners off freeway overpasses, and attacked anti-fascist protesters at rallies in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley in 2017.

Rundo fled the US in 2019 after an initial federal indictment under the anti-riot act was thrown out by US district court Judge Cormac Carney. That decision was reversed in March 2021 by a ninth circuit court of appeals panel and the charges against Rundo, Boman and Laube were reinstated. A fourth RAM member charged in the initial 2018 case, Aaron Eason, died of lung cancer last year, according to a law enforcement source.

Setting up shop at first in Belgrade, Serbia, Rundo reconnected with far-right European football hooligans and militants who he had first made contact with on a 2018 trip to Germany, Italy and Ukraine. Bouncing back and forth between Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and elsewhere in eastern Europe, Rundo refashioned himself as a white nationalist influencer, creating a podcast with Denis “White Rex” Kapustin (a German-Russian neo-Nazi who also goes by “Denis Nikitin” and currently leads a far-right combat unit in Ukraine), founding a fascist clothing brand called Will2Rise, and quietly directing the formation of a series of “active clubs” on the RAM blueprint throughout North America and Europe. On his final podcast episode before his arrest, Rundo interviewed Alex Davies, the now-imprisoned founder of the British neo-Nazi group National Action, which was proscribed by the Home Office in 2016.

Since his arrest in Romania, Rundo has become a cause celebre among the international neo-fascist movement. Active clubs in Scandinavia, France and the United Kingdom have created videos and created graffiti calling for his liberation.

The trial is scheduled for December 2023