White nationalist groups are now recruiting young women

Photos of two young women on a sunny Wisconsin hike picked up traction on the messaging platform Telegram in May. The photos, plain and anonymous, feature a woman in a white dress, her head cropped out of the photo and a girl in pink, heavily blurred, turning away from the camera to reveal a braid garnished with a delicate bow.

That obscurity is intentional because they're members of a newly established white nationalist youth group for girls, the first known of its kind in the U.S., according to experts on extremism.

"When we think of extremism — especially when we think of violent extremism — we think of men," said Willis Shaw, an investigative researcher at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. "But there have always been movements in the United States that are white supremacist that also accept women, and this seems to be one of those as well."

"White European descent, female, nationalist"

The group's formation was announced on Telegram in early May by United Youth, an umbrella organization under which white nationalist Youth Clubs for young men ages 15 to 18 operate across the U.S. The all-female branch, Young Columbia, was born out of "high demand," according to the announcement, which said the group will have "their own separate supportive roles and mission." 

The Telegram post featured a quote from Adolf Hitler about the role of women in the Nazi party and laid out three criteria for membership: "white European descent, female, nationalist."

Youth Clubs first began appearing in February 2025, Shaw said, and in less than a year and a half, have expanded from a few pockets of the country to all 50 states.

The embrace of white nationalist ideology by Gen Z is complicated, Shaw said, but he pointed to some young people's cynicism about the state of the country — particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, which confined some students to online spaces and thrust others into an uncertain job market.

"When you feel as though your life is outside of your own control, when you're stripped of your agency, you are willing to accept that there is some kind of a system or a force from the outside that is the one that is at fault," Shaw said.

Jacob Wagner, a digital research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to combat extremism — said that Gen Z teenagers are increasingly engaging with extremist content online, something that groups like United Youth seek to capitalize on.

"These views of white nationalism, white supremacism, unfortunately, have become more mainstream over the last couple of years," said Wagner. 

Grabbing onto the algorithms

Male Youth Club members are known to gather in person to hike, work out, participate in combat sports and disseminate white nationalist propaganda. The groups offer what Shaw called an "uncritical space for a certain kind of masculinity."

But training together isn't just for sport. 

"They believe that white people and the white race are under attack, and that they are being systematically replaced, and they will need to defend their future," Shaw said. "They want to be in a position where they can do that."

The mission of the women's group is not entirely clear. So far, experts in extremism have tracked Young Columbia members' activity in Wisconsin and Illinois, where young women have been documented distributing propaganda and meeting up with male Youth Club members.

Young Columbia, like other Youth Clubs, leverages social media to recruit members. On TikTok and Telegram, the group's original content leans into teenage angst, femininity and traditional gender roles.

One video posted to a TikTok account that appeared to be associated with Young Columbia is a montage of vintage illustrations of all-white families captioned, in part, "Bring back the traditional life that women truly desire."

Shaw points to a reemergence among Gen Z of "traditional values" and popularity of the online "cottagecore" aesthetic, which portrays  a "soft," pastoral lifestyle, and "tradwife" content, where women on social media chronicle traditional married life — and some creators promote more drastic lifestyle choices, like forgoing education and employment altogether.

"They're latching on to a very specific kind of aesthetic that's very popular among people roughly that age," said Shaw. "They're grabbing onto the algorithms in that way."

Some of Young Columbia's posts incorporate symbolism associated with white supremacy. One video features an image of a young woman in a dress standing before the black sun, a hate symbol used by white supremacists, with the caption "White Youth Revolt." 

Other posts that the group reshared from Telegram channels platforming neo-Nazi content depict women undertaking more active roles in the white nationalist movement. One featured a young woman applying lip gloss in the reflection of a riot shield captioned "beauty is on the frontline."

The group's TikTok account also reposted videos with overtly racist, antisemitic and anti-immigrant content.

The TikTok account that appeared to be associated with Young Columbia was banned from the platform shortly after CBS News reached out to the company for comment. A TikTok spokesperson pointed to the platform's community guidelines which prohibit hate speech and the promotion of hateful ideologies. The company uses a combination of technology and moderation to identify and remove such content, according to the spokesperson.

A Telegram spokesperson said that the platform supports free speech, but that content calling for violence is "explicitly forbidden" and is "routinely removed by moderators."

Experts suspect larger influences at play

The content reshared by the Young Columbia TikTok account, including propaganda videos from Patriot Front — one of the most visible groups in the white nationalist movement — has longtime observers like Shaw and Wagner questioning who may be behind it.

While United Youth claims to be completely independent and youth-run, Shaw and Wagner are skeptical.

Wagner suspects there are ties to the Active Club network, whose adult male members bond over white nationalist ideologies through workout sessions and mixed martial arts and have been associated with Patriot Front.

"The chances of this being an organic thing materializing from female teenagers who were watching United Youth and decided to create their own group to support them, I find that very unlikely," Wagner said, citing evidence of adult Active Club members training with Youth Clubs in person.

CBS News reached out to United Youth and Young Columbia for comment. United Youth initially responded when asked for an interview, but then stopped responding and did not provide a statement.

Experts who have been tracking United Youth said it's difficult to tell how many members there are, but that Youth Clubs have expanded globally across Europe, Canada and Australia. In Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, riots earlier this month targeting immigrant residents following a knife attack in the city were tied to the Active Club network and its Youth Club wing, according to a Wired investigation. 

TikTok accounts identified by CBS News for two United Youth groups based in New Jersey, for example, have almost 3,000 combined followers, and photos posted on TikTok in June of one U.S.-based Youth Club shows a group of 10 members gathered, waving flags bearing their branch's emblem.

"With the addition of Young Colombia, it's just more indications that this network is growing, its influence is growing, especially over younger generations," Wagner said.