Tristan J. Rettke, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee, is involved with the white supremacist Active Club movement and the white nationalist group Patriot Front.
Patriot Front was formed after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Their explicit goal is to create a white ethnostate in the United States. What they actually do best is extract money and labor from their young recruits while making them feel brave and special for promoting racism.
The Active Clubs are a network of white supremacist fight clubs founded by self-described fascist Robert Rundo. Tennessee has had multiple Active Clubs in recent years. We would be more worried if they showed any signs of stability. What seems to happen instead is these groups splinter repeatedly due to the massive egos and tiny characters of the men involved.
Since at least 2023, Rettke has been training in martial arts with other white supremacists including Ian Michael Elliott (personal bodyguard to Thomas Rousseau, the founder of Patriot Front) and Sean Kauffmann of the Tennessee Active Club. Both of these men are deeply embarrassing.
Some of Rettke’s martial arts training took place at the Lewis Country Store, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hub for networking events and fight clubs hosted by a self-described “actual literal Nazi.” Members of the Tennessee Active Club, including Kauffmann, participated in these sessions.
Tristan has also trained with Devotion Jiu Jitsu— a gym owned by the Waggeners of Wolves of Vinland, and explicitly aligned with fascism– alongside Ian Elliott and others.
As of this writing, Rettke trains at the Shawn Hammonds Academy of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Nashville. This photo, showing Tristan, was recently posted to their facebook page:
Tristan Rettke indulges his warrior self-image at combat tournaments. Under the name Tristan Fialkowski, he has competed with the Brazilian jiu jitsu team “Patria Gloria,” a Patriot Front group that sneaks into normie events. Other members of Patria Gloria include Ian Michael Elliott, Andrew Lindgren, and Paul Michael Gancarz, every one a white supremacist.
Most recently, Rettke has participated in for-profit fights between members of the technically separate but suspiciously well-connected Patriot Front and Active Clubs. These events are affiliated with a Russian organization called Streets Fight Club, which has raised money for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. In a promotional video for one of these events, Rettke calls himself “Sporty.”
Rettke has been up to racist nonsense in public for nearly a decade. In 2016, as student at East Tennessee State University, he disrupted a Black Lives Matter rally while wearing a gorilla mask and dangling bananas from a rope. He was charged with civil rights intimidation but convicted only of disrupting a meeting.
Nashville area residents should be aware that Tristan John Rettke is a violent white supremacist. As of this writing, he is living at the Percy Apartments on Stewarts Ferry Pike.