The Heartland Active Club disseminates racist propaganda and engages in military-style training under the command of its masked, and up until now, anonymous leader. The club’s Telegram channel shares racist messages and shows members making Nazi salutes. It also shows the group meeting and training with other chapters.

Active Clubs are decentralized offshoots of the Rise Above Movement, which engage in combat sports and white nationalist activism. The Heartland Active Club is operational in Kansas and Missouri as a chapter of the larger Active Club network. Its members are careful not to reveal their true identities and typically blur or redact identifying information in their online posts.

An investigation by Decoherence Media shows that the leader of this group is Jacob Daniel Jones, a 32-year-old resident of Olathe, Kansas.

Decoherence Media reviewed thousands of social media posts over several platforms, linking these posts to email addresses and other social media accounts while comparing imagery from anonymous accounts to those under Jones’ real name.

Social media images of Jones’ dog even helped link one anonymous account that published neo-Nazi content to those where he could be seen with his face fully visible. 

According to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, Active Clubs have a growing presence in more than two dozen countries around the world. Although they are a “loose collection of groups with no central leader, they are united by a shared commitment to white supremacy and building a brand around hypermasculinity,” Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center told Decoherence Media.

Attempts to mask his identity

Decoherence Media was able to identify Jacob Jones thanks to his extensive online footprint and despite attempts to mask his identity via a series of aliases. Under one alias, he claimed to have been a “National Socialist” for at least a decade.

Jones, alongside other members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front, wore face masks during a June 2023 counter-demonstration at Ozarks Pridefest, an LGBTQ+ event held in Springfield, Missouri.

Under his online aliases, Jones posted anti-semitic comments as well as praised Anders Breivik, a neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in Utoya, Norway, in 2011. 

An email address, used to open several online accounts using Jones’ name, deployed the same distinctive username contained in a 2019 leak from an alt-right Discord server. This matched biographical information that could be found in a later 2022 leak of Patriot Front data that allowed Decoherence Media to begin to pull the threads that enabled the identification of Jones.

Many of the details shared in the Patriot Front leaks also match Jones’ physical description of himself (such as exact height and weight) as well as his activities and location.

While Patriot Front and Active Clubs are separate organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in May 2025 that many Active Club chapters are secretly controlled by Patriot Front. Members have staged protests together and they promote each other on their respective social media channels.

Posts on the Heartland Active Club Telegram channel show typical Active Club activities, such as sparring, hiking, and stickering. Jones uploaded a video on November 30, 2022 to one chat of himself using a stencil to spray a Patriot Front design onto a wall. On December 31, 2023, he wrote in another group chat that 30 people attended a 2023 Heartland Active Club camping event.

Tracking Gwaihyr

In the aforementioned leaked Patriot Front data—published and made searchable by the media non-profit Unicorn Riot in January 2022—members of the group compiled notes during an interview with an individual seeking membership described as Interviewee-894480 who “runs an active club in Kansas.”

Interviewee-894480, who we now know is Jacob Jones, was also detailed as being a former Marine, raised in Texas, and a bodybuilder for the past two years (weighing “230 or 240 lbs” and standing 5’9” tall).

Jones was also detailed as being a former member of Identity Evropa, another white nationalist group which disbanded in November 2020. However, he said he had left the Identity Evropa Discord server after it “got doxxed,” referring to Unicorn Riot’s previous publication and indexing of the white nationalist group’s internal communications in March 2019. The top of the notes for his interview say “Result: Accepted,” indicating that Jones was accepted into Patriot Front.

The leaked Identity Evropa Discord logs detail a user named Gwaihyr who is one of only a few members who describe themselves as being based in Kansas. They also detail in one introductory post that their real name is Jacob and in another post that they spend almost 10 hours a day in the gym.

“Interviewee-894480” and “Gwaihyr” could be two different people who live in Kansas and enjoy working out. However, investigating the relatively unique “Gwaihyr” username (an apparent misspelling of an Eagle from Lord of the Rings) reveals multiple connections between the two that can be traced back to Jones.

Using the online lookup tool osint.industries – that allows investigators to track usernames and email addresses linked to various social media and online accounts – it was possible to build out a picture of the online presence related to the Gwaihyr username.

Firstly, by exploring email addresses that utilized the misspelled Gwaihyr moniker, several results were obtained. 

For example, a Microsoft account with the name Jacob Jones, a Skype account with the username “jacobtexasjones” based in Kansas City, MO, and a PayPal account with the name “Jake Daniels” all came back as results. 

These details are consistent with “Gwaihyr” telling Identity Evropa that his name was “Jacob” and “Interviewee-894480” telling Patriot Front that he grew up in Texas and lived in “Kansas/Kansas City.” 

Another email address that contained Gwaihyr in its makeup was part of a 2017 Twitter data breach and is associated with the username “JacobTexasJones.” 

A separate Twitter account, with the username “JacobJonesThe1” has the same name and a profile picture of an individual similar in appearance. Both Twitter accounts give their location within the Kansas City metropolitan area and mention enlisting or being enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

Also in the osint.industries results for one of the email addresses associated with “Gwaihyr” is a Cash App account with the name “Prairie Nationalist” and username “prairienationalist.” 

This matches the moniker of a user who is linked in the bio of Heartland Active Club’s Telegram channel with the username “grassLandenjoyer” and name “Prairie ⴲ Nationalist 🌲.” The symbol “ⴲ” is a Unicode character commonly used by neo-Nazis because of its resemblance to the Celtic Cross, a white supremacist symbol. Heartland Active Club describes itself as being active in Kansas and Missouri, which is consistent with Interviewee-894480’s claim that he runs an Active Club in Kansas.

This Telegram account was named in a recent SPLC article as networking with a Missouri militia.

Similarly, a Spotify account with the username “gwaihyr” has the name “Grassland Enjoyer.” 

Worth fighting for?

These extra details of other usernames and aliases connected to “Gwaihyr” provided further investigative leads that revealed more about the individual behind them.

The Telegram user “grassLandenjoyer,” for example, is very active in a group chat called “Worth Fighting for chat v3” that is associated with a white nationalist clothing store, posting more than 1,400 messages over the past two years. On October 3, 2023 he wrote in one message that this was “the last public group I haven’t deleted lol.” 

In another message from April 2023, the account stated “I’m 5’9” and 230 😬,” the same height and weight stated by Interviewee-894480.

Many of this account’s messages in the group chat contain typical neo-Nazi topics of discussion, such as antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and dehumanizing women and minorities. In one of his messages, he wrote that, though he’s “not condoning pedophilia,” 14-year-olds “can reasonably consent.”

One image shows him posing with a large “White Lives Matter” banner, seemingly on a freeway overpass. The account typically censors tattoos in uploaded pictures and videos, but it has let a handful of unredacted images slip through. Visible tattoos include a valknut on his shoulder and a vegvisir on his chest, as seen in the images below. 

Another tattoo visible in a video uploaded by the account on June 16, 2023 shows what appears to be a dragonfly on the left bicep. This closely matches a tattoo in a picture posted to Twitter by “JacobJonesThe1” (note that this picture was taken in a mirror). Jones is listed as number 32 on the 2013 football team roster of William Jewell College, a liberal arts institution in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

In a June 2021 message to a different Telegram group chat, the account claimed to be a member of Asatru Folk Assembly, another white nationalist organization.

That same summer, Jones joined the Telegram group chat for his region’s chapter of White Lives Matter, a decentralized white supremacist group. He invited other men to hold a “White Lives Matter” sign on an overpass with him, asking: “Is anyone near Johnson County?” Almost one year later, in July 2022, Jones announced in the group chat that “the Kansas City Active Club is progressing” well and invited anyone who was interested to reach out to him.

In a November 2023 message to another Telegram group chat, he wrote, “I run Heartland Active Club.”

Meeting Maximus

Checking the public court records for Johnson County, Kansas, shows a “Jacob Daniel Jones” was married in September 2018. This is consistent with the name “Jacob Jones” from Gwaihyr’s Microsoft and Skype accounts, as well as “Jake Daniels” from the PayPal account. 

Jones appears in several pictures posted to his wife’s and family members’s online accounts. 

The same dog as the one visible in the picture above also appears in several images posted by the Prairie Nationalist account to the Worth Fighting for chat v3 Telegram group. In the chat, the dog is referred to as “Maximus” and is described as a “Mixed anatolian/great pyr.” 

One picture each from Jones’ Worth Fighting for chat v3 group chat and his wife’s Instagram account have the dog wearing the same green tag.

The photo above, where Jones can be seen in a denim blue shirt and which was used as his wife’s Microsoft profile picture, offers another piece of evidence to confirm the identification. A freckle on Jones’ left forearm appears to match a freckle on the left forearm in photos posted by “grassLandenjoyer” to the above-mentioned group chat.

Run n Gun

A shooting event in Versailles, Missouri in May 2023 allowed more identifying evidence to be collected.

The Prairie Nationalist account claimed on Telegram to have participated in a “run n gun night shoot,” posting about it in the Worth Fighting for chat v3 group and the Heartland Active Club channel in late May 2023. This post was cited by the Counter Extremism Project, an international policy organization, in their September 2023 report on the Active Club Network as an indicator for future targeted violence. 

The details mentioned by Jones fit one event listed on a “Run-N-Gun Calendar:” A “Night Run n Gun” held in Versailles, Missouri, on May 13, 2023. A Facebook group for the event venue has a user-uploaded photo (see in the montage below) with a distinctive wood grain pattern in the background that matches the wood grain pattern of one Jones posted to Worth Fighting for chat v3.

A Facebook page of the event location has a picture of a wedding reception that shows the same wood grain pattern, as well as similar-looking mounted birds to those in the picture from the Heartland Active Club channel. Additionally, the results of the event list a Jacob Jones who placed 23rd out of 26 participants.

In a message on the Heartland Active Club Telegram channel, the Prairie Nationalist account posted a screenshot of the Counter Extremism Project report, writing “Actually, we were in a group of 5 😘.” If this riposte is legitimate, the names of four other Heartland Active Club members may be listed in the competition results.

Heartland Active Club’s involvement in this kind of tactical competition appears to contradict a post from one of the most popular Active Club chapters, that says “What an Active Club IS NOT: A militia that rehearses military battle drills involving firearms. We do not condone or accept groups who do this as it is not in line with what the Active Club model is about.”

Taking pride in your work

Among the handful of Patriot Front members who counter-protested Ozarks Pridefest 2023, an LGBTQ+ event held in Springfield, Missouri, on June 10, 2023 was a familiar figure.

A larger version of one of Jones’ Telegram profile pictures was posted to the Heartland Active Club Telegram channel. The image matches the location of a picture of Patriot Front members at the event posted to a Patriot Front-affiliated Telegram channel. In the photos, Jones wears the mask and hat of the Patriot Front uniform and a t-shirt previously sold by a white supremacist activewear brand affiliated with Active Clubs. 

Jones is also visible in frames from videos taken by a Pridefest attendee and uploaded to Imgur. He is seen closing the U-Haul truck that Patriot Front members used for transportation and sitting in the truck’s passenger seat.

“We will be outmanned and outgunned if shtf”

In another Telegram chat called “MidMoMinutemen Public Chat,” Jones discussed a military standard operating procedure (SOP) that he developed for his group if shit hits the fan (“shtf”). Prepper communities use the term "shit hits the fan" to refer to a breakdown of societal order, but neo-Nazis often use it as a dogwhistle with more racist connotations, like racial unrest or a race war.

He writes that the SOP is based on the Selous Scouts, a unit of the Rhodesian Army during the Bush War of the 1960s and ’70s with a reputation for atrocities including murder, rape, and allegedly bombing churches.

According to Jeff Tischauser of the Southern Poverty Law Center, these posts are revealing and concerning.

“To see an Active Club chapter participating in firearm trainings and advocating military tactics used by Rhodesia - a country that was ruled by white supremacists - signals that this chapter wants to escalate and move away from activities associated with the group,” Tischauser said.

Decoherence Media invited Jacob Daniel Jones to respond to claims outlined in this article, via email and USPS certified mail, but he did not reply with comment before publication. A message sent to his Telegram account was deleted by him.

Research by Jennefer Harper, journalist at Decoherence Media, contributed to this article.