There has been persistent speculation that peaceful protests against racism and police brutality may have been infiltrated by white provocateurs.
The members of this movement have attracted attention.
The police in Las Vegas arrested three white men and charged them with terrorism.
Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government have been arrested on terrorism-related charges in what authorities say was a conspiracy to spark violence during recent protests in Las Vegas.
Federal prosecutors say the three white men with U.S. military experience are accused of conspiring to carry out a plan that began in April in conjunction with protests to reopen businesses closed because of the coronavirus.
More recently, they sought to capitalize on protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air, prosecutors said.
The three men were arrested Saturday on the way to a protest in downtown Las Vegas after filling gas cans at a parking lot and making Molotov cocktails in glass bottles, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by The Associated Press.
A 25-year-old white man was arrested for arson in Nashville after setting a fire at the city’s historic Courthouse. A white man dressed in black and wearing a gas mask smashed windows in Minneapolis, where he methodically used a hammer to break every window in an Autozone store, then slipped away.
Were they and others part of the so-called “Bougaloo Movement” of rightwing anarchists?
This is what Wikipedia says about them.
The boogaloo movement, members of which are often referred to as boogaloo boys or boogaloo bois, is a loosely organized American far-right extremist movement.[3][4][5] Members of the boogaloo movement say they are preparing for a coming second American Civil War, which they call the “boogaloo”.[3][6] Members use the term to refer to violent uprisings against the federal government or left-wing political opponents, often anticipated to follow government confiscation of firearms.[1][7]
The movement consists of anti-government and anti-law enforcement groups, as well as white supremacist groups who specifically believe the unrest will be a race war.[3][1][7] Groups in the boogaloo movement primarily organize online (particularly on Facebook), but have appeared at in-person events including the 2020 United States anti-lockdown protests and the May 2020 George Floyd protests, often identified by their attire of Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues.[1][8][9]…
Members of boogaloo groups typically believe in accelerationism, and support any action that will speed impending civil war and eventually the collapse of society.[4][6] According to The Economist, to this end boogaloo group members have supported the “spreading of disinformation and conspiracy theories, attacks on infrastructure (such as that on New York’s 311 line) and lone-wolf terrorism.”[4] Some boogaloo groups are also white supremacist and specifically believe that the “boogaloo” will be a race war,[3][1][7] but there are others that condemn racism.[13] Attempts by some elements of the Boogaloo movement to support anti-racist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, have been met with wariness and skepticism….[14]
Extremism researchers first took notice of the word “boogaloo” being used in the context of the boogaloo movement in 2019, when they observed it being used among fringe groups including militias, gun rights movements, and white supremacist groups.[1] This usage of the term is believed to have originated on the fringe imageboard website 4chan, where it was often accompanied by references to “racewar” and “dotr” (day of the rope, a neo-Nazi reference to a fantasy involving murdering what the posters view to be “race traitors”).[1][6] Researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) found that the usage of the term “boogaloo” increased by 50% on Facebook and Twitter in the last months of 2019 and into early 2020. They attribute surges in popularity to a viral incident in November 2019, when a military veteran posted content mentioning the boogaloo on Instagram during a standoff with police, and to the December 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump.[1][2] The boogaloo movement experienced a further surge in popularity following the lockdowns that were implemented to try to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and the Tech Transparency Project observed that the boogaloo groups appeared to be encouraged by President Trump’s tweets about “liberating” states under lockdown.[3][7][19]
I’m wondering if the origin of this word “boogaloo” goes back even earlier. I heard some people use this word to refer to black people in the late 1970’s & 1980’s.
I think I recall “Oh baby, Boogaloo down Broadway” as a line out of a song, maybe Motown, in the 60s or 70s. It might have been appropriated by rascists as a general term for Blacks. Sort of like Gringoes for white people was earned by the troops marching into Mexico in 1846 singing “Green Grows The Grass”, a popular tune of the time.
But the question is “WHY”? Why do they want to bring on a Civil War and/or a collapse of society? What purpose does it serve to demolish everything? Who benefits if there are no social services or law? I don’t understand the movement (or it seems fishy to me) since there doesn’t seem to be a central core or philosophy. I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist, but it all seems like a bunch of man-kids who like to blow things up for fun….just because.
Extremism is always bred by fear. The more vague and ill-defined the fear, the greater the fear.
From whatever we do know about these extremists, we know they are dangerous anarchists that use social media to communicate. In my opinion they are a response to a government that has long ignored the needs of people. Our lax gun laws allow them to walk the streets toting semi-automatic rifles in many communities. Groups like these give fringe people a sense of identity and purpose. While they may not have a common ideological message, they all embrace anarchy. Groups like these feed on the existing chaos and uncertainty, and we certainly have a lot of that in our current situation. I would like to know where they are getting money to travel to various cities to stir up violence. Are outside groups funding them?
In my discussion online last night with Jitu Brown, he described a group of 7-10 young white men, marching military-style, joining the demonstration. He didn’t recognize them. They wore backpacks. They brought incendiary protest signs. He checked with his colleagues in 30 other cities. They reported similar strangers.
Please edit spelling in headline.
What spelling should I correct?
Boog…, not Boug…
Yesterday, I mentioned the “South will win the 2nd Civil War” flyers that were tossed out of a car at the peaceful protest in Pensacola. Vice News actually had correspondents on the ground during the protests in Minneapolis, Louisville, Kentucky and St Louis. Their cameras captured footage of white people destroying property. Who are these people? They also captured needless aggression from the police. The FBI should analyze footage from various news outlets and cell phones to try to understand what is going on.
Sheesh. Whatever happened to just joining the Elks, or the Moose Lodge? I understand that the Lions do good work with their vision charity, and the local Rotary Club here in Bennington, Vermont, is heavily involved in public service–how about them?
Again: sheesh.
The term boogaloo has an interesting profile on Google’s ngram. I associate it with a dance from the 1960s and with James Brown doing the boogaloo on television. This shows an earlier version in song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd9xBjHQIE8&feature=youtu.be
The ngram shows a peak in references within Google-scanned books around 1971 and dramatic spike beginning in 2002. I have no doubt that white supremacists and some of the fierce defenders of gun rights, including defenders of the right to own military-grade weapons, are ready to take advantage of any opportunity to expanding their influence. Among these are a President who seeks personal power at any cost and his many “silent” collaborators, most in the Republican party.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=boogaloo&year_start=1800&year_end=2016&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cboogaloo%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cboogaloo%3B%2Cc0
A February 2020 report offers a fascinating analysis of the groups that are using social media to organize others for actions that should be regarded as anarchistic.
“Cyber Swarming: Memetic Warfare and Viral Insurgency, represents a breakthrough case study in the capacity to identify cyber swarms and viral insurgencies in nearly real time as they are developing in plain sight. The result of an analysis of over 100 million social media comments, the authors demonstrate how the ‘boogaloo meme,’ ‘a joke for some, acts as a violent meme that circulates instructions for a violent, viral insurgency for others.” “Using it, like turning off the transponders on 9/11, enables the extremists to hide in plain sight, disappearing into the clutter of innocent messages, other data points.” “It should be of particular concern, the authors note, for the military, for whom ‘the meme’s emphasis on military language and culture poses a special risk.’”
Some cluster maps illustrate the social media relationships among groups and prominent topics and themes. Names of these groups and some of the visual symbolism they use are also identified. The research methodology may also be of interest. https://ncri.io/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-White-Paper-Memetic-Warfare.pdf
Thanks for sharing that song. Can’t believe I’ve never heard it before.
Laura: I should have read your post before mine above. I knew I had heard that from somewhere. You sure do your research. I think I will go back to building a cabinet.
This is not unlike the Chinese techniques in Hong Kong last July and August. thugs would appear and create disturbance in the midst of a non-violent protest. It is also similar to the radicals who assassinated Sadat and then Rabin in order to produce chaos, justifying militarism. Militarism is the enemy of democracy.
Many of the Nazis were mild failures in life. They were men in need of a cause, of a motivation. Generally stirred into action by a philosophy that was easy to understand, which went logically along with their laziness, the Nazis often provided the middle leadership in the party with the extrinsic motivation to take action. Modern extremists seem similar. Extremism on the left takes a different group of those disaffected with a peaceful society, and my experience reading history suggests much more diversity in that population.
This is another opinion sent to me by a friend. A real friend. What do you think? https://www.facebook.com/Skwerilleee/posts/10222575646089945
Jordan Howard
April 25 ·
It really makes me sick that a ton of new people are finding out about the boogaloo movement via super negative and dishonest smear pieces like the one huffpost put out yesterday. If anyone sees someone sharing it, please inform them how horrifyingly incorrect it is and direct them to my article from January instead so they actually get some real information (I’ll link it in the comments), or even just jump in their comments and counter people’s bullshit hottakes in a civil and informative way.
The boog has nothing to do with race. All people from all walks of life are welcome to join in the cause of standing up to tyranny.
The boog has nothing to do with either political party. Most boogbois can’t stand trump and hate the Republicans just as much as the Democrats. The boog exists more on an authoritarian vs libertarian scale than a left vs right one.
It’s not about the shutdown either, it’s not a new thing, it’s been going on for years now.
It’s about freedom. More and more people are sick of the corrupt tyrants in our bloated government constantly imposing their will on us. We’re sick of every aspect of our life being regulated and controlled. We’re sick of ridiculous new gun laws being pushed all the time. We’re sick of peaceful people being thrown into jail for victimless crimes like recreational drug use. We’re sick of no knock police raids. We’re sick of having the world’s largest prison population. We’re sick of no win elections where both parties and candidates are awful and just want to continue further restricting our lives. We’re sick of our money being stolen and wasted on endless wars that are none of our business. We’re sick of the police murdering people and getting away with it. Both parties are rotten to the core. It’s more and more obvious that ‘we the people’ lost control of our government a long time ago. We can’t vote our way out of this. The whole system needs a hard reset.
It’s definitely an anti government movement, but you can’t tell me the US government does not deserve that kind of hatred more and more every day. People are just sick of the nonsense.
Just the fact that huffpost used the term “civil war” in their headline, which implies a war between the people, indicates a core misunderstanding of the entire movement. The boog is not the people vs the people, the boog is the people vs the government. It’s a revolution, not a civil war.
If the Boogs were Black they would be pushing up daisies already. Picture the response if Black citizens had approached any state capital armed with AR 15s . And of course Bill the slug Barr the Christo Fascist could only name Antifa this morning, in spite of the fact that the only documented arrests tied to any organized groups have been on the right.
Enough of the nonsense no one has a constitutional right to an AR 15. Till 2008 they had no right to a hand gun.
And if the violent overthrow of the elected Government is their end game then they should be exterminated like venom.
18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 115
(oops) like vermin
Marjorie,
He is an anarchist. I don’t respect anarchists. We need a sane government and a sentient president. We have neither.
Marjorie L. Israel,
If your “real friend” was correct about the organization hating Trump and the Republicans, then William Barr and Trump would have already denounced the organization.
Given that William Barr seem to just be “accidentally” overlooking the organization and blaming their destruction on other groups, I think you can assure your “friend” that his group is beloved by the far right, and if a few people in it have deluded themselves that Barr and Trump don’t approve, then that is simply their delusion and Barr and Trump definitely are very glad they keep deluding themselves that they aren’t tools of the far right.
People who are truthful when they say they aren’t acolytes of Trump but oppose Trump are publicly derided by Trump and insulted.
Trump and Barr’s attempt to scapegoat anyone but the “boogbois” for the destruction caused by them speaks for itself.
The only name Trump wants to list as a domestic terrorist group is Antifa. Trump never mentiones any of the right wing groups like this one unless he includes a “they are good people phrase.”
Boogaloo Boys
“A relatively new incarnation of the anti-government militia movement, the Boogaloo Boys are an online community of pro-gun activists who advocate for a second boogaloo, their term of choice for civil war. The movement took off last summer when white supremacists appropriated the term for a cause of their own: a race war as opposed to a civil war, according to Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University. Mostly, though not exclusively, white, Boogaloos have been promoting themselves as libertarians fighting tyranny, according to Squire.”
Antifa
Depending on whom you ask, antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a movement of far-left activists opposed to neo-Nazis and other extremist groups or, as one critic put it, an “extreme anarchist-communist movement.”
Organizing on social media, antifa followers show up at right-wing rallies dressed in black and wearing masks and often engage in violent confrontations.
Antifa sympathizers were among counter-protesters at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says it does not label antifa as a hate group in part because antifa members “do not promote hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
https://www.voanews.com/usa/four-extremist-groups-suspected-involvement-protest-violence