Boogaloo movement

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Participants in the boogaloo movement often wear Hawaiian shirts along with military fatigues to identify themselves at protests such as this VCDL Lobby Day gun rights demonstration on January 20, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia.[1][2]

The boogaloo movement, whose adherents are often referred to as boogaloo boys or boogaloo bois,

extremist movement in the United States.[4][5][6][7][8][9] It has also been described as a militia.[10][11][12] Adherents say they are preparing for, or seek to incite, a second American Civil War or second American Revolution which they call "the boogaloo" or "the boog".[13][14]

The movement consists of

anti-racist groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter have been met with wariness and skepticism, and researchers and journalists are unsure if they are genuine or meant to obscure the movement's actual objectives.[7][10][12][20]

The movement primarily organizes online, but adherents have appeared at in-person events including

anti-lockdown and George Floyd protests. Heavily armed, boogaloo members are often identified by their attire of Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues.[1][21][22][23]

Boogaloo emerged on 4chan and subsequently spread to other platforms.[24][25][26] Although usage of the term dates back to 2012, the movement did not gain mainstream attention until late 2019.[1] Adherents use boogaloo, including variations so as to avoid social media crackdowns, to refer to violent uprisings against the federal government, often anticipated to follow government confiscation of firearms.[1][27][28]

Individuals affiliated with the boogaloo movement have been charged with crimes, including the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; the murders of a security contractor and a police officer; a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; and incidents related to participation in the George Floyd protests.[29][30][20][31] In mid-2020, several companies acted to limit the movement's activities and visibility on their social media and chat platforms.[32][33]

Overview

Naming and identity

Black and white version of the American flag, with the stars replaced by an image of an igloo and the eight stripe replaced with a red tropical print stripe.
A version of the boogaloo flag[16]

The term boogaloo alludes to the 1984 sequel film Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which was derided by critics as a derivative rehash.[2][34] Subsequently, appending "2: Electric Boogaloo" to a name became a jocular verbal template for any kind of sequel, especially one that strongly mimics the original.[2][34] The boogaloo movement adopted its identity based on the anticipation of a second American Civil War or second American Revolution, which was referred to as "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo" and became popularly known among adherents as "the boogaloo".[6][35][36][37]

Participants in the boogaloo movement also use other similar-sounding derivations of the word, including boog,

Duncan Lemp.[16]

Adherents attend protests heavily armed and wearing tactical gear, and sometimes identify themselves by wearing Hawaiian shirts along with military fatigues.

Political beliefs

Groups in the boogaloo movement are far-right,

McVeigh bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the armed response to Ruby Ridge as heroic moments in American history", which they view as citizens standing up to government oppression.[20] Newhouse also identified the choice by adherents of the movement to provide armed protection to private businesses during anti-lockdown protests and George Floyd protests as evidence that the movement is right-wing, saying that leftists would not be likely to do the same as they are more likely to view large corporations as an integral component of capitalist exploitation.[20] According to Newhouse, this emphasis on the importance of private property is part of what makes the boogaloo movement "very much an extreme right libertarian ideology".[20]

The groups and individuals often self-identify as libertarian, although a few individuals have also described themselves as adherents of related ideologies, including

minarchism.[3] There are also "a few apparent anarchists", including some self-identified "anarchists".[3][44][45] Pitcavage described the "anarchists" who have adopted "'boogaloo' rhetoric" as generally being right-wing anarcho-capitalists, not what he terms "left-wing anarchists".[20] MacNab has stated that "most boogaloo members are libertarian anarchists who hate cops".[46] The SPLC notes that "a look at the movement's origins and its online communities make it clear that its politics are much more complicated than straightforward libertarianism".[3] The Daily Beast reported in October 2020 that the varying ideologies of groups within the movement cause confusion about its overall ideology, and that some adherents intentionally obfuscate the movement's ideology in order to attract more followers.[31]

In June 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tweeted in reply to a Politico[47] article about the boogaloo movement that an intelligence bulletin released by the agency "does NOT identify the Boogaloo movement as left-wing OR right-wing" and stated that "they are simply violent extremists from both ends of the ideological spectrum".[20] The Guardian refuted the DHS' description of the movement, saying that experts on extremism concur that the boogaloo movement is right-wing.[20] Daryl Johnson, a former DHS analyst, told The Guardian that he believed the DHS' claim that the boogaloo movement was not right-wing was "playing politics".[20] Johnson further stated that the boogaloo movement is "an ultra-nationalist primarily white movement of people who belong to the militias. Could there be somebody that has different sympathies that's part of it? Sure. It's predominantly right-wing".[20]

Members of boogaloo groups typically believe in

lone-wolf terrorism".[5][16] Some participants in the movement claim that the group and its ideology are nothing more than online jokes, but some law enforcement officials and researchers maintain that people connected to the groups have been implicated in plans to commit real violence.[49][50] The Tech Transparency Project has observed that while public posts on boogaloo Facebook pages tend to be satirical, members of private boogaloo groups "exchang[e] detailed information and tactics on how to organize and execute a revolt against American authorities". Some of the private groups ban the sharing of memes to keep the conversation focused on serious topics.[38] The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) has also commented on the mix of serious and joking content, writing that "this ambiguity is a key feature of the problem: Like a virus hiding from the immune system, the use of comical-meme language permits the network to organize violence secretly behind a mirage of inside jokes and plausible deniability".[2][13] According to the Anti-Defamation League, boogaloo adherents' use of humor makes their content more digestible by softening the violent underpinnings of some of their beliefs. While many people might reject an explicit call for violence, some might be more receptive to a meme that cloaks such violent sentiment with an overlay of humor.[51]

Some boogaloo groups are white supremacist or neo-Nazi and specifically believe that "the boogaloo" will be a race war.

Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism (CTEC) have argued that "a significant number of 'boogaloo' supporters are genuinely not white supremacist". The researchers have described the movement as having two wings: "one advocating for race war and one obsessed with societal breakdown and rebellion against the government".[20] However, "other experts say that lip service from some 'boogaloo' supporters about wanting to be a multi-racial movement should not be taken seriously".[20] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has said that "few of [the boogaloo movement's] adherents are interested in aligning with Black Lives Matter or antifascist protesters against police brutality".[3] According to Joan Donovan, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, "[w]e're equivocating for the sake of an imagined audience. The idea that you would dismantle the US government at this stage is to undo the protections that have been granted to black people, queer people, disabled people, to stop foreign policy related to immigration. There are always racialized and eugenic sub-themes in these groups. That's what war is, at its base. It's about who should live. I don't think you can get away from the ways in which the rhetoric supports a white supremacist ideology, once you start talking about the kinds of policies or strategies they think need to be implemented".[20]

The boogaloo movement has also been described as a

AR-15-style rifle".[20] Mark Pitcavage, a researcher at the Center on Extremism of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has identified the boogaloo movement's contempt for law enforcement as the element that most strongly distinguishes them from other militia groups.[16]

Structure and membership

While boogaloo groups are often described as a part of a larger boogaloo movement, J. J. MacNab, a

United States House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism on July 16, 2020, MacNab testified that the boogaloo movement "isn't really a movement. It's a dress code, it's a way of talking, it's jargon. The people who belong to it came from other extremist groups, usually on Facebook. They might have been militia, they might have been a white supremacy [group]. They picked it up somewhere and they donned that Hawaiian shirt, and yet they're treated as a separate movement, and the problem is you're ignoring the underlying areas that they came from".[53] Bellingcat and the SPLC have also stated that other groups with their own distinct identities have adopted the boogaloo meme, including militias, groups comprising the patriot movement, and the Proud Boys.[8][3]

The boogaloo movement has attracted some active-duty members of the military and veterans. While the number of active and former military members is believed to be small when compared to the overall size of the movement, extremism researcher Kathleen Belew has stated that their participation "is not a problem we should take lightly" due to the threat that they could "dramatically escalate the impact of fringe activism, pass on explosives expertise, [or share] urban warfare expertise".[54] Following the filing of terrorism charges against three Nevada men with ties to the Department of Defense (DoD), the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) stated in a June 2020 report: "Racially motivated violent extremist (RMVE) movements that subscribe to boogaloo have engaged in conceptual discussions about recruiting military or former military members for their perceived knowledge of combat training.... NCIS cannot discount the possibility of DoD affiliated individuals sympathetic to or engaged in the boogaloo movement."[55][56] As of June 2020, four men who have been arrested and found to have ties to the boogaloo movement, including the alleged perpetrator of the 2020 boogaloo murders in California, have been veterans or active military servicemen.[57]

History

Emergence

Memes referring to "the boogaloo", a violent uprising or civil war, developed simultaneously among anti-government and white supremacist online communities in the early 2010s. According to the SPLC, both types of communities regularly used the term to refer to racist violence or a race war.

fascist and neo-Nazi web forum known as the birthplace of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization.[7]

Boogaloo adherents participating in a "Blue Igloo" event in Raleigh, North Carolina in May 2020

Extremism researchers 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] Megan Squire, a computer science professor and online extremism researcher at Elon University, observed the term begin to be used among white supremacists on the Telegram messaging app in the summer of 2019, where they used it to describe a race war.[11] Researchers at the NCRI found that use 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 where 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 then-President Trump's tweets about "liberating" states under lockdown.[27][4][58] The Tech Transparency Project found that 60% of boogaloo Facebook groups had emerged following the pandemic lockdowns, during which time they amassed tens of thousands of followers.[27][38] A May 2020 Bellingcat report identified Facebook as a particularly important platform for the movement, and in May and April 2020, Bellingcat and the NCRI both estimated the movement to have tens of thousands of adherents.[2][8] A Facebook spokesperson said that Facebook and Instagram had changed their policies as of May 1 to "prohibit the use of ['boogaloo' and related] terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence".[27][58]

Shooting of Duncan Lemp

On March 12, 2020, Duncan Lemp, a boogaloo Facebook group leader, was fatally shot by police in a no-knock raid of his home in Potomac, Maryland. Police had obtained a no-knock search warrant based on a tip that Lemp was violating a restriction from possessing firearms. However, Lemp's family has said they were unaware that he was under any such restriction.[59] Lemp's family has also asserted that he was asleep when he was killed by police.[60] Some far-right groups have theorized that Lemp was killed by police for his anti-government beliefs and his position in the boogaloo movement.[27] J. J. MacNab, a fellow of the George Washington University extremism program, has described Lemp as a "martyr" of the boogaloo movement and warned that the increase in anti-police sentiment among boogaloo group members following his death may lead to violence against the police in the "foreseeable future".[4] Some adherents of the boogaloo movement use phrases including "we are Duncan Lemp" and "his name was Duncan Lemp", which The New York Times has said they "repeat... like mantras".[16] Adherents of the boogaloo have posted to Lemp's girlfriend's Instagram account promising to someday avenge his death.[16]

Offline activities

Adherents of the boogaloo movement have been observed at pro-gun rights demonstrations, protests against COVID-19 lockdowns, and the George Floyd protests which began in May 2020 and continued through the year.[1][4][33] Believers in the movement can also appear unexpectedly at events and protests initiated by others with apparently different affiliations.[10][33][44]

In January 2020, members of boogaloo groups attended the

red flag legislation that would allow police to confiscate weapons from those considered a risk to themselves or others, a law that would require background checks to buy or transfer a firearm, and a law that would impose a limit on the number of handguns that could be purchased in a month.[61]

Adherents of the movement were also observed attending the anti-lockdown protests that began in mid-April throughout the United States, including in Washington, Tennessee, and New Hampshire.[11] They viewed the lockdowns and related restrictions, which were imposed by state and local governments to try to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, as governmental overreach and some described them as "tyranny".[49][63] Some members of boogaloo groups offered armed protection to businesses who wished to reopen in defiance of state shutdown orders.[63]

George Floyd protests

Boogaloo adherents (foreground) at a protest in Columbus, Ohio, July 18, 2020

Some members of boogaloo groups attended the protests that occurred across the United States beginning in May 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd.[21][22] On July 25, 2020, 28-year old Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster, who identified with the boogaloo movement and had expressed anti-racist, libertarian, and anti-police views, was shot and killed in an altercation with a motorist accelerating their vehicle into a crowd of protesters.[64] According to Vice, although the boogaloo groups tried to position themselves as allies of the Black Lives Matter movement, they generally avoided addressing police brutality in the United States as a racial issue.[21] Extremism researcher Robert Futrell spoke of the varied motivations of the adherents of the boogaloo movement who attended the protests, saying: "Some folks who identify as Boogaloo Bois share anti-police sentiments. Some are acting as self-appointed security, vowing to protect businesses from protesters. Some say they're monitoring the protests. Some are white supremacists trying to antagonize protesters".[11] Posts in some online boogaloo groups called for their members to loot police stations and set fire to government buildings while some encouraged actions emulating the "rooftop Koreans", a reference to Korean store owners who shot at looters from roofs during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.[40] There were a number of criminal incidents related to boogaloo adherents attending the George Floyd protests as well as the murders of a security contractor and a police officer believed to have been committed by two men associated with the boogaloo movement who used the protests as a distraction to commit their attacks.[65][66][67]

Online activities

Groups belonging to the boogaloo movement organize on mainstream online platforms including

Discord and Telegram, and on more obscure platforms such as 4chan.[1][35][54][33] Online extremism researcher Megan Squire observed references to the boogaloo in white supremacist Telegram chat rooms in the summer of 2019, before the movement began to become popular on gun forums in September of the same year.[11] Vice has also noted the boogaloo meme was popular on the TikTok video sharing application, where the #Boogaloo hashtag had over two million views as of June 2020, although many posters are not believed to be serious adherents of the movement.[68]

Social media companies have taken steps to limit boogaloo content and groups on their platforms. However, Squire observed in mid-June 2020 that despite Facebook's policy and enforcement changes to remove and demote boogaloo-related content, membership among boogaloo groups on the platform as well as on Discord and Reddit had remained steady or increased.[11]

Criminality and violence

People affiliated with the boogaloo movement have been arrested and five deaths have been publicly linked to boogaloo rhetoric.

breach of peace, and drugs charges.[66][70]

Murders of police and security officers in California

United States Air Force sergeant Steven Carrillo was charged with the June 6, 2020 murder of a Santa Cruz County deputy and the May 29 murder of a Federal Protective Service officer in Oakland. At the time of the attacks, Carrillo was an active-duty member of an elite Air Force unit tasked with guarding American military personnel at unsecure foreign airfields.[67] Carrillo wrote "Boog" and the phrases "I became unreasonable" (a popular meme among boogaloo groups) and "Stop the duopoly" in his own blood on the hood of a vehicle he hijacked. A patch with a boogaloo symbol and a ballistic vest bearing the boogaloo symbol of an American flag with an igloo instead of stars were also found in the white van allegedly used in the murders.[69][71]

The FBI linked the crimes to the boogaloo movement and said Carrillo and an accomplice used recent demonstrations against racial injustice as a cover to attack police.[14] The FBI agent in charge of the investigation said in a news conference that the men did not appear to intend to join the protests, saying: "They came to Oakland to kill cops".[67]

Carrillo pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge and received a 41-year sentence in June 2022, while other state felony charges remained pending.[72]

Plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

On October 8, 2020, a federal indictment against six men associated with the Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan-based militia group, was unsealed. The indictment charges the men with plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and violently overthrow the state government.[73] The FBI became aware of the scheme in early 2020 after communications among the far-right group were discovered, and via an undercover agent who met with more than a dozen individuals at a meeting in Dublin, Ohio.[74] Another seven men were charged with state crimes in relation to the plot.[75]

Prosecutors alleged links between some of the suspects arrested with the broader boogaloo movement.[31][76] According to an affidavit filed as a part of the state investigation, the seven men who were charged at a state level had been engaging in firearms training and tactical drills to "prepare for the 'boogaloo'". The leader of the group was known online as "Boogaloo Bunyan".[31] An NBC News investigation into the suspects' social media profiles found a swift online radicalization following Whitmer's implementation of a statewide lockdown as part of an effort to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic in Michigan.[76]

Acts during George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests