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an 11 22 travis raw

MAGA movement is out in force in Maricopa County, Arizona, as votes continue to be counted in last week's midterm elections.

Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's allies are questioning the ballots cast outside same-day voting as fraudulent,echoing Donald Trump's lies after his own election loss, and right-wing demonstrators have gathered outside vote-counting centers to denounce election officials and sheriff's deputies stationed outside as traitors, reported The Bulwark.

"PATRIOTS RISE UP to RALLY tomorrow SATURDAY NOON at the Maricopa County Elections office (510 S. 3rd Ave. Phoenix) to pray for the Light to shine in the darkness and for His truth to be revealed!" posted far-right state Sen. Wendy Rogers last week.

A loose confederation of Boogaloo Bois, Christian nationalists and other protesters answered Rogers' call to action, which she described as a "Jericho March" -- in a clear echo of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

"You may remember the organization named Jericho March and its role in laying the groundwork for the January 6th insurrection," wrote Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque for The Bulwark. "As God instructed the Israelites to walk seven times around Jericho and blow the shofar (horn) so that the walls would fall and everyone within the city would be slaughtered in God’s name, so believers have taken up the mantle of spiritual warfare and continued Jericho Marches in Maricopa County. The target that they are currently circling, which holds their enemies, is the center in which votes are being counted."

Lake, Senate candidate Blake Masters and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem all earned Trump's endorsement by backing his fraud claims, and they have followed the former president's playbook in challenging their losses as illegitimate without any evidence.

"It is very unlikely that Kari Lake’s supporters will try to storm the Maricopa ballot center," wrote Brockschmidt, the author of a book on the religious right, and Lecaque, a history professor at Grand View University. "But their ideology isn’t far from the one that drove people to march around the Capitol in the weeks before January 6th and then to attack it: the belief that not just humans but institutions can be possessed by evil spirits, by demons and powers of darkness (Eph. 6:12)—and that they have to be cleansed, purged, defeated by righteous Christians in the cosmic battle between good and evil."

"It is ultimately a totalizing — totalitarian, even — belief system that allows for no nuance, that only knows friend or mortal foe," the pair added. "And, crucially, while this kind of belief can wane for any number of reasons, it has never been swayed by defeat at the ballot box. Rather, it takes defeats and twists them into stories of heroic martyrdom, of promises of revenge and retribution."

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Two men have received a guilty verdict for their involvement in the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).

On Tuesday, August 23, a jury found Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., guilty of "conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home."

According to HuffPost, the guilty verdict was a victory for the U.S. government. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler shared his argument about the case with the jury. “You can’t just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,” Kessler told jurors.

“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo.And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”

The jury's decision in reference to Fox and Croft came as the jury also delivered a conviction for two other men who also conspired to kidnap the Democratic governor.

Shortly after reports surfaced about the kidnapping plot, Fox, Croft and the other suspects are said to have been accompanied by government operatives as they "traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed."

However, the suspects' defense attorneys attempted to turn the tables on the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). “This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Croft attorney Joshua Blanchard told jurors.“You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”

so i guess false flags are real?

member of the far-right Boogaloo Boys had admitted he traveled from Texas to Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s death and posed as a Black Lives Matter supporter while wreaking havoc on the city. Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of rioting. He admitted to firing 13 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle into the 3rd Precinct police station as rioters set the building alight in May 2020. He was then filmed yelling “Justice for Floyd!” Hunter wore a distinctive skull mask during the riot that investigators later matched to a video on his Facebook page.

The Boogaloo movement is an extremist, anti-government, often racist movement that aims to start a second American civil war. Court filings allege Hunter came to Minneapolis with two other Boogaloos and also communicated with Steven Carrillo, a Boogaloo accused of fatally ambushing deputies in California.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/boogaloo-bois/

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Gisela Pérez de Acha, Kathryn Hurd and Ellie Lightfoot, Berkeley Journalism's Investigative Reporting Program

Series: The Insurrection

The Effort to Overturn the Election

It was 2:20 p.m. on June 6, 2020, and Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant who belonged to the anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement, was on the run in the tiny mountain town of Ben Lomond, California.

With deputy sheriffs closing in, Carrillo texted his brother, Evan, asking him to tell his children he loved them and instructing him to give $50,000 to his fiancée. “I love you bro," Carrillo signed off. Thinking the text message was a suicide note from a brother with a history of mental health troubles, Evan Carrillo quickly texted back: “Think about the ones you love."

In fact, Steven Carrillo had a different objective, a goal he had written about on Facebook, discussed with other Boogaloo Bois and even scrawled out in his own blood as he hid from police that day.He wanted to incite a second Civil War in the United States by killing police officers he viewed as enforcers of a corrupt and tyrannical political order — officers he described as “domestic enemies" of the Constitution he professed to revere.

Now, as he texted with his brother and watched deputies assemble so close to him that he could hear their conversations, Carrillo sent an urgent appeal to his fellow Boogaloo Bois. “Kit up and get here," he wrote in a WhatsApp message that prosecutors say he sent to members of a heavily armed Boogaloo militia faction he had recently joined. The police, he texted, were after him.

“Take them out when theyre coming in," the text read, according to court documents.

Minutes later, prosecutors allege, Carrillo ambushed three deputy sheriffs, opening fire with a silenced automatic rifle and hurling a homemade pipe bomb from a concealed position on a steep embankment some 40 feet from the deputies. One deputy was shot dead, and a second was badly wounded by bomb shrapnel to his face and neck. When two California Highway Patrol officers arrived, Carrillo opened fire on them, too, police say, wounding one.

“The police are the guard dogs, ready to attack whenever the owner says, 'Hey, sic 'em boy,'" Carrillo said in an interview, the first time he has spoken publicly since he was charged with murdering both the deputy sheriff in Ben Lomond and, a week earlier, a federal protective security officer at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Oakland.

When Carrillo was finally subdued on June 6, cellphone footage captured him shouting at deputies as they led him away, “This is what I came to fight — I'm sick of these goddamn police."

For Carrillo, that final frenzied expression of rage marked the culmination of a long slide into extremism, a journey that had begun a decade earlier with his embrace of the tea party movement, libertarianism and Second Amendment gun rights,before evolving into an ever-deepening involvement with paramilitary elements of the Boogaloo Bois. The militant group is known for the distinctive Hawaiian shirts its members wear at protests, often while brandishing AR-15s and agitating for the “Boog" — the group's shorthand for civil war.

Carrillo's arrest was also an omen of something larger and even more ominous: the rise of a violent insurrection movement across America led by increasingly extreme and aggressive militias that seek out opportunities to confront and even attack the government. Examples of this broader insurrection abound, from October's foiled plot to abduct Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to the leading role militia groups such as the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers played in the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

While militias have long been active in the United States, groups tracking extremist violence have reported notable increases in paramilitary activity over the past year, and the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence have all issued stark warnings in recent months about an elevated threat of violence from domestic extremist groups.

ProPublica, FRONTLINE and Berkeley Journalism's Investigative Reporting Program also uncovered new evidence that some military service members have embraced extremist ideology. The news organizations identified 15 active-duty members of the Air Force who, like Carrillo, openly promoted Boogaloo memes and messages on Facebook. On Friday, the Pentagon announced new measures to combat extremism inside the military.The Biden administration, meanwhile, is increasing funding for preventing attacks by militias, white supremacists and other anti-government groups, The New York Times reported this month.

“These groups want to be instigators, the frontline of the civil war that is going to happen in this country," said John Bennett, who was the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Francisco Division at the time of Carrillo's arrest.

“The scary thing," he added, “is a lot of people in these groups that we're seeing now are your neighbors."

An examination of Carrillo's life and his path to radicalization, based on extensive interviews with him, his family, his friends and his fiancée, along with a review of hundreds of pages of court records, previously undisclosed text messages and internal militia documents, revealed startling new details about the threat posed by the Boogaloo Bois.

Experts in extremist militia groups have long regarded the Boogaloo Bois as having no real hierarchy or leadership structure. But in piecing together Carrillo's activities and militia contacts, law enforcement officials were stunned to discover the extent of coordination, planning and communications within the group.

Not only was Carrillo in regular contact with a wide range of prominent Boogaloo Boi figures around the country, records and interviews show, but two months before his arrest Carrillo had joined up with a heavily armed, highly organized and extremely secretive Boogaloo militia group in California that called itself the “Grizzly Scouts."

“This group was different," Jim Hart, the sheriff of Santa Cruz County, where Ben Lomond is located, said in an interview. “There was a definite chain of command and a line of leadership within this group."

In a federal indictment unsealed on Friday, prosecutors said Carrillo and four members of the Grizzly Scouts, including its leader, “discussed tactics involving killing of police officers and other law enforcement." The indictment also alleges that the same four Grizzly Scouts tried to thwart a criminal investigation into their activities by destroying evidence of their communications with Carrillo and each other.

In nearly two hours of interviews conducted in Spanish and English, as well as in a letter dictated to his fiancée from Santa Rita Jail east of Oakland, Carrillo talked about the evolution of his anti-government ideology. While he would not discuss any of the criminal charges against him, Carrillo spoke at length about his continuing allegiance to the Boogaloo Bois and patiently explained how the movement's “revolutionary thought" could offer a rationale for attacks against law enforcement officers who he or any other Boogaloo Boi thinks are violating the Constitution. “I pledged to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," he said.

Not once did Carrillo express pity or remorse over the deaths of Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, the deputy sheriff, whose wife was pregnant with their second child, or David Patrick Underwood, the security officer at the Oakland federal building, who made a habit of donating to local baseball youth organizations.

Becoming a Boog

Born in Los Angeles in 1988, Carrillo had an early childhood marked by episodes of domestic violence. According to family members, his father, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who worked as a tree trimmer, repeatedly assaulted his mother, who was from Burbank, California. Given up by his parents as a toddler, Carrillo and Evan, his older brother, were taken in by other members of their family, and at age 5 he was sent with his brother to a tiny rural village in Jalisco, Mexico, where they lived on their grandparents' farm. A couple of years later, the Carrillo boys returned to California to live with their father, eventually settling in Ben Lomond, a remote two-stoplight town in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After graduating from San Lorenzo Valley High School, Carrillo said he joined the Air Force in 2009, the same year he married his childhood sweetheart. In an interview, Carrillo's father denied the family's allegations of domestic violence, but otherwise declined to comment. Carrillo's mother would not speak on the record for this article.

According to Carrillo, his ideas about politics and the role of government began to take shape in the Air Force. “Before, I was confined to a little bubble," he said in an interview, referring to his upbringing in Ben Lomond, population 7,000. Once he joined the Air Force and met others from around the world, “talking to people changed my whole views," he said. He followed a well-worn path that began with a fierce attachment to gun rights, which in turn led him to libertarianism, and then an enthusiastic embrace of the tea party movement.

By 2012, Carrillo was a registered Republican who supported Gary Johnson, the presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, and Ron Paul. He attended Second Amendment rallies and advocated for expanded gun rights on a Facebook page set up for a group of self-described Christian “patriots."

In 2015, while stationed at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah, Carrillo was in a car accident that left him hospitalized with a concussion and head lacerations. Family and friends said the crash affected his mental health. “He wasn't himself," Evan Carrillo said in an interview. “He was usually very talkative, very social. I was the quiet one. And now it was like talking to a wall."

At the time, Carrillo was a security forces officer in the Air Force. According to his siblings, his mental health issues were serious enough that the Air Force took Carrillo's gun away for several months. (The Air Force said it could not immediately locate the records it needed to comment about this incident.)

He became even more withdrawn, family members said, after his wife committed suicide in 2018 shortly after he confessed to cheating on her yet again.He spoke of wanting to kill himself and started living out of a van, leaving it to his in-laws to look after his two young children. “He was just in complete disconnect of how people should live and who he was," said his sister, Ruby.

And yet months after his wife's suicide, Air Force records show, Carrillo was serving as an apprentice in Phoenix Raven, an elite Air Force security unit that is dispatched to protect aircraft and air crews in global hotspots. At the time, Carrillo was stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, but his apprenticeship with the Ravens also gave him special training in combat techniques, explosives and advanced firearms proficiency at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst near Trenton, New Jersey.

According to the Air Force, Carrillo completed the 24-day Phoenix Raven qualification course in New Jersey in late 2018, then returned to Travis Air Force Base to become “fully mission qualified as a Raven." From July to November of 2019, Carrillo served as a Phoenix Raven Team Leader in Kuwait and other countries in the region, the Air Force said.

In an interview, Carrillo said he was introduced to the political ideology of the Boogaloo Bois through friends in the Air Force and on the internet. The 15 active-duty airmen identified by the news organizations as openly promoting Boogaloo content on Facebook worked at bases around the world, including eight who, like Carrillo, served in the Air Force security branch.

When asked about these active-duty airmen, the Air Force said in a statement that personnel who participate in extremist groups are in “direct violation" of Defense Department regulations. “Supporting extremist ideology, especially that which calls for violence or the deprivation of civil liberties of certain members of society, violates the oath every service member takes to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," the Air Force statement said.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Pentagon to take a series of immediate steps to counter extremism in the military.

It is unclear precisely when Carrillo began associating with the Boogaloo Bois, but according to a sworn statement from an FBI agent he was in direct contact with prominent figures in the group by December 2019.

The next month, prosecutors allege, he bought a $15 device that converts AR-15 semiautomatic rifles into fully automatic machine guns, making the purchase through a website that advertised to Boogaloo Facebook groups and promised to donate some of its profits to the family of Duncan Lemp, who became a Boogaloo martyr after he was killed in a police raid. Carrillo also began incorporating popular militia memes and imagery into his Facebook posts, and was in touch online with a growing circle of Boogaloo Bois. “A lot of people in the movement knew who Steve was," Mike Dunn, the leader of a Boogaloo faction in Virginia that calls itself the Last Sons of Liberty, said in an interview.

Carrillo's girlfriend, Silvia Amaya, said she noticed a distinct shift in Carrillo's behavior at around this time. He struggled with insomnia and was increasingly “shut off in his own world," she said in an interview. He talked frequently about how “a war would start soon," echoing the core belief of Boogaloo followers.

The Grizzly Scouts

On March 14, 2020, prosecutors allege in court filings, Carrillo received a text message from Ivan Hunter, a Boogaloo Bois leader in Texas. The message reads like an instruction to get ready for action. “Start drafting that op," Hunter wrote to Carrillo. “The one we talked about in December. I'ma green light some shit." In response, Carrillo wrote, “Sounds good, bro!" Soon after, Carrillo sought to join the Grizzly Scouts, a newly-formed California militia group that had proclaimed its “affinity for Hawaiian shirts," the best-known symbol of the Boogaloo Bois, in its profile page on mymilitia.com.

The Grizzly Scouts, also known as the 1st Detachment of the 1st California Scouts, are based in Turlock, a small city about 100 miles southeast of San Francisco. According to federal prosecutors, the Grizzly Scouts had a Facebook group called “/K/alifornia Kommando" that proclaimed their desire “to gather like minded Californians who can network and establish local goon squads." (Among the Boogaloo Bois, the word “goon" refers to a single member.)

On April 10, 2020, according to records obtained by the news organizations, a member of the Grizzly Scouts who goes by the alias BoojerBro1776 emailed Carrillo an extensive packet of application materials, 31 pages in all. (“On boarding," read the email's subject line.) The documents, never before publicly disclosed, are an odd blend of corporate instruction manual and chilling playbook for armed military action.

New recruits were asked to abide by a social media policy and to sign both a non-disclosure agreement and a release of liability. The application itself offered this bit of corporate boilerplate: “If this application leads to employment, I understand that false or misleading information in my application or interview may result in my release."

At the same time, the documents make clear that the Grizzly Scouts intended to do more than simply meet up in the woods for occasional target practice. A policy on the Grizzly Scouts' dress code begins this way: “Since the time man realized we could kill each other to gain something, men have donned uniforms and have gone to battle." The documents, which describe the Grizzly Scouts as an “armed Constitutional militia," go on to decree that black will be worn “while conducting covert/clandestine operations," and stress the importance of wearing approved Grizzly Scout uniforms “to mitigate any potential battlefield confusion."

“Our Areas of Operations can take us from the dirt to downtown in a blink of an eye," the document states.

The documents also make clear that Carrillo's military background, in particular his advanced combat and weapons training, provided exactly the qualities the Grizzly Scouts wanted in its recruits. The Grizzly Scouts' members — law enforcement officials say the group had attracted 27 recruits — were given military ranks and roles based on their level of military training and prior combat experience. Some Grizzly Scouts were designated “snipers," others were assigned to “clandestine operations," and some were medics or drivers. Whatever their role, all were expected to maintain go kits that included “combat gauze" and both a “primary" and “secondary" weapon.

Two weeks after receiving his application materials, Carrillo joined the Grizzly Scouts for a weekend of training — or “church," in the group's vernacular. In keeping with the Grizzly Scouts' desire for secrecy, Carrillo was vague with Amaya, his girlfriend, about where he had been and whom he was with. Aware of his history of cheating, Amaya imagined the worst and insisted he take her along the next time he planned to meet with his mysterious new friends. “I was very angry and jealous," she said.

On May 9, the couple loaded their car with guns and bulletproof vests and headed toward a ranch in Mariposa County, not far from Yosemite National Park, to meet the Grizzly Scouts for another training session. Along the way they met up with Jessie Rush, the “detachment commander" of the Grizzly Scouts, whose LinkedIn profile says he is a U.S. Army veteran now employed by a private security company. Rush, also known as “Grizzly Actual," reminded them not to take photos, but otherwise raised no objections to Amaya's presence as the Grizzly Scouts went through various shooting drills.

Rush, one of the four Grizzly Scouts now charged with concealing evidence of their communications with Carrillo, declined to comment.

When asked in an interview about his involvement with the Grizzly Scouts, Carrillo responded evasively. “How did you figure that out?" he asked in Spanish when first pressed about his ties to the group. Later, Carrillo professed little understanding of either the aims or activities of the Grizzly Scouts. “We were just getting to know each other," he said.

According to prosecutors, however, Carrillo held the rank of “staff sergeant" in the Grizzly Scouts, and, as with other members of the group, he was given an animal nom de guerre: “Armadillo."

Combat Mode

George Floyd's death in Minneapolis on May 25, 15 days after Carrillo's last training session with the Grizzly Scouts, galvanized the Boogaloo faithful. In online postings, they spoke of Floyd's death not only as an example of egregious police misconduct but as an opportunity to stoke chaos that could be blamed on the Black Lives Matter movement. The resulting racial unrest, they hoped, would accelerate the long-awaited “Boogaloo" — the final conflict, a second Civil War.

Two days after Floyd's death, Carrillo's Boogaloo friend Ivan Hunter drove from Texas to Minneapolis. Armed with an AK-47-style semiautomatic rifle, Hunter fired off 13 rounds into an abandoned Minneapolis police precinct where hundreds of protesters had gathered, prosecutors allege. Prosecutors say Hunter yelled, “Justice for Floyd!" before disappearing into the night with several other Boogaloo Bois who had come to Minneapolis to provoke civil strife. Hunter, eventually arrested in San Antonio, was charged with participating in a riot and is being held without bail; his defense lawyer declined to comment.

For Carrillo, Floyd's death confirmed his view of the police as little more than willing instruments of a corrupt and tyrannical political order bent on destroying the Constitution. “I felt hate more than anything," he said in an interview when asked about Floyd's killing.

“The Boogaloo revolution is against the government," he explained, “but the police is basically the government's dog on a leash."

Amaya said Floyd's killing “unleashed the worst" in Carrillo, who in the days that followed behaved, she recalled, like a man who was preparing for battle. “It's a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois," Carrillo wrote on his Facebook page on May 28, using Boogaloo slang for federal law enforcement agencies. That night he shocked Amaya by proposing marriage, presenting her with a $25 turquoise blue silicone ring and promising to replace it with a diamond ring later.

The next day, Carrillo left Amaya's house. According to prosecutors, he picked up another Boogaloo Boi, Robert Justus Jr., and drove to downtown Oakland. It was 9:15 p.m., and crowds had gathered on Oakland's streets to protest and mourn Floyd's death. Meanwhile, blocks away, the two men drove a white Ford van around Oakland's federal courthouse, where David Patrick Underwood, a federal protective security officer, staffed a two-person guard hut. Prosecutors say Carrillo was in the back seat near the sliding door, carrying a short-barreled rifle, a “ghost weapon" with no serial number, making it almost impossible to trace. According to the FBI, it was an illegal machine gun optimized to fire bursts of shots automatically, with an added silencer.

Hours before, Carrillo had posted on Facebook that if “it's not kicking off in your hood then start it." Now, according to prosecutors, Justus drove toward the guard hut while Carrillo slid the van's door open and fired multiple bursts, killing Underwood and seriously wounding a second guard. “Did you see how they fucking fell?" Carrillo said as the van drove off, according to an account Justus gave investigators after turning himself in.

“In his mind, Steven was on a mission just like in the Air Force, except the enemy was the police," Amaya said.

A lawyer for Justus, who has been charged with aiding and abetting Underwood's murder, declined to discuss his client's alleged involvement with the Boogaloo Bois. Instead he pointed to court filings that describe what Justus told investigators. According to those records, Justus insisted to investigators that he felt he had to participate because he was “trapped in the van." He also claimed he told Carrillo, “I am not cool with this," and tried to think of ways to “talk Carrillo out of his plan," only for Carrillo to respond by pointing a rifle at him and asking if he was “a cop or a rat."

The shooting of both guards aligned neatly with Boogaloo ideology. “Use their anger to fuel our fire," Carrillo had written on Facebook that morning. “We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage." Sure enough, some conservative commentators rushed to blame Underwood's murder on antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters.

Four hours after Underwood's death, Carrillo received a text message from Hunter urging him to attack police buildings, court records show.

Carrillo's response: “I did better lol."

That weekend, when Carrillo returned to Amaya's house, he seemed “on edge and distracted," she recalled. He asked for a week's leave at Travis Air Force base and sent $200 to Hunter, congratulating him for “doing good shit out there." Most of the time, she said, Carrillo was glued to Facebook, following the news and commenting on viral videos of police clashing with protesters. “Who needs antifa to start riots when the police do it for you," read one of his posts.

In the days after the Oakland shooting, Carrillo communicated regularly with Rush and other members of the Grizzly Scouts on a WhatsApp group they called “209 Goon HQ," prosecutors say. (The area code for Mariposa County, home turf of the Grizzly Scouts, is 209.) Via WhatsApp, they repeatedly made references to the “Boog" and “discussed committing acts of violence against law enforcement," prosecutors allege.

On Saturday, June 6, Carrillo drove to his father's house in Ben Lomond. It was about 2 p.m. when Gutzwiller, a sergeant in the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office, and two more deputies arrived at theproperty, which was guarded by a dog wearing a bulletproof vest and monitored by security cameras. They were responding to a call from a passerby who had spotted a suspicious white Ford van loaded with what appeared to be firearms and bomb-making material. When the deputies learned the van was registered to Carrillo's father, they pulled up to his house to question him.

The deputies did not realize Carrillo was above them, perched just 40 feet away in a covered, well-concealed position up a steep embankment, aiming the same “ghost" weapon that prosecutors say he had used in Oakland.

Based on the WhatsApp text messages that prosecutors say he sent at this time, Carrillo appeared to be trying to guide his fellow Grizzly Scouts on how they could join forces with him in a coordinated attack on the law enforcement officers gathering to search for him.

“Theyre waiting for reenforcements," he texted.

And this: “Theres inly one road in/out. Take them out when theyre coming in."

According to police, Carrillo “sniped" Gutzwiller, killing him with a single shot to the chest. Another deputy was also shot in the chest, but was saved by his bulletproof vest.

During the mayhem and bloodshed that followed, Carrillo engaged in a running gun battle with law enforcement officers, hurling pipe bombs and hijacking vehicles. In his own blood, he scrawled “BOOG" and “I became unreasonable" and “Stop the Duopoly" — all common Boogaloo slogans — on the hood of a car he had stolen. And at some point, he sent one more WhatsApp message to his fellow Grizzly Scouts: “Dudes i offed a fed."

For all of Carrillo's urgent appeals for reinforcements, there is no indication any Grizzly Scout tried to come to his aid. While questioning Carrillo's fiancée in August, Henry Montes, an investigator for the Santa Cruz County District Attorney's Office, offered a possible explanation. Some members of the Grizzly Scouts, he said, had told investigators that Carrillo was too extreme for them. “The things that he was saying made them think he wants to kill policemen," Montes told Amaya, according to a recording of the interview obtained by the news organizations.

“We spoke with some people who were no longer part of that group because they were afraid of Steven," Montes said.

A Jailhouse Wedding

In interviews, Carrillo's siblings describe a brother who suffered from years of severe mental health problems and didn't get the support and medical treatment he needed from the Air Force. “I could see his pain," Carrillo's sister, Ruby, said.

Over two hours of interviews, Carrillo himself did not attribute any of his actions to mental illness. Instead, he forthrightly proclaimed his support for the Boogaloo Bois and repeatedly challenged what he views as misconceptions about the group.

“I just want to say, the Boogaloo movement, you know, there's a lot in the paper that I feel like people don't understand," he said. “And that is the Boogaloo movement, it's all inclusive. It includes everyone. It's not a thing about race. It's about people that love freedom, liberty, and they're unhappy with the level of control that the government takes over our lives. So it's just a movement, it's a thought about freedom. It's just a complete love for freedom."

Meanwhile, as Carrillo sits in jail awaiting trial, his political evolution continues. In a letter he wrote to reporters in October, he referred to Joe Biden as a man who “sniffs kids," echoing QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that falsely accuses the Democratic Party of running a Satan-worshipping child sex-trafficking ring.

Carrillo's defense lawyers declined to comment.

Amaya continues to stand by Carrillo. “I know him, and I think he can change," she said.

On Christmas Day the couple exchanged vows through a video call from the Santa Rita Jail. “I love your lips, baby," Carrillo told her.

She promised to love him “forever and always."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Tacit endorsement': The Proud Boys are celebrating Trump telling them to 'stand by'

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/fbi-memo-warns-of-far-right-violence-to-come-during-post-election-flashpoint/

one day after President Donald Trump urged his supporters to engage in voter intimidationduring the general election and called on the violent white supremacist group Proud Boys to "stand by" rather than "stand down," The Nation reported that the FBI is preparing for a "violent extremist threat" posed by a far-right, anti-government militia whose members have advocated for a "race war."

Identifying the loosely-organized group known as the "Boogaloos" as the specific threat, the FBI's Dallas field office prepared anintelligence report on Tuesday—the day of the first presidential debate—titling the document, "Boogaloo Adherents Likely Increasing Anti-Government Violent Rhetoric and Activities, Increasing Domestic Violent Extremist Threat in the FBI Dallas Area of Responsibility."

Known for wearing Hawaiian shirts and military fatigues and carrying weapons to rallies, "Boogaloos" reportedly intend to bring about a second American Civil War, which some adherents believewill be a "race war." In one high-profile case against a Boogaloo proponent, Steven Carrillo was accused this year of killing two law enforcement officers with the aim of "provoking retaliation from the police against the demonstrators" at a Black Lives Matter rally.

The Boogaloo movement has also had a strong presence at protests against Covid-19 restrictions, where many adherents were armed.

With Trump repeatedly stoking the perception among his supporters that—despite the fact that he trailsDemocratic candidate Joe Biden in several swing state polls—the only legitimate election will be one that he wins and that mail-in ballots will result in a rigged election, the FBI believes Election Day could be a "potential flashpoint" in an escalation of the Boogaloos' violent activities over the next three months, leading up to Inauguration Day in January 2021.

"Boogaloo adherents likely will expand influence within the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility] due to the presence of existing anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, the sentiment of perceived government overreach,heightened tensions due to Covid-19-related state and local restrictions, and violence or criminal activity at lawful protests as a result of the death of an African American USPER [US person] in Minneapolis, factors that led to violence at otherwise peaceful and lawful protests in the FBI Dallas AOR," thereportreads.

"Indicators that this assessment is correct include increased violent social media posts of boogaloo adherents and increased 'patrolling' or attendance at events that are anti-law enforcement, anti-government, or anti-authority," the Dallas field office continues.

On social media, journalist Medhi Hasan called the report "a huge story." Nation reporter Ken Klippenstein, who wrote about the FBI's warning for the outlet, urged federal law enforcement agents to share more information about their concerns regarding the election and potential violence by white supremacist groups.

If you're federal law enforcement, please text me at 202-510-1268 (use Signal). I know you guys are a lot more wo… https://t.co/UH4KwCa79I

— Ken Klippenstein (@Ken Klippenstein)1601512167.0

AsCommon Dreamsreported Wednesday, members of the Proud Boys celebrated the president's refusal to denounce white supremacy at the debate.

The group's reaction was "a perfect example of how Trump's voter fraud disinformation and emboldened white supremacists and other violent extremists are a recipe for disaster this fall," tweetedAmy Spitalnick of the anti-racist group Integrity First for America.

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/10/fbi-sting-boogaloo-hamas/

...The Boojahideen case did something rare: Over the years, the FBI usually uses foreign terror plots to coax would-be adherents of these foreign groups, whereas in the Boojahideen case, the FBI linked up domestic extremists with a foreign terror group. Under the Justice Department’s normal modus operandi — using something of a double standard — right-wing domestic terrorists do not face terrorism charges.

Still, the use of stings involving foreign-terror plots is still unsettling to some law enforcement and rights experts. Human Rights Watch hascritized these stings for often targeting “those with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent.” The FBI has long defended its practices by saying that stings allow federal law enforcement to find would-be terrorists before real terrorist groups have the opportunity, but, as in the Boojahideen case, the threats often seem to be concocted by the FBI out of whole cloth in order to initiate charges.[ex fbi at brennan]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/this-ex-trump-official-is-exposing-the-presidents-complicity-in-far-right-terrorism

Alex Henderson September 2, 2020

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Many of President Donald Trump’s allies have downplayed the threat that far-right white nationalist and white supremacist groups pose from a domestic terrorism standpoint. But conservative Republican Elizabeth Neumann, who served as assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is warning that such groups do, in fact, pose a major threat in the United States — and Trump, according to Neumann, is inciting such groups.

Neumann, who voted for Trump in 2016 and served in DHS under his administration, recently came out in support of former Vice President Joe Biden in an ad by Republican Voters Against Trump. And during an interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep, she stressed that Trump is encouraging extremist groups when he should be condemning them.

Neumann told NPR:

If you had a very clear voice at the top, from the president, from other senior leaders in the Republican Party, denouncing this and warning conservatives — warning Republicans — that these groups are trying to recruit you based on things that might sound like a typical conservative belief, but behind it is this insidious, ugly, evil thing, if we had more clear voices talking about it — it would somewhatinoculate people from that recruitment and that radicalization. But instead, we have the opposite effect. We have the president not only pretty much refusing to condemn, but throwing fuel on the fire, creating opportunities for more recruitment through his rhetoric.

…

He uses rhetoric to scare people. This is a known psychological tactic that if you get people to fear, they tend to follow you to the solution of ‘How are we going to save ourselves?’ And his answer is, ‘It’s me. If you vote for me, I will save you,’ … Well, for some people, the way that they think that they need to protect themselves, it’s more than just a vote for a president. It’s ‘let me go kill people.’

One of the worst terrorist attacks of the Trump era occurred on August 3, 2019, when a white nationalist gunman killed more than 20 people in El Paso, Texas, targeting his victims simply because most of them were Latino. Neumann, during the NPR interview, argued that the attacker was influenced by Trump’s rhetoric.

“When you see the El Paso attacker, his manifesto was citing language and rhetoric that comes from the president’s campaign rallies about an invasion from Mexico and how we’ve got to protect our country,” Neumann told NPR.

She compared the growth of the dangerous far-right movement to the development of ISIS:

“They borrowed from ISIS’s playbook and they learned how to radicalize people online,” she says. In the post-Sept. 11 United States, domestic extremists also adopted an emphasis on smaller attacks that could be carried out quickly with limited planning. What Neumann saw was “the pivot to bring your own weapon to the fight, use whatever you have: a knife, a gun, a vehicle, vehicle ramming,” she says. “We’ve seen a number of vehicle rammings this summer, in fact.”

But the White House was reluctant to name the threat directly.

“[If] we use the term ‘domestic terrorism’ or we talk about the white supremacist language, that seems to derail things at the White House,” she said.

Trump and his allies have been making the baseless claim that the Antifa movement is a source of domestic terrorism. But Antifa, for all their militant rhetoric, do not engage in or encourage the type of attacks favored by either white nationalist and white supremacist groups or radical Islamist groups like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram or ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria).

Neumann told NPR: “If you look at the people that have been arrested for” acts of violence recently, “by and large…. it’s the Boogaloo movement, or it’s an association with QAnon. It’s the right side of the spectrum. It is not Antifa….. The threat of domestic terrorism is not from Antifa. It is from these right-wing movements.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/**the-disturbing-appeal-of-boogaloo-violence-to-military-men**

no lnx pix

the fringe movement is the latest in a long series of paramilitary scenes to court U.S. soldiers.

Kelly Weill

Reporter

Updated Jun. 08, 2020 9:14AM ET / Published Jun. 08, 2020

A decade ago, Stephen Parshall served in the Navy as an aviation mechanic. His four-year stateside stint earned him the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, standard fare for members of the Armed Forces supporting the sprawling conflict that began in September 2001.

On May 30, Parshall and two other men were arrested for allegedly plotting several attacks on protests, government facilities, and electrical infrastructure. His alleged accomplices were also current or former military members. According to prosecutors, the three were drawn together by the Boogaloo, an emerging, violent ideology that’s gaining popularity among some troops and veterans.

Fantasies of a violent tipping point feature prominently in the Boogaloo scene, which—while relatively new and not an ideological monolith—generally trends right-wing or fringe libertarian, with many of its memes and aesthetic markers borrowed from more explicitly racist alt-right and 4chan culture. The movement is broadly anti-government, and talks often of sparking a civil war.

[3 Men Tried to Hijack Floyd Protest to Spark Bloodshed: Feds

OUTSIDE AGITATORS

Blake Montgomery

Right-Wing ‘Race War’ Wannabes May Make Protests Go Nuclear

ULTERIOR MOTIVES?

Kelly Weill]

In the midst of that are current and former service members talking about waging war on U.S. soil. Participation by military members in an anti-government movement might seem counterintuitive on its face, but the Boogaloo movement is only the latest in a long series of fringe paramilitary scenes that court American troops.

Parshall, 35; Andrew Lynam, 23; and William Loomis, 40, were arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas. But the trio weren’t there to protest the death of George Floyd, prosecutors say. Instead, they allegedly planned to throw Molotov cocktails and incite violence, in the hopes of sparking greater unrest.

Their Las Vegas cell came under investigation in April, when one of Parshall and Lynam’s associates contacted the FBI about what that person claimed was the two men’s interest in conducting a terror attack, prosecutors said.The person agreed to become a confidential informant in the group, and gathered with members as they allegedly discussed plots to commit violence and overthrow the government.

The trio allegedly went heavily armed to a “re-open” rally in Las Vegas—one of the largely conservative protests attended by people who wanted to end COVID-19 business closures. There, they allegedly talked of targeting government infrastructure, like a ranger station at a nearby lake.

During later meetings, they allegedly planned to blow up a power station and throw smoke bombs at a different re-open protest. (They allegedly went to the protest but got cold feet when they saw cops watching them.) Finally, on May 30, they allegedly attended the Black Lives Matter protest with Molotov cocktails [COOCH ANNOUNCEMENT] and a plot to spark chaos. The FBI arrested all three on the spot.

The Boogaloo crowd’s intense focus on weapons and training requires the ability to talk the talk—there is a huge amount of jargon in the gun groups...]

The trio’s arrest contributed to growing scrutiny of the Boogaloo movement, as well as the military records of many therein. Parshall was a former Navy seaman, achieving the rank of E-3 during his 2007-2011 service.Lynam is currently a Private First Class in the U.S. Army Reserve,where he is a health-care specialist, an Army spokesperson told The Daily Beast. The spokesperson added that the Army Reserve “is committed to serving the people of the United States, and living the Army values. [Lynam’s] alleged actions are in direct contrast to these values and they are not representative of America's Army Reserve.”

Loomis was an Air Force veteran. Although details on his dates of service and rank were not immediately available, he pleaded guilty to a traffic violation while living on the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in 2001, records show. Attorneys for Parshall and Loomis did not return a request for comment, and it was unclear if Lynam had retained a lawyer. The Department of Defense did not return a request for comment on how it was handling the Boogaloo movement among troops.

Megan Squire, an Elon University professor researching far-right extremism online, said that, among members of the armed forces, she has noticed a higher rate of Boogaloo participation than in other right-wing movements like the alt-right.

Some of that might be due to fewer Boogaloo participants hiding their involvement, due to the movement’s less explicit messaging, Squire noted. “But a bigger reason might be that theBoogaloo crowd’s intense focus on weapons and training requires the ability to talk the talk—there is a huge amount of jargon in the gun groups—and those with military training are therefore more respected and quicker tohit the ground running with anecdotes, familiarity with weapons, understanding of training protocols, and so on.”

A report by the disinformation-tracking group Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in February described the military community as a potentially hot recruitment ground for the Boogaloo movement.

“The military community, in particular, may merit special consideration in risk evaluation and social-climate research because seditious memes are now tailored for infection among veterans and active service members,” researchers wrote.

At its most basic level, Boogaloo is an internet joke, onto which followers have grafted a still-solidifying ideology.Mike Harts, an Army veteran and Boogaloo adherent who spoke to the Associated Press last month, described it as a meme that evolved into a movement. That meme has racist roots, with much of the “Boogaloo” language emerging in extremist Telegrams, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted last week, even though “at times, members of online boogaloo communities have presented their political project as race-blind and, in some instances, actively express solidarity with the black freedom movement.”

The joke-y meme language can conceal some of the movement’s true intentions. Members sometimes show up at protests bearing AR-15 rifles and wearing Hawaiian shirts—simultaneously serious and difficult to take seriously.

Much of the movement’s appearance is borrowed from 4chan culture and previous far-right communities. The movement has many of its origins in 4chan’s “/k/” weapons board, a Bellingcat investigation noted last month, andmany Boogaloo-friendly Facebook groups incorporate “/k/” into their names. Fluency in 4chan-style memes gives the movement common ground with alt-right types who popularized those memes from around 2015 to 2017. And Boogaloo members’ military-style riffs on those memes may make them appealing to service members, bringing troops and veterans into conversation with far-right culture.

Seditious memes are now tailored for infection among veterans and active service members...

The end result is something like a military-looking arm patch with a Pepe meme and the words “Boogaloo Boys, Memetic Warfare, 1st [Division],” which members of the movement wore to a pro-gun rally in Virginia in January.

[RELATED IN U.S. NEWS

Was This Rally Hijacked by White Supremacists?

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There Must Be No More Vanessa Guillens in the Military]

The NCRI noted that “memetic warfare is still very much a mystery to both policy makers and officials working within the American law enforcement community. In this ignorance, the worst actors amongst Boogaloo groups possess a distinct advantage over government officials and law enforcement: They already realize that they are at war.”

Parshall was apparently familiar with ironic alt-right culture. In 2015, he set his profile picture to a swastika on a gay pride flag, surrounded by Stars of David. (Two days earlier, his profile picture had been a Confederate flag.)

As the Boogaloo movement emerged, some of its earliest advocates were military members. The NCRI identified one of the movement’s early surges as a November standoff between an Army veteran and a police officer, during which the veteran name-checked the Boogaloo. The veteran’s pro-gun Instagram account“only held several thousand followers at the start of the event, it boasted over 130,000 by the time the standoff ended,” the NCRI noted.

During the January pro-gun rally, Boogaloo members associated with the group that wore the “Boogaloo Boys, Memetic Warfare” patch claimed to be active-duty military. “Some of the guys we were with aren’t exactly out of the military yet, so they had to keep their faces covered,” a member of the cell said on a podcast, the NCRI noted.

Army veteran Bradley Bunn, who was arrested May 1 for an alleged plot to throw pipe bombs at a re-open protest, did not appear to be an explicit Boogaloo adherent. But he had associates in the movement and became a hero among some Boogaloo followers, RawStory previously reported.

Despite—or even because of—members’ military ties, the Boogaloo movement seems to have a genuine skepticism of police.

“The military or ex-military guys that I have observed in these communities are proud of having done their service but also frustrated with what they perceive to be ineffective policies and hierarchy,” Squire, the Elon University professor said. “More significantly, all the Boogaloo adherents are intensely anti-police (this is a foundational tenet), and the military-affiliated guys are constantly talking about how inept the police are. They express feelings of frustration for having to be subject to police that they feel are over-militarized and under-trained.”

The military-affiliated guys are constantly talking about how inept the police are...]

The Boogaloo is far from the first civil war-thirsty movement to recruit military members. After the Vietnam War, the white power movement swelled with former soldiers, some of whom had been radicalized by racial conflict in their units or who blamed their military loss on the government.

In her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, historian Kathleen Belew writes that existing white power groups and publications solicited returning soldiers to stamp out what those groups saw as looming threats of progressivism and racial diversity.

Many Boogaloo Bois deny being racist, or even far-right. Some characterize themselves as libertarians, which, while a break from the standard Republican party line, is not a guarantee against holding far-right views. (When the alt-right movement was in a similarly adolescent stage, jokes about the “libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline” became so popular that alt-righters made a Facebook page of that name.)

But heavily armed and calling for civil war, with one foot in 4chan memes and the other in the military, the group could be an ascendant threat.

Loomis, the oldest of the three men arrested in the Las Vegas bust, apparently associated himself with multiple paramilitary groups prior to the Boogaloo, but could never find one that would bomb anything.

“Loomis stated that he wanted the group to take action against the United States government,” the criminal complaint reads. “Loomis stated that he was previously part of several militia groups, but ultimately left due to inactivity

Several recent violent plots associated with the anti-government Boogaloo movement have also allegedly been carried out by veterans or active service members. In May, two veterans and a current Army Reserve soldier were arrested in an alleged plot to throw explosives at a Black Lives Matter rally. That same month, a current Air Force staff sergeant was arrested for allegedly killing a federal security officer and attempting to kill another, in an apparent plot to kick off a new civil war that Boogaloo adherents believe is imminent.

icn 820 cooch

DHS Takes to the Streets

Four days after Floyd's murder, amid street protests in Oakland, California, an officer for the Federal Protective Service was gunned down and killed outside the federal building he was guarding. Cuccinelli called the killing of the DHS agency officer "an act of domestic terrorism," and pledged that the department would take an active role in response to the violence.

"We will stand behind our law-enforcement officers here in the department and all over America," he said.

Six weeks later, when two men were captured and charged in the Oakland assault, federal prosecutors detailed evidencethat the men were associated with a right-wing extremist group, the Boogaloo Boys, and that they had taken advantage of the chaos of the anti-racism protests to stage their assault. That fact was lost in the executive order Trump signed on June 26, expanding DHS authority to respond to "anarchists and left-wing extremists." Trump directed DHS to provide personnel to assist in the protection of "federal monuments, memorials, statues or property."

Within days, DHS officers were deployed to Portland, Oregon, where Black Lives Matter protests had continued into July, stoked by tensions that have raged for years between leftists and white extremists in the city. [pix]

The conflict escalated with the arrival of the federal officers, and while many protesters were peaceful, others in the crowd tossed fireworks at officers and pointed high-powered lasers at federal agents, temporarily blinding them. Agents clubbed protestors with batons, used tear gas to disperse the crowds, and forced protestors into unmarked vans to detain them for questioning. An unarmed 26-year-old protesterwho was holding a radio over his head suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when a DHS officer shot him in the forehead with a rubber bullet.

DHS compiled and distributed to law enforcement "intelligence reports" on journalists who were covering the clash in Portland, a practice Wolf halted after The Washington Post reported on it. Politico later reported that the intelligence-gathering on journalists occurred after Cuccinelli relaxed the civil liberties oversight process at the agency.

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Suspect in Santa Cruz ambush linked to federal officer killing in Oakland; charged with 19 felonies

Suspect was a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force

By NATE GARTRELL | ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com and JULIA PRODIS SULEK | jsulek@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: June 11, 2020 at 10:12 a.m. | UPDATED: June 12, 2020

A U.S. Air Force sergeant accused of ambushing Santa Cruz County deputies is also believed to be the gunman who shot a federal officer in Oakland, a law enforcement source confirmed Thursday, linking the extraordinary tragedies that may have been spurred in part by extremist, anti-law enforcement views found in the dark corners of social media.

The explosive claim connecting the cases comes the same day that Steven Carrillo, 32, was charged with 19 felonies, including murder, attempted murder, explosives charges and carjacking after the deadly rampage Saturday afternoon that terrorized the mountain community of Ben Lomond, where Carrillo grew up and lived with his father.

‘I became unreasonable’: Bloody message scrawled on car at Ben Lomond ambush]

In a 14-page criminal complaint filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court, Carrillo — who was on active duty at Travis Air Force Base — was charged with murder in the death of Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller and with the attempted murder of Deputy Alex Spencer, who was critically injured and remains hospitalized. They had been responding to a call from a concerned citizen in nearby Boulder Creek who reported seeing firearms and explosives in Carrillo’s white van.

In all, Carrillo was charged on Thursday with assaulting a firefighter and trying to kill three other law enforcement officers, as well as the resident who ultimately pinned him to the ground as he tried to steal the man’s car during a desperate run from police. The charges include special circumstances of lying in wait, which makes Carrillo eligible for the death penalty, though prosecutors have not said if they will pursue death.

His first court appearance in that case will be a Friday afternoon arraignment in front of Judge Paul Burdick.

The complaint does not mention the Oakland case nor Carrillo’s increasingly hostile anti-government social media posts that alarmed Facebook friends. And it remains unclear why an active duty Air Force sergeant would target members of federal and local law enforcement.

“The link to the Oakland murder doesn’t necessarily surprise me,” said Troy Hunter, a Silicon Valley software engineer who was one of Carrillo’s alleged carjacking victims in Ben Lomond on Saturday.Hunter thwarted Carrillo’s getaway when he removed the keys from the ignition and ran. “It’s more surprising that this guy being an active Air Force member would go down that route. It’s absolutely a little alarming.”

A memorial to fallen Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller in front of Sheriff Headquarters is filled with flowers on Sunday as more than 1,000 mourners attend a vigil for Gutzwiller, who was killed in Ben Lomond in the line of duty on Saturday. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

As the country grapples with the Black Lives Matter protests and police use of rubber bullets and tear gas, the rampage in Ben Lomond and the killing in Oakland of a federal officer, who was black, further entangle any notion of clear left and right political battle lines.

A former friend of Carrillo’s — Justin Ehrhardt, who served in the Air Force with him before retiring — said Carrillo’s Facebook posts point to a right-wing extremist group that includes former and active military members. In particular, Carrillo was sharing memes about the so-called “Boogaloo” movement that considers itself a libertarian anti-government citizen militia that is preparing for the next American civil war. Last week, the FBI arrested three adherents to the Boogaloo movement in Nevada, charging them with inciting violence with Molotov cocktails and other explosives at protests over the death of George Floyd.

Carrillo considered himself a libertarian, Ehrhardt said, speculating that police use of force during the protests may have pushed him over the edge.

“Excessive use of force on unarmed civilians — that was a huge thing for him,” Ehrhardt said. “It was a mental tipping point for him.” Ehrhardt imagined it was Carrillo’s way of saying, “If I’m going to fight for something, it’s going to be against the establishment.”

According to the complaint, Carrillo killed Gutzwiller while “lying in wait” for officers on Saturday afternoon at his Ben Lomond home and opened fire and lobbed pipe bombs before stealing one vehicle and attempting to carjack several others. Carrillo ultimately was wrestled to the ground by a nearby, unnamed resident whom Santa Cruz Sheriff Jim Hart praised for a “remarkable, heroic” act.

Carrillo also is charged with the attempted murder of that resident, who Hart said knocked away a pipe bomb and firearm as he grappled with Carrillo before officers arrived.

On Thursday, a source close to the investigation confirmed Carrillo is also believed to be behind the May 29 Oakland shooting that claimed the life of Federal Protective Services officer Dave Patrick Underwood. Underwood had been patrolling the federal building in Oakland blocks from a protest as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in cities across the country after the Minneapolis police killing of Floyd.

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the Oakland case and are expected to make a filing decision in coming days.

Angela Underwood Jacobs gives her opening statement 10 June, 2020 during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC of the House Judiciary Committee about policing practices and law enforcement accountability prompted by the death of George Floyd while in police custody. (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) ]

In testimony before a congressional panel on Wednesday, Underwood’s sister, Angela Underwood-Jacobs, said her heartbreak and grief are unexplainable.

“My brother wore a uniform, and he wore that uniform proudly. I’m wondering, where is the outrage for a fallen officer that also happens to be African American?” Jacobs told the House Judiciary Committee. “I truly hope that you take your positions, your offices so seriously that you want to go back and really work together and collaborate, because if you can’t get it right, there’s no hope for the rest of us.”

Carrillo had been living with his father in Ben Lomond over the two years since his wife, who was also in the Air Force, died by suicide while in South Carolina on a training program. He has been a member of a security squadron at Travis Air Force Base since 2018.

Carrillo has two school-age children who are living with his late wife’s parents.

Gutzwiller, the officer Carrillo is charged with killing, left behind a pregnant wife and young child.More than a thousand people turned out the day after his death for a vigil, and while it was clear that the case had national political overtones, the tragedy was deeply personal for this local community.

“There’s a hole in all of our hearts now,” Hart said.

Staff Writer John Woolfolk contributed to this report.

Nate Gartrell | Contra Costa County courts reporter

Nate Gartrell covers crime and corruption in Contra Costa County. He joined the Bay Area News Group in 2014.

Julia Prodis Sulek | Enterprise reporter

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to immigration debates. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.

ref

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/06/12/i-became-unreasonable-bloody-message-scrawled-on-car-at-ben-lomond-ambush/

... Carrillo, 32, has been charged with 19 felonies including murder in Saturday’s ambush, according to a 14-page indictment filed in the Superior Court of Santa Cruz. He is also a suspect in the fatal shooting May 29 of a federal officer in Oakland, a law enforcement official confirmed to the Mercury News.

Before he was arrested in Ben Lomond, Carrillo scrawled the word “boog” and the phrases “I became unreasonable” and “stop the duopoly” in blood on the hood of a car, NBC News and other media have reported.

“Boog” is shorthand for the Boogaloo, a libertarian anti-government movement that claims to be preparing for a civil war in the United States.

“I became unreasonable” has become a meme in Boogaloo social media. It refers to a statement by Marvin Heemeyer, an icon in extremist anti-government groups because of the 2004 rampage in which he bulldozed 13 buildings in a Colorado mountain town over a zoning dispute. Heemeyer — aka “Killdozer” — fatally shot himself when the heavily armored bulldozer became stuck in the basement of a store he was destroying. A note he left behind included the line,“I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable.”

“Stop the duopoly,” referring to the dominance of the Republican and Democratic parties, is a slogan frequently pushed by third-party and libertariancandidates.

A former friend of Carrillo’s, Justin Ehrhardt,told the Mercury News that the suspect considered himself a libertarian and had been sharing Boogaloo memes on his Facebook account.

In the attack Saturday, Santa Cruz County sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller was killed and Deputy Alex Spencer was critically wounded, hit by shrapnel as the suspect fled, the indictment and media accounts said.

Other charges against Carrillo included detonating pipe bombs, laying in wait to attack officers and assaulting a firefighter and three other law enforcement officers, the indictment said.

Carrillo was an active-duty sergeant at Travis Air Force Base and a member of the 60th Security Force Squadron.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/experts-fear-trump-supporters-will-be-dangerous-if-he-loses-the-last-gasp-of-a-dying-party/

The United States has a long history of bitter, divisive presidential elections being followed by gracious concession speeches. But Journalist Andrew Feinberg, in an article published by The Independent on July 7, examines the possibility of far-right violence if Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November.

“Even by the hardball standards of American presidential politics,” Feinberg explains, “Trump’s reelection bid stands out in history as the sole example of an incumbent president who is pushing his supporters to view a loss as the end of the republic rather than the end of his political career. This unprecedented strategy is raising concerns among experts on extremism and authoritarianism, and even veterans of Republican politics who say it is likely to result in violence should Trump lose in November.”

Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to play hardball during his reelection campaign. President Richard Nixon, in 1972, slammed Democratic nominee George McGovern unmercifully and was reelected by a landslide. Had Nixon lost to McGovern, however, he would have no doubt congratulated him and moved on; for all his corruption and ruthlessness, Nixon knew when to quit. But as Feinberg points out in his article, Trump’s rhetoric has been historically over-the-top.

“While speaking last Friday at the foot of Mt. Rushmore as part of an official, taxpayer-funded celebration of American independence,” Feinberg notes, “Trump characterized the anti-racist protest movement that has swept the country in recent weeks as ‘a new far-left fascism’ and a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ that is ‘designed to overthrow the American Revolution’ and ‘would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.’"

Feinberg adds that on July 4, the day after his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump gave a White House speech in which he railed against “the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters” and asserted that defeating them in November would be akin to “the process of defeating” the United States’ enemies during World War II.

Brian Klaas, a politics professor at Universal College London in the U.K., told The Independent he “would be surprised if there is not at least some sporadic low-level violence around the election” if Trump loses.

Klaas warned, “In modern American history, there has never been a major mainstream political figure who has argued that his opponents are not legitimate.” And the things that worry Klaas about the hardcore MAGA bass, he told The Independent, include the “high concentration of weapons among Donald Trump’s supporters” and the “steady diet of information that tells them that they are the last defense for America against some conspiracy against them.”

According to Klaas, “People who have really worked themselves up in this vortex of disinformation… and have really gone down the rabbit hole…. may take Trump’s tweets literally and say, ‘OK, they’re my enemies. They’re committing treason, they’re part of the Deep State, and it’s time to be a patriot and stand up against them.’ That would be very, very dangerous.”

Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who was a Tea Party favorite befor he became a Never Trumper, also fears the possibility of violence from the far right if Trump loses. Walsh, interviewed by The Independent, described Trumpism as “the last gasp of a dying party” that will become “even more desperate” if Democrats retake the White House and the Senate in November.

“They will engage in violence,” Walsh warned. “They will engage in trying to stop the machinery of government from even working.”

7/20 AN pathetuic 20 guys going back and forth between BLM and cops, trying to provoke DC

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/06/boogaloo-gun-ammunition-marketing-facebook-instagram/

in mid March, Fenix Ammunition, an ammunition manufacturer in Michigan, saw its daily online sales rise from :{$4,000 to $40,000:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

The coronavirus pandemic had :{boosted demand for guns:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and ammunition around the country, and Fenix was reaping the fruits of the national following it has cultivated since its 2016 launch. In addition to record high civilian demand, Fenix also counted at least three local police departments, a law enforcement training center, and KelTec, one of the :{leading rifle manufacturers:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: in America, among its clients.

But Fenix’s March profits were also driven by an aggressive social media campaign led by its owner, Justin Nazaroff.

For months, Nazaroff had been posting memes to his company’s Facebook and Instagram pages referencing the “boogaloo,” slang for the armed uprising that a loose assortment of preppers, Second Amendment activists, and anti-government extremists is getting ready for — and in some cases trying to accelerate.

“I’ll be honest, it drives sales,” Nazaroff said in April of his company’s marketing practices. “People think it’s funny. People click on boogaloo memes. It’s something that gun people enjoy joking about.”

“You can look up any firearms social media influencer and probably find them using the term boogaloo at some point in time,” he added. Nazaroff cut off communication after a police department notified him of our records request seeking information about sales to Fenix and emails referencing boogaloo.

The word itself is a reference to the 1984 movie, “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” but the imagined sequel would be a second civil war. Sometimes re-tooled as “big luau” or “big igloo” (adherents often don floral Hawaiian shirts or insignia bearing cartoon igloos), the concept :{reportedly:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: originated on 4chan, the anonymous image board that’s long been a meeting place for the alt-right. While some spreaders of boogaloo memes claim to see them as provocative fun, their mushrooming popularity has concerned experts on extremism. They fear that the concept has re-energized the American militia movement and given anti-government extremists a rallying cry.

Boogaloo is not a true movement in the sense that there is little — if any— structure or leadership. Adherents even seem to have :{different visions:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: of what a civil war would accomplish. But to the extent that there is a central idea animating the boogaloo’s largely white, right-wing supporters, it’s that armed combatants will kick off a full-fledged rebellion to topple the federal government. “They don’t have a lot of beliefs other than they really like guns, they really hate cops, and they want some sort of revolution,”said Megan Squire, a computer scientist who researches online extremism at Elon University. “You pretty much have to be weapons-trained and interested in weapons to be a boogaloo adherent.”

In the past month, at least seven people with boogaloo ties have been arrested for attempting or carrying out violence at recent protests. On June 6, Air Force Sergeant Steve Carillo allegedly shot two Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies, killing one. He was arrested after scrawling the word “boog” in blood on the hood of a stolen car alongside phrases from memes that are popular in boogaloo groups. Carillo was also charged with shooting two guards outside an Oakland, California, courthouse during protests a week earlier. One died. That morning, Carillo had posted to Facebook: “Go to the riots and support our own cause. Show them the real targets. Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.” A boogaloo patch was recovered from the van that he used that day. A suspected accomplice was also arrested after confessing to the FBI.

On the day of the Oakland shooting, :{three men:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: were arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of possessing homemade explosives and on charges of conspiracy to commit an act of domestic terrorism near protests. Though they have since pleaded not guilty, the criminal complaint against them noted boogaloo ties. And, in :{South Carolina:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, two men with boogaloo connections were separately arrested on charges of looting and attempting to incite a riot.

At least two more boogaloo supporters were arrested for the possession of illegal firearms in :{Oklahoma:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and :{Tennessee:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. In :{Colorado:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, police seized multiple weapons from one boogaloo supporter at a protest, but did not make an arrest.

On June 26, Attorney General William Barr created a task force aimed at fighting extremism, and in a memo he singled out boogaloo supporters, as well as members of the left-leaning antifa.

Even before the protests, several boogaloo supporters had attempted to incite violence. In March, a Missouri man who planned to bomb a hospital in what he called “operation boogaloo” shot and killed himself before he could be arrested by the FBI. In April, a member of several boogaloo Facebook groups was arrested in Texas, live streaming as he searched for police to kill.

“Boogaloo boys,” as they call themselves, have been spotted at protests following the killing of George Floyd, both marching with demonstrators and as counter-protesters. Some have also been :{discussing:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: how to use the protests to encourage violence. The varied response is indicative of supporters’ lack of a unifying ideology.

Their fixation on guns and tactical gear makes boogaloo supporters attractive clients for gun sellers. And hashtagged social media posts are an effective way for weapons dealers to boost their brands. Firearms sellers are not allowed to purchase ads on Facebook, though some have:{found ways around this:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, but they can use their official pages to reach niche audiences.

When COVID-19 lockdowns seemed to validate adherents’ expectations of government overreach, use of the term boogaloo exploded on mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Reddit. In April, the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit that monitors activity on major online platforms, documented 125 boogaloo Facebook groups with over 72,000 members. More than 60 percent had been created since February — the same time that Fenix’s use of boogaloo-related hashtags peaked, according to data from the company’s Instagram page.

Around the same time, a review posted on Fenix’s Facebook page revealed that the company was sending stickers to online customers that featured the “boogaloo flag,” a black and white American flag with a floral Hawaiian stripe and a cartoon igloo instead of stars. When contacted, the reviewer said he had found the company by searching for competition-grade ammunition, and that the sticker helped cement his loyalty to Fenix.

A Fenix Ammunition Instagram post that blends boogaloo memes and marketing. [Instagram / fenixammo]

A December 19, 2019, post on Fenix’s Instagram page, which has nearly 34,000 followers, shows the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster photoshopped so that he’s holding an AR-15 and wearing night-vision goggles. “B is for Boogaloo” is written over the bright yellow background. “And V is for Virginia,” read Fenix’s caption, which went on to offer “free shipping on ammunition, body armor and medical products” sent to the state. The offer lasted through a January 20 rally to oppose new gun laws, one that sparked a state of emergency order from Governor Ralph Northam as :{armed militias:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and white nationalist groups implored their members to attend the demonstration.

In the days before the rally, members of a neo-Nazi group called:{ The Base :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:were arrested after federal agents said two of them discussed opening fire on the rally. An FBI affidavit claimed the group wanted to use the event to start the boogaloo, which some neo-Nazis see as a race war or civilizational collapse. There is no evidence that The Base acquired ammo from Fenix, and on June 25, Fenix posted on Instagram about our reporting, writing: “Our company wants nothing to do with anyone claiming to be a Nazi, or a white supremacist. We’ve banned people from our page for saying such things in the past and we’ll continue to do so in the future. The Boogaloo is for everyone. “

Since October 2019, Fenix has made over 100 posts using hashtags and imagery related to the boogaloo. Many were linked to events like the Virginia rally, national anti-lockdown demonstrations, and recent anti-racism protests. “This is what the politicians and media fear the most” read a June 5 post showing a diverse group of protesters holding a boogaloo flag on a city street.

In another post, Fenix responded to a suggestion that looters target white neighborhoods, like Novi, Michigan, the Detroit suburb where Fenix is located. The response included a picture of four high-powered guns with the comment “send bachelors.”

The Trace has identified 35 more dealers and manufacturers of firearms or tactical supplies across the country that have posted references to the boogaloo on social media. They range from small town stores to multi-million dollar manufacturers of AR-style weapons, like the South Carolina-based Palmetto State Armory.

Instagram search still recommended these #boogaloo-related hashtags on June 24.

We also reviewed the online presence of 548 federally licensed firearms dealers in Michigan, :{where armed protesters converged on the state Capitol:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, and identified 48 with active social media profiles. Six of those posted memes or hashtags referencing the boogaloo. Eight promoted insignia from militia groups like the Three Percenters, an armed anti-government group with chapters around the country. Another six promoted coronavirus conspiracy theories or encouraged disobedience against state lockdown measures. Three made suggestive posts about shooting looters during the protests

Instagram no longer allows searches for #boogaloo and some related hashtags on its site. However, as of June 24, if you typed #boogaloo into the search bar, it still autofilled suggestions of related hashtags. After being asked about this by The Trace, a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram and has been criticized for its :{failure:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: to rein in boogaloo content, said, “The hashtag #boogaloomemes was already blocked and we’ve since further blocked #boogalooboys, #boogaloocrew, and #boogalootime given the amount of content using these hashtags that violated our policy.” The spokesperson added, “we continue to remove content using boogaloo and related terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence. We are also preventing these pages and groups from being recommended on Facebook.”

Boogaloo marketing isn’t limited to social media. Some companies, like Fenix, sell boogaloo-themed merchandise. For instance, in February, Palmetto State Armory sold a limited run of custom boogaloo-themed AK-47-style guns, finished with Hawaiian patterns, mimicking the shirts boogaloo supporters have adopted as an unofficial uniform. They also advertise boogaloo T-shirts on Facebook. Palmetto State Armory CEO Jamin McCallum did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

Hoplite Armor, a body armor manufacturer in Kalispell, Montana, sells a Hawaiian-patterned plate carrier — a kind of bullet-proof vest — as a part of its “Aloha Line” of products. The traditional flowers have been replaced with a blood-stained bauhinia flower, which adorns the Hong Kong flag frequently carried by protesters there.

During an interview, Hoplite’s owner, Lyman Bishop, said he was inspired to make the shirt on a trip to Hawaii, and not because of the boogaloo. Yet a September 27, 2019 Facebook post introducing the plate carrier was tagged with #boogaloo. The company’s page, with more than 142,000 followers, has continued to use the hashtag as well as associated language and imagery. Bishop is currently a long-shot candidate for governor of Montana on the Libertarian Party ticket, running on an apocalyptic platform that suggests violent secession.

In spite of significant anti-police sentiment among boogaloo boys, Fenix’s website lists four Michigan police departments as major clients, as well as the law enforcement training center at Schoolcraft College.

Records from police departments in the small cities of :{Dowagiac:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and :{Berkley:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: showed receipts from Fenix totaling $4,899 and $18,076, respectively, since 2017. The Grosse Ile Police Department confirmed that it had records of purchases, but has yet to release them. The Northville Police Department denied buying ammunition from Fenix, and a records request returned no receipts from the company. The Schoolcraft training center confirmed it had purchased ammo from Fenix, but refused to say how much.

All of the organizations said they had no knowledge of Fenix’s support for boogaloo, and don’t have policies on checking suppliers’ social media accounts. Fenix’s social media posts have been largely pro-police, sprinkled with some criticism of police brutality, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.

Interviews with firearms dealers revealed a host of reasons for posting about the boogaloo or selling related merchandise.

Chris David, the owner of Route 6 Guns, a small shop in Torrington, Connecticut, said that he posts about boogaloo for his company’s 650-odd followers because he believes in the movement’s libertarian messaging. “It’s a lot more mainstream than I think people give the movement credit for because of the portrayal that it’s just this group of people that have these violent intentions, which is just not the case,” said David.

David successfully lobbied for a spot on a list of pro-boogaloo companies in one of Facebook’s largest boogaloo groups, which, as of June 8, no longer appears in Facebook searches. It’s unclear whether this is because the group was made secret or if it was taken down by Facebook.

All five firearms and armor dealers that agreed to be interviewed for this story denied that their posts should be interpreted as calls to violence. Nazaroff likened spreading the memes to being an ammunition seller: He said he’s aware of the possibility that his product may be used in violent crimes against innocent people. “That’s the nature of the product,” Nazaroff said. “There’s nothing to be done about that. It doesn’t mean that my company shouldn’t exist.”

“It’s literally an internet joke. It’s like ‘Harambe,’” said Dimitri Karras of Firearms Unknown, which sells “:{ghost guns:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:,” unserialized but legal firearm parts that can be assembled by customers at home. “I’m a Marine who’s fought in two wars. I have a dark sense of humor. That’s just who I am.”

The use of humor to cover up intentions or shift the boundaries of acceptable discourse has a history in the alt right. In 2017, The Huffington Post published :{excerpts:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: from the style guide for the Daily Stormer, one of the largest white supremacist websites, instructing supporters to employ jokes instead of screeds, noting that the latter may be a “turnoff” to potential converts. “The reader is at first drawn in by curiosity or the naughty humor,” it stated, “and is slowly awakened to reality by repeatedly reading the same points.” According to historian Elaine Frantz Parsons, the use of :{humor:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: as a way to destigmatize extremist ideologies dates back at least to the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.

Whether the inflammatory memes that boogaloo supporters share reflect their true beliefs can be hard to pin down — and some experts say that’s by design.

Nazaroff, for instance, said he considers himself a liberal libertarian and boogaloo “prepper.” He believes in the possibility of civil war, but like other arms dealers interviewed for this story, stressed that the memes shouldn’t be taken seriously. But Cassie Miller, a researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said: “They pretend that it’s a joke. In some ways that’s to conceal just how serious and sometimes dangerous the ideas that they’re pushing are."

by Matthew Valasik, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

As protests about police violence among black people continue and become more widespread across the U.S., certain individuals and groups have begun to stand out – including anarchists, agitators and members of a variety of far-right groups.

With the country’s long history of racist killings, it may be confusing to think that racists and white supremacists are among those objecting to the killing of people of color.

But people affiliated with far-right groups aren’t trying to be part of the overall protest movement. Having researched these groups, we think it’s likely that they are attempting to hijack the event for their own purposes.

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As researchers of street gangs and far-right groups, we see that in this case, they want to stoke a civil war between the races – one they think they can win. By antagonizing police, destroying property, or intimidating the public by adopting military gear – including weapons – these groups are attempting to instigate violence between the police, protesters and the public. Rousting law enforcement to violently retaliate against black people en masse is the first step.

Instigating civil war

The far-right is not unified by a strict ideology. It is a broad movement with various factions vying for greater amounts of attention and influence.

In spite of this tension, our research shows that many share the conspiracy belief that Western governments are corrupt and controlled by the New World Order, a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites. To them, wealthy Jewish investor and democracy advocate George Soros is the puppet master of the world economy.

William Luther Pierce’s 1978 novel “The Turner Diaries,” which has come to be known as “the bible of the racist right,” lays out a plan to instigate a race war and bring about the federal government’s collapse. The book has inspired violence from the far-right, most notably the 1995 bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“Accelerationism” – the idea that inducing chaos, provoking law enforcement, and promoting political tension will hasten the collapse of Western government – has taken root among far-right groups. One such group, the “Boogaloo Bois,” identified by their penchant for wearing Hawaiian shirts, has been observed at protests in Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Oregon. As with any far-right movement, “Boogaloo Bois” groups are rather unstructured and have varied beliefs, lacking any hierarchical organization.

In Las Vegas, three “Boogaloo Bois” were arrested with firearms and a plan to incite violence during George Floyd protests. Social media posts and online chat groups have also shown them attempting to infiltrate other protests across the country.

Joining the crowds provides these groups an opportunity to discredit protesters by inciting looting, rioting, violence and vandalism – which they hope will spark like-minded white Americans to resist the civil disobedience of protesters. Already, there are roving bands of armed white counterprotesters at protests across America.

Other far-right extremists are talking on social media about the protests requiring a lot of police attention and see an opportunity to engage in targeted terror attacks. Their overall intention is the same: fanning flames to burn down the federal government, making room for them to establish a whites-only country.

Matthew Valasik, Associate Professor of Sociology, Louisiana State Universityand Shannon Reid, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/white-supremacy-groups-are-hoping-to-leverage-george-floyds-death-into-their-longed-for-race-war/

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white supremacy groups are hoping to leverage George Floyd’s death into their longed-for ‘race war’

Image via Screrengrab.

Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos May 31, 2020

The protests that have spread across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have attracted a diverse group of supporters that go beyond local Black communities and national organizations. At events in Washington, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, community activists have been joined by allies, by groups supporting Latinos, Indian groups, and even groups of Mennonite farmers speaking out in support and showing up for protests.

But, with dozens of buildings burned and Donald Trump preparing to bring in the military, there’s a growing sense that the violence in many cases isn’t originating from within the local Black community. In multiple instances, there have been incidents that seemed to spring up on the periphery of peaceful protests, leading to violent confrontations and property destruction. And increasingly, there are reports that these events are not originating organically from the protests or from confrontations between protesters and the police. There is a very real feeling that white supremacists are using this moment to create incidents designed to justify still more violence and suppression.

peanut butter cup

@deshawnieboy

Raw footage of who started the looting in Oakland at Walgreens. Had just seen them three blocks down hitting some other businesses. All prepared with hammers. Don’t let them say different.

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With dozens of protests across the nation, not every event is the same. For example, it’s not hard to see what sparked this incident Atlanta, where a police officer slams a bicycle into a Black woman for having the audacity to wave a finger at him while saying “Don’t touch me.” It’s clear that the violence in this particular moment originated direct from the police.

Brittany Miller

@Brittm_tv

WATCH: I was recording when the first clash between police & protestors broke out in Atlanta. @cbs46 #cbs46 #news #GeorgeFloydprotest

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But in some of the most publicized incidents across the nation, there seem to be a singular nature to some of those involved, as in this recording in which what appears to be a young white man in camo pants and military boots paints graffiti on a federal building.

Fin Gomez

@finnygo

The protest then headed to in front of the White House. A protester was taken by the USSS in front of Pennsylvania Ave into an adjacent federal building. Unclear what he did.A couple men then splintered off from the group and spray painted “F*ck Trump” on the building. @cbsnews

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Or this group which is, reportedly, shown attempting to smash store windows in Minneapolis, with the group initiating this action appearing to be led by a number of white people.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @lewoofl

Yes we are. Absolutely.

Barbara Stiles

@Dovewoman1

This from @Mikel_Jollett

It shows the instigators clearly. They are white. Organized with walkie talkies. pic.twitter.com/zPhBoSg3fE

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And those on the ground reported similar events at other protests in many locations.

Asia

@AsiaJannelll

I was at Downtown Oakland protests a little while ago. Let me say something; the people breaking glass, breaking into windows & starting fires were WHITE men wearing all black. They had hammers and walkie talkies. They were organized. BLM protestors did not start the violence!

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Repeatedly, from eye witnesses and from officials, have come claims that violence in the protests is originating not with those who live in the community, but with others who have appeared to take advantage of this moment.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Remarkable info coming out of this presser: Gov. Tim Walls, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and now MN attorney general Keith Ellison ALL alleging outside forces, domestic and possibly foreign, have post-Tuesday infiltrated the state, and are

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And, as Vice reports, far right extremists are trying to use this situation in hopes of bringing about their much-desired “race war.”That effort involves both showing up at protests with guns, initiating violence, and taking to computers to urge everyone involved toward more tragic confrontations. Even the Hawaiian shirt-wearing “Boogaloo Bois” have appeared at some of the protests. The possibility of using these protests as a precipitating incident, and calls for white supremacist militias to confront protesters, are dominating discussion boards and social media for these groups.

This is also generating some genuinely bizarre events.

Fox Wound

@foxwoundband

Atlanta has deployed a child militia at Lenox Mall fitted with riot shields and batons. What the actual fuck is going on?

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The extent to which those trying to instigate more widespread violence are behind the incidents of property damage and physical clashes remains unclear. What is absolutely clear it that white supremacists are hoping to leverage yet another example of violence against an individual Black man as an excuse to carry out a campaign of expanded violence against the entire Black community.

Following closely on the heels of the police murder of Breonna Taylor and the recorded lynching of Ahmaud Arbery—as well as decades in which police violence has been repeatedly excused—there’s no doubt of the weight of grief in the Black community, or the justified anger. But there are definitely those who are seeking to turn this moment from one in which those suffering injustice are finally heard, to one in which that injustice is “justified” and made worse.

And with Donald Trump calling Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people” and protesters in Minneapolis “thugs,” there seems little doubt about which side he is ready to join.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

May 30, 2020

Replying to @JoyAnnReid

And the governor says he has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and fully mobilized the MN National Guard for the first time in 164 years. This is a continuing story and presumably we will begin hearing it echoed in other cities.

Joy Reid

@JoyAnnReid

Mayor Carter said EVERY person arrested last night during the protests was from out of state. The governor said it is at least 80 percent, and that they will begin releasing the names. Dept of Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they are contract-tracing arrestees:

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ref

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/pkyb9b/far-right-extremists-are-hoping-to-turn-the-george-floyd-protests-into-a-new-civil-war

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Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War

Armed extremists are showing up to protests and urging a "boogaloo" — code for civil war — online.

By Tess Owen

May 29 2020, 2:57pm

Far-right extremists are showing up, with guns, to the protests against police brutality that have exploded across the country.

Others are egging on the violence from behind their computers, urging followers to carry out acts of violence against black protesters with the goal of sparking a “race war.”

Their presence makes an uneasy addition to the escalating unrest, which was triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man who was choked to death by a white Minneapolis police officer earlier this week.

But there’s a range of motivations that’s driving far-right interest toward the protests, which are being led by community members and Black Lives Matter, and bolstered by antifascists.

For example, the so-called Boogaloo Bois — a group of armed anti-government extremists made visible by their Hawaiian shirts — have reportedly shown up to some of the protests.

READ: The cop who kneeled on George Floyd's neck was just charged with murder]

The “boogaloo” is code for impending civil war or violent confrontation with law enforcement, and that’s what they’re hoping to get out of the protests. Their main reason for being there is their antipathy toward law enforcement, and so they’re trying to position themselves as allies of Black Lives Matter protesters. They’ve made police brutality one of their central issues, which was explored at length in a Bellingcat article this week.

Their approach to police brutality links the victims of the deadly standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992, to the victims of modern police brutality, including Floyd. But unlike the vast majority of protesters, they refuse to acknowledge the fact that police brutality is an issue that disproportionately impacts people of color.

There have been scattered reports of Boogaloo Bois’ presence at the protests, which were compiled by a Bellingcat investigative journalist in a thread. He includes an audio clip (stripped of video per activists’ requests) ofprotesters saying they’d wrestled a handgun from a “white nationalist” agitator — whom he describes as a Boogaloo Boi who became overly rowdy.

READ: New video shows three cops kneeling on George Floyd as he lay dying]

Another photo, shared across private Boogaloo Facebook pages, showed one of their own unfurling their trademark flag during the Minneapolis protests.

And one protester posted a picture of himself wearing a gas mask to Instagram, under the hashtag #Boogaloo.

While some Boogaloo Bois say they’re just libertarians, others will, on occasion, veer into racism — and make no secret of their desire for violence. In addition to their physical presence at the protests, the #boogaloo hashtag on social media has been flooded with memes in the last couple days egging on violence, and talking about how they hope this is the beginning of a civil war.

While more established militia types sometimes share those perspectives, they often view themselves as intermediaries between law enforcement and civilians. For example, two armed white men were interviewed by the Minnesota Reformer, a local independent news organization, outside a tobacco store in Minneapolis this week. They said they were protecting businesses from looters, but were also there to defend civilians should they need to.

“Cops are less likely totread on people’s rightswhen there’s other armed people around them,” one of the men told the interviewer.

Local activists identified another group in Minneapolis as members of the III% militia, one of the largest militia networks in the U.S.

But perhaps the most troubling of all are the hardcore “accelerationists” who are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people — all with the goal of “exacerbating the ethnic tensions” and sparking a “race war.”

Accelerationists promote violence to speed up the collapse of society. Aneco-fascist Telegram channel wrote to its nearly 2,500 subscribers on Thursday that “a riot would be the perfect place to commit a murder.” Accelerationists often seek to exploit moments of political or civil unrest, and the widespread protests that have unfolded across the country fit the bill. Similarly, 4chan is full of racists cheering the violence and saying that they hope it’s the beginning of a “race war.”

Cover: Protesters are trapped between police and other protesters who gathered in a call for justice for George Floyd following his death, outside the 3rd Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The younger, shitposting face of the armed far-right — often called “boogaloo bois” — have been showing up at anti-lockdown protests across the U.S., toting their AR-style rifles and wearing their trademark Hawaiian shirts and leis.

It’s a troubling sign that the far-right “boogaloo” meme, used to refer or even incite an impending civil war or violent anti-government rebellion, is now spilling out into the real world.

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}:}:

On Monday, a group of heavily armed men — including at least one with links to the boogaloo movement — were arrested following a tense standoff with SWAT outside Big Daddy Zane’s Bar in West Odessa, Texas. The men claimed that they were protecting the bar, whose owner was defying Texas’ lockdown orders by remaining open. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott loosened some restrictions on businesses in recent weeks, but bars remain shuttered.

[apc pix]

eight people were arrested in total; seven armed vigilantes and the bar owner. A Facebook page for Wyatt Winn, one of the arrestees, shows that he follows about two dozen pages dedicated to boogaloo. Recently uploaded photos show Winn posing with a group of armed men in Hawaiian shirts. Other memes he shared reference Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old student with anti-government views who has been martyrized by the armed far-right after he was killed by cops in Maryland during a nighttime no-knock raid in March. Police said they were executing a high-risk search warrant following a tip that Lemp was in illegal possession of firearms.

[pix twet]

lemp’s death, and the political tension surrounding coronavirus-related lockdown orders, have galvanized the boogaloo movement, whose adherents have used the two events to drum up anti-government sentiment among conservatives.

A report by the Tech Transparency Project last month identified 125 Facebook groups that were dedicated to “boogaloo,” and more than 60% of those had been created between February and April. On those pages, shitposting, racism and anti-government memes intermingle. That’s typical for Boogaloo pages, according to a February report by the National Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), which tracks how hate moves from the internet into the real world.

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“While many still use the boogaloo meme jokingly, an increasing number of people employ the phrase to incite an apocalyptic confrontation with law enforcement and government officials or to provoke ethnic warfare,” NCRI wrote.

The incident in West Odessa, Texas, was just the latest example of extremists, including boogaloo bois, taking up arms in response to lockdown orders.

On Thursday, Colorado police said they were investigating threats of civil war made against health centers. "We the people’ are DONE with this f***ing bulls**,” one person wrote in an email, according to local news outlets, “and you're about to start a hot-shooting no bulls*** civil war."

And last Friday, federal agents arrested Bradley Bunn, a 53-year-old man in Loveland, Colorado, for possession of pipe bombs, which he said he’d planned to use against law enforcement if they raided his property in the middle of the night (a possible reference to Lemp). Local news outlets identified him as a member of a militia, and reported that he’d planned to attend an armed lockdown protest.

Following Bunn’s arrest, according to the Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist activity, misinformation about an impending FBI raid on armed protesters began circulating on 4chan and far-right Telegram channels — with some users encouraging armed resistance.

Also last week, heavily armed men with long guns stormed Michigan’s capitol, joining hundreds of conservative protesters who were demanding an end to stay-at-home orders. Some state lawmakers had shown up to work that day with bulletproof vests on in anticipation of violence.

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On May 1, armed militia men also showed up to protest lockdown orders in Richmond, Virginia. The same day, armed men promoting boogaloo protested in Raleigh, North Carolina. They had responded to a “call to arms” issued by a Facebook group called “Blue Igloo” (a homophone for boogaloo). “They’re called guns,” one person wrote in response to the event page, the Triad-City-Beat reported. “Show up ready to use them. I’m tired of this shit. I’m not going to any more protests unless serious men come and are ready to defend our lives and liberties.”

And earlier in April, police in Texas arrested Aaron Swenson, a self-proclaimed “boogaloo boi” who was Facebook live-streaming his search for a police officer to “ambush and execute.” He, too, was upset about Duncan Lemp’s death.

The day after Lemp was killed, Swenson changed his Facebook profile picture to a photo of himself in a Hawaiian shirt, and an armored vest, and the hashtag #HisNameWasDuncan, according to a Buzzfeed report.

Cover: Armed protester Wyatt Winn waits for Ector County Sheriff's officers and Texas State Troopers, who were monitoring a protest, shortly before his arrest Monday, May 4, 2020, at Big Daddy Zane's bar near Odessa, Texas. Winn and others were supporting the the bar's owner, who decided to open despite orders from the Texas governor during the coronavirus pandemic that prohibit the opening until later in May. (Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP)

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ex-fbi-official-slams-bill-barr-for-ignoring-the-right-wing-boogaloo-bois-infiltrating-protests/

Ex-FBI official slams Bill Barr for ignoring the right-wing ‘Boogaloo Bois’ infiltrating protests

Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story May 31, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr was slammed by the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday for misleading Americans about the source of violence at the protests over the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.

“There’s evidence developing, Brian, that the organization we’re seeing of the most violent protesters is coming from a couple of disturbing places,” both, by the way, there’s disparate in terms in being from the right or the left. here’s what those who monitor these groups and sites are seeing.

“We’re seeing a far-right group, one group for example known as the Boogaloo Bois, who on their private Facebook page and social media outlets are calling for violence, calling for people to show up,” Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC’s Brian Williams.

“We’re seeing evidence in the protests that right-wing dangerous militia groups are there. We’ve seen flags and symbols that come from both Boogaloo Bois and dangerous militia groups,” he warned. “On the far-left, we’re seeing some evidence developing of global anarchists showing up.”

“So we’re seeing a strange alignment occurring by some groups who are anti-government on the right and therefore anti-police because they think the police are too oppressive to them, aligning themselves with people like Black Lives Matter and saying, ‘hey, we’re one because we both don’t like the police,’ but I’m here to tell you they are not one, their intention is to destroy government and the system of justice, as opposed to calling for justice within the system.”

“What do we do about it?” Williams asked.

“Well, ordinarily we’d rely on our system and mechanisms and rule of law, but here’s two things significant that happened today that caused me to be deeply troubled about the summer ahead. The attorney general, William Barr held a press conference where he chose selectively just the intelligence that indicates there’s far-left agitators within the protest groups,” Figliuzzi noted.

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

AG Barr: it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far left extremist groups using Antifa like tactics... it is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting

Embedded video

5,003 people are talking about this

“He politicized intelligence. We shouldn’t be surprised by it, but we should be disturbed that the whole truth is not getting out about all the groups that pose a threat because that goes toward whether or not law enforcement will take effective action against all groups that are violent and be allowed to take such action,” he explained.

“And then the second thing that should disturb us today is within the last hour, the president of the United States has tweeted he wants to use the unlimited power of the military with regard to these protests. Well, let me remind our viewers that we have laws in the United States that prevent the military from turning into law enforcement on the streets of America,” he reminded.

“Yet we see a direction of where this is headed: politicizing the intelligence so that only the far-left becomes the bad folks here, and then a president who seems inclined to use the military on our streets,” Figliuzzi warned.

“It’s scary stuff,” Williams said.

Watch:

no lnx twet pix

5/20 hmn yikes

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/far-right-boogaloo-militants-have-embedded-themselves-in-the-george-floyd-protests-in-minneapolis-they-want-their-civil-war/

raw astory

young, white men dressed in Hawaiian-style print shirts and body armor, and carrying high-powered rifles have been a notable feature at state capitols, lending an edgy and even sometimes insurrectionary tone to gatherings of conservatives angered by restrictions on businesses and church gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests —the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.

A new iteration of the militia movement, boogaloo was born out of internet forums for gun enthusiasts that repurposed the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogalooas a code for a second civil war, and then modified it into phrases like[big igloo] “big luau” to create an insular community for those in on the joke, with Hawaiian-style shirts functioning as an in-real-life identifier. Boogaloo gained currency as an internet meme over the summer of 2019, when it was adopted by white supremacists in the accelerationist tendency. In January, the movement made the leap from the internet to the streets when a group boogaloo-ers showed up at the Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va.

It’s not just the jittery aesthetics and pop-culture irony that sets boogaloo apart from an older generation of militia activists, but also its unbridled hostility towards law enforcement. In late 2019, the movement spread beyond private Discord servers to multiple Facebook groups with names like Thicc Boog Line, Boojahideen of Occupied Appalachistan and, in North Carolina, Blue Igloo. Some of the memes generated and shared on the Facebook pages contain overt signals towards white nationalists, including images of the German Wehrmacht during World War II and references to the failed war to preserve white rule in Rhodesia during the 1970s. But others signal an interest in building bridges with the political left by lifting up the names of black victims of police violence like Oscar Grant, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, alongside right-wing martyrs like LaVoy Finicum, Sammy Weaver and Duncan Lemp, the latter a boogaloo-er who was killed by police in March during a no-knock raid at his home in Maryland.

When protests against the police killing of George Floyd escalated into clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night, a significant segment of the boogaloo movement was electrified.

At 8:38 p.m., an anonymous Discord user identified as [MN-TC] Jimmydean338 posted in the#SOS channel for the private Citizens Liberty Organizationserver. The post displayed a red button inscribed with the words, “Send help!” followed by the address 3000 Minnehaha Ave., which is the location of the Minneapolis Police 3^rd Precinct. “Police opening fire on protesters breaching precinc [sic],” Jimmydean338 wrote. “Not a drill.”

At about 11:30, the Big Igloo Bois Facebook group posted a photo of a young man holding the trademark boogaloo flag depicting an igloo and palm tree in the protests.

“If there was ever a time for bois to stand in solidarity with all free men and women in this country, it is now,” the admin for the page wrote. “This is not a race issue. For far too long we have allowed them to murder us in our homes, and in the streets. We need to stand with the people of Minneapolis. We need to support them in this protest against a system that allows police brutality to go unchecked.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, a resident of the coastal community of Hampstead in southeastern North Carolina, reshared the red button panel posted by Jimmydean338 on his Facebook page at 11:44 p.m., writing, “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off.”

Teeter, who is active in the North Carolina Libertarian Party and has participated in weekly armed excursions through downtown Raleigh with a group organized through the Blue Igloo Facebook group over the four weeks alerted his friends that he would be driving, not flying to Minneapolis.

Tom Bailey, a Libertarian candidate for Congress in 2018, commented, “Grim.” To which Teeter replied, “Exactly! I love it!”

Another private Discord server set up for boogaloo users — named “We should all Led(better)” — had designated special channels for different functions: #on-scene-only (for users on the ground), #off-scene-intel (for remote users sharing information), and #location-want-to-repond (for users across the country to coordinate travel to Minneapolis).

Boogaloo activists who showed up for the first night of protests on Tuesday met with mixed reaction.

One, a white man identified on Facebook as Michael Solomon, posted photographs of himself and another friend holding high-powered rifles while posing alongside black protesters, including one wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie. But another, Tyler Scott of Minnesota man, warned in the Big Igloo Bois thread: “This is not the time for boog, this is how a race war starts.” He added that the protesters “jumped one of our 3%ers” — a term that denotes an older generation of militia activists — “earlier tonight and stole a firearm. They are not with us. They’ve made it clear they don’t want us.” Scott’s statements were met with skepticism, with other commenters suggesting he was making it up or speculating that the older militia activists were racist and had it coming.

“I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny,” said Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago. “They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case — this is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.”

The nascent boogaloo movement is not monolithic, Friedfeld said, and it draws from spectrum of groups from the right wing to the far right, from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists. An internal struggle is underway to define the movement’s relationship with race, he said.

“You see this in the Facebook comments,” Friedfeld said. “You’ll see very strong condemnations of racism and homophobia. Then there are people who use racially charged phrases such as, ‘Vote from the rooftops.’ It’s a reference to Korean shop-owners who went to rooftops to fire on looters [during the 1992 Los Angeles riots], who are presumed to be black. There’s this debate: Why are we accepting Black Lives Matter when they won’t accept us? There’s a good deal of social distrust.”

Antifascist Twitter accounts on Wednesday issued a steady stream of stern warnings against making common cause with boogaloo.

“It’s a right-wing thing; it’s a neo-fascist thing,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, a veteran antifascist organizer based in New Jersey, in a Twitter video. “And they’re trying to use what’s happening in Minneapolis as a jump-off. Do not let them. They are not our friends.”

Jenkins told Raw Story that he fears that boogaloo-ers are bringing their apocalyptic fantasies about civil war to Minneapolis and will leave residents to pick up the pieces.

“They can be more aggressive, and they can cause the police to be more aggressive,” he said. “They can get people hurt because they want their civil war…. People who are in the community, all they know is they have to defend themselves. The people they hate get hurt, and they walk away scot-free. So, it’s kind of a win-win for them.

“You don’t even necessarily have to be interacting with anybody in order to pop something off,” he added. “You’re going to be one with the crowd.”

Jenkins noted that Minneapolis has rocky track record with armed white men interposing themselves in protests against police brutality: In 2015, five people at a Black Lives Matter protest were shot, resulting in non-life-threatening injuries. A white man from Bloomington named Allen Scarsella was later convicted in the shootings.

Jenkins charges that the boogaloo-ers are operating in bad faith, citing a fellow New Jersey resident named Paul Miller who was recently involved in a Memorial Day reopen protest. Miller identifies himself as a “Boogaloo Boy” on his Instagram account, which also includes the Latin Catholic motto “Deus vult,” or “God wills [it],” generally associated with Islamophobia.

On Wednesday, Miller re-shared livestreams from Minneapolis on his Instagram, while refraining from providing his views on the action underway. A previous post includes a whimsical video of armed protesters during an April 30 reopen protest at the Michigan state capitol captioned, “When the boogaloo kicks off cuz the boys had enough.”

Others more definitively signal that Miller’s politics don’t align with the protesters in Minneapolis. One calls for the release of the white father and son who are charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a black jogger in Georgia, while another contends that the media is burying coverage of migrants “rioting throughout France.” Miller frequently uses boogaloo hashtags with Instagram posts, including #bigluau, #boogaloomemes, #boogaloo2020, #Boogvirus, #boogaloosidequest and #boogaloobois.

“There’s two versions of boogaloo,” said Friedfeld of the ADL. “There’s the white supremacist burn society down and build a white ethno-stage. And then there’s the anti-government resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it version.”

So far, the wing of the boogaloo movement that’s shown up in the streets is the more mainstream, outwardly inclusive version.

But some white supremacists, especially in the accelerationist tendency, are likely cheering events in Minneapolis from the sidelines, or looking for ways to melt into the crowd.

A user identified as “Terrorwave Refine” messaged at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday: “Boogaloo boys are reportedly on [sic] place. If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be a fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible.”

Earlier in the evening, a user named “The Shitpost Facility (Dick)” wrote, “I hate that I support the n****** over the pigs at this point, get some you dumb monkey f****ot. This is absolutely the end goal of our philosemitic society. Imagine giving n****** ‘civil rights’ hahahha.”

Another, named “Uncle Paul,” forwarded Dick’s message, adding, “I don’t support either the n****** or the pigs… certainly not the k****. However, I’ll do some pushups and pull-ups while I watch them redacting each other.”

Benjamin Ryan Teeter, the North Carolina man traveling to Minneapolis, said he is motivated to join the protests out of genuine solidarity with black residents who are oppressed by police violence. Teeter, who describes himself as an “LGBT left-leaning anarchist,” said he plans to “defend the protesters.”

He deflected when asked if he and other boogaloo-ers are consulting with local residents to see how they can best support them, as opposed to pursuing their own agenda.

“I think trying to get the police to stop killing people is trying to support the people of the community,” he said. “If we’re not willing to stand up because we might hurt someone, how bad are we going to allow things to get?”

Teeter insisted the share of white supremacists in the boogaloo movement is no greater than any other group or political party. But he pleaded ignorance when asked about Dillon Goad, a North Carolinian who attended the first Raleigh boogaloo walk on May 1 wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt. In addition to his primary Facebook page, Goad has an alt page under his name that pays tribute to Hans Friedrich, a member of the SS Infantry Brigade accused of murdering Jews and communists in the Soviet Union.

Teeter posted a breathless update at 1:23 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Baltimore cop shot,” Teeter wrote. “Chicago is a powderkeg. MN police are planning an emergency exit if the building is breached.”

Goad was the first to comment: “It’s all coming together.”

Reached on the road nine hours outside of Minneapolis on Wednesday evening, Teeter demurred when asked about Goad.

“Dillon is someone I’m not familiar with,” he said. “I don’t want to speak to the account without knowing. I don’t know if it’s a satire account or something else.”

Whether their movement is infiltrated with neo-Nazis or not, there’s little doubt that the boogaloo-ers want to see an escalation in Minneapolis.

In a post that has now been removed from the We should all be Led(better) server, (KS) RugbyIsLife lamented at 11:38 p.m. on Wednesday: “Looks like it’s just a bunch of looting that should have been booging. Are people going to wake the fuck up and start laying down lead or just steal TVs and shit?”

aha: ~ stay@home is a hub

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/05/05/facebook-go-platform-organizing-protests-against-social-distancing

no pix lnx

Facebook Is Go-To Platform For Organizing Protests Against Social Distancing

May 05, 2020

Hatewatch Staff

As COVID-19 continues to pose a lethal threat worldwide, fringe, right-wing activists are using Facebook to mobilize protests of stay-at-home orders in several states.

In a review of Facebook event pages, Hatewatch identified more than 50 rallies from April 13 through May 1. The event pages are being set up all across the nation regardless of which political party controls the state house.

Facebook has become the social media platform of choice for far-right organizers and activists who engage in protests against social distancing.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook,” a spokesperson for Facebook told Hatewatch via email.

The majority of these rallies run afoul of recommendations from health experts. They allow extremists, however, to reinforce the spread of far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation about COVID-19.

In Lansing, Michigan, hundreds of protesters rallied Thursday as Republican House legislators voted to not extend Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency. The American Patriot Rally event, organized by theMichigan United for Liberty group, called for the reopening of local businesses.

The rally first spread through Facebook before the platform decided to pull the event page. Late Thursday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the state capital building, ignoring social distancing recommendations. In some cases, demonstrators carried firearms and were seen peddling QAnon slogans and COVID-19 conspiracies.

Alex Jones

Alex Jones, radio host and creator of the website InfoWars, left, shakes hands with a demonstrator during a "You Can't Close America" rally outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 18. (Photo by Alex Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Antigovernment figures such as Alex Jones are capitalizing on these gatherings to advance the message that federal institutions can’t be trusted. In the days leading up to an April 18 rally in Austin, Texas, hosted by Infowars, promotional content was circulated on Facebook. Once on the ground, Jones accused the Texas state government of enacting “martial law” and told attendees, “We don’t live in fear of some made up virus. We know the globalists and the media are the enemy.” In far-right circles, the term “globalist” is frequently used as an antisemitic slur.

PMAZ flier

A flyer for the Patriot’s Day Rally circulates on Patriot Movement AZ’s Facebook page.

Similarly, in Phoenix, Arizona, the hate group Patriot Movement AZ shared “Patriots' Day Rally” flyers and memes in the lead-up to the April 20 rally in Phoenix. Although the group frequently dabbles in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the content shared aligned with common antigovernment talking points. In one instance, a member of the group’s Facebook page who goes by Brent Backus shared an image stating: “Quarantine is when you resist the movement of sick people. Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.”

Militia organizations also did their part to vilify government institutions. TheSouth Carolina Light Foot militia shared details on their page for the “Drive to Thrive SC” gridlock event. Similar to other extremist groups, the South Carolina Light Foot Militia also used its Facebook page to rile up its base ahead of the April 24 event.

“Maybe we can put all the sick people in boxcars and take them to someplace safe, oh wait…” read one of the memes in an attempt to equate the government’s response to COVID-19 to that of life under the rule of Nazi Germany.

badge star of davis yellow as "pass"]

The South Carolina Light Foot militia stoked fears recently as they claimed yellow badge-style patches are in the near future for vaccinated individuals.

Other militia leaders such as John Cody, state commanding officer of the South Carolina Light Foot Militia Special Response Team, jumped on the bandwagon using Facebook to advertise a national May Day Rally.

Cody, who uses the codename “Hawkeye,” was a key organizer for the Jan. 29 Militias March on Richmond rally. The march, which was organized mainly on Facebook, was scheduled to coincide with the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) gun event. VCDL was hoping to put on a show of force for gun owners who stood in opposition to state bills that were aiming to adopt new gun restrictions. Cody’s rally ultimately helped bring together a number of right-wing militias with established gun rights organizations.

Cody post

Militia leader John Cody recently circulated two different flyers on Facebook for his May Day rallies.

Along with Cody, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, has been rallying her supporters to protest. Chase, who was involved in a number of controversial incidents earlier in the year and was subsequently ousted from her local GOP committee, has been sympathetic to far right causes. She made a personal appearance at the January VCDL gun rally where she joined several antigovernment militias in an attempt to protest new gun legislation.

Amanda Chase

Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase at work in the statehouse in Richmond. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Chase recently got on Facebook and shared details for several rallies against social distancing scheduled in Richmond, encouraging her supporters to attend, saying “Share with those who believe in Liberty, Freedom and pursuit of Prosperity, …not liberalism.”

Kayla Gogarty, a Media Matters senior researcher who has been tracking these rallies since they first appeared on Facebook, told Hatewatch: “We found that a lot of these Facebook groups and a lot of these events are including members of local militias and members of some local anti-vax groups. We’ve seen a lot of far-right figures attend some of the events like the Proud Boys. We’ve seen pro-gun activists and antigovernment extremists at these rallies and some local government officials as well.”

A Hatewatch analysis of Facebook posts earlier last month aligned with much of what Gogarty has seen in recent weeks, with the platform being a hotbed for COVID-19 misinformation.

Facebook touts response as rallies materialize

As first noted by the tech website The Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is still heavily touting the billion-dollar company’s projects aimed at helping minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19. Facebook has donated $100 million to small businesses in a gesture made to help them through trying times. The social media company has alsoteamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to roll out a global symptoms survey to Facebook users in an effort to track COVID-19 growth. These initiatives come as Facebook is simultaneously failing to provide a clear solution for countering the spread of disinformation and anti-public health organizing on its own platform.

Owen Shroyer

Infowars host Owen Shroyer arrives at the Texas State Capitol building on April 18 in Austin. (Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

In an April 20 interview with ABC News, Zuckerberg emphasized that “the stuff that people are saying that is false around a health emergency like this, can be classified as harmful misinformation that has a risk of leading to imminent physical danger and we’ll just take that kind of content down.”

Complicating matters is the fact that not every state and country has instructed citizens to stay home. According to The New York Times, “42 states, three counties, 10 cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico” have adopted stay at home orders as of April 28th. This means that if protests occur in states where stay at home orders were never adopted, Facebook faces less pressure to take immediate action.

A general search on Facebook for rally terms such as “liberate” and “reopen” brings up a plethora of groups that oppose social distancing.

The decision to hold off on pulling down content that rails against social distancing undermines the work the company has done to help survey and map the spread of COVID-19. The networking site may have taken down a handful of conspiracy posts, but the antigovernment rhetoric contained in the rally posts has the potential to expose people to greater amounts of misinformation.

aha: abortion turned xian anti-gubmint; in 80's RR grifter televangelists had TV programs/stations; Rove courted (organized) for Bush 43; now drollinger cabinet and GOTV network (AI/digital tracking?); scary overlap with militias?! patriot prayer ~ stay at home order , boogaloo

old ppl and xian vote in primaries, thus leverage, flank, enforcer

putin cozied up to? thus US xians gave him pass on collusion, plus if true delegitimatizes trump, who delivers anti-abortion judge and SCOTUS w/ mcconnell

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-religious-freedom-stokes-coronavirus-protests-in-the-u-s/

...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-far-right-wants-to-make-its-shared-fantasy-of-violent-civil-war-a-reality/

david n kos

The Age of Conspiracy Theories in which we are now immured has produced a kind of bastard offspring: the Shared Violent Fantasy. Exhibit A is the “Boogaloo,” the far-right’s ironic name for the long-sought “second civil war” they believe is on the verge of erupting in the United States—and in which the ongoing novel-coronavirus pandemic has become a virtual petri dish for cultivating the fear of societal collapse essential to their worldview.

Like many conspiracy theories, and all such fantasies, the “Boogaloo” has a powerful tendency to produce real-life violence from people who absorb the underlying paranoid values and believe in them fervently. A recent incident in Texas in which a self-proclaimed “Boogaloo Boi” set out to murder a police officer in order to help spark the civil war underscores the extent to which the believers are likely eventually to attempt manifesting their fantasies—which can entail violence not just against authorities, but sometimes even their unsuspecting neighbors.

Aaron Swenson is a 36-year-old Texarkana man who frequented “Boogaloo”-related Facebook pages with some frequency, sharing their frequently violent memes and indulging the usual violent rhetoric in the comments. Eventually, he reached a point where he decided to act on it.

The world of “Boogaloo” on social media—particularly on Facebook, where over 125 such pages reside—is riddled with references, both direct and obscure, to their eagerness to begin a civil war by shooting law-enforcement who attempt to enforce gun-control measures, or for that matter any other measures that attract the ire of the far right. Recently, these have come to include COVID-19 lockdown and social-distancing measures.

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The universe it occupies resides in a bubble of conspiracy theories and “constitutionalist” fantasies, but with a distinctly alt-right edge. Irony abounds everywhere: adherents wearHawaiian shirts as a reference to “the boog,” or the “Big Igloo” (the “Boogaloo” flag features an igloo and a palm tree). Their memes reference “Pepe the frog,” white-nationalist OK signals, and the common shared belief that nefarious communists are plotting to confiscate their guns and enslave them in concentration camps. This fantasy is the justification for their announced intention to begin shooting their fellow citizens, especially those who work for the federal government or police.

On the night of April 11, Aaron Swenson began livestreaming from his pickup truck, telling his audience that he was out hunting a police officer—anyone would do, he wasn’t particular—to shoot and kill, all in order to start the “Boogaloo.” He told them he was seeking a lone cop to “ambush and execute.”

People began calling the Texarkana Police Department, which promptly found the page and figured out both where Swenson was located and what kind of vehicle he was driving. Upon locating him, he fled a squad of police cars at high speed, eventually grinding to a halt well after his tires were flattened by a spike strip. “He was wearing an armored plate carrier type vest when we arrested him, and officers found several loaded weapons inside his truck,” the police department’s Facebook post reported.

At his own Facebook account, Swenson liked more than a dozen pages that mention boogaloo in their names, as a report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) on the “Boogaloo” phenomenon described. It also noted that “some users leaving comments on the profile on the night of the attempted attack endorsed the targeting of police officers, while others suggested calling 911 in response to the live broadcast.” The two videos were active on the Facebook page at the time of the report, having amassed over 1,500 and 3,400 views, respectively; however, they have since been removed by Facebook.

Swenson has been charged with making terrorist threats against an officer, evading with a vehicle and illegal possession of a weapon.

He is not the first such “Boogaloo” enthusiast intent on making the shared fantasy into a violent reality. In January, three would-be terrorists from the neo-Nazi organization The Base were arrested by the FBI, charged with plotting to wreak havoc with their weapons at a planned anti-gun-control march in Richmond, Virginia, around which “Boogaloo” rhetoric was already rife.

A few days later, three more “Boogaloo”-loving members of The Base were arrested in Georgia for plotting to assassinate a local antifascist couple, as well as overthrow the local county government.

At the Richmond rally, the “Boogaloo” was a major theme—flags, signs, and social-media posts from the event all referenced and celebrated it—that continued even afterward during the debate in Virginia over its gun-control laws.

And just as the white-nationalist, conspiracist and “accelerationist” right has sought multiple means to exploit the novel-coronavirus pandemic, the “Boogaloo” theme has become a louder topic of discussion on far-right telegram channels. The lockdown measures instituted by governors around the nation in response to the virus have particularly provided ample evidence for the conspiracists—in their minds, at least—of their long-running contention that “globalists” are seeking ways to enslave the world.

Signs referencing the “Boogaloo” have popped up at a number of the far-right-led protests against the lockdown measures. One marcher at the “ReOpen” rally in Topeka, Kansas, on April 23 carried a large black “Big Igloo” flag.

There has also been a certain amount of somewhat predictable crossover between the “Boogaloo” element and the far-right conspiracists of the Trump-loving QAnon world, some of whom have also been acting out violently during the pandemic—notably the locomotive engineer who attempted to ram the USNS Mercy with a train engine.

According to QAnon expert Travis View, the “Boogaloo” has become the preferred fallback position for people swept up in “The Storm” theories, believing that one day soon there will be mass arrests of leading liberal and media figures for their roles in a global child-trafficking ring, and increasingly disappointed at its failure to materialize.

“If that change doesn’t come, some of the followers have made reference to what they call Plan Z,” View says. “If the whole Q operation fails, then Plan Z is sort of equivalent to what the far-right extremists call the ‘Boogaloo.’ Which is civil war, basically.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the interest in a civil war. The TTP report found that most of the 125 Facebook groups devoted to the “boogaloo”—some 60%—were created in the very recent past (within three months), just as the states began declaring lockdowns and social-distancing measures. Perhaps more worryingly, “they have attracted tens of thousands of members in the last 30 days.”

In several private boogaloo Facebook groups that TTP was able to access, members discussed tactical strategies, combat medicine, and various types of weapons, including how to develop explosives and the merits of using flame throwers. Some members appeared to take inspiration from President Donald Trump’s recent tweets calling on people to “liberate” states where governors have imposed stay-at-home orders.

Despite these findings, TTP notes, Facebook has been slow to remove these pages. One of the most prominent—Thicc Boog Line, which specializes in selling branded “Boogaloo”-themed gear and clothing—attracts thousands of readers. It has recently been pitching messages to its readers emphasizing the opportunity to wreak “boojahideen” havoc during the time of a pandemic.

These findings resonate with a similar report issued in February by :{the :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Network Contagion Research Institute,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: warning that “domestic militants” are organizing around memes to “incite violent insurrection and terror against government and law enforcement.”

The boogaloo, a joke for some, acts as aviolent meme that circulates instructions for a distributed, viral insurgency for others.The topic network for boogaloo describes a coherent, multi-component and detailed conspiracy to launch an inevitable, violent, sudden, and apocalyptic war across the homeland. The conspiracy, replete with suggestions to stockpile ammunition,may itself set the stage for massive real-world violence and sensitize enthusiasts to mobilize in mass for confrontations or charged political events.

Daniel E. Stevens, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, the umbrella organization under which TTP operates, told Christopher Mathias of HuffPost in a statement that “Facebook’s failure to stop their platform from being used as an organizing tool for extremists is completely unacceptable.”

“There is nothing subtle about how these extremist groups are using Facebook’s platform to advance their cause,” Stevens said. “Boogaloo proponents are not simply discussing ideas or political views; they are directly advocating for violent action and tactically planning how to defeat government entities.”

“Boogaloo” enthusiasts indeed have detailed plans for how to achieve their goals, both militarily and through propaganda, as the TTP report details. However, government and law enforcement are not the only targets that “Boogaloo” memes discuss. A subcurrent in a number of the violent fantasies that they express in their memes is the idea of committing home-invasion robberies targeting their relatively hapless and untrained neighbors as a means of thriving during the civil war—or a pandemic.

Another featured a photo of an angry Joaquin Phoenix in Jokerwith the script: “When you dispatch the normie with ease to raid their stash because they stocked up on TP and not ammunition”—with a subscript across the bottom reading: “You get what you fucking deserve.”One popular meme among Facebook “Boogaloo” followers was one that showed a SWAT-style armed raid team in military gear massing outside a door, with the script: “Me and my boys going for a grocery run at my asshole neighbor’s house.” Another features a grid of graphics demonstrating military hand signals during a raid, all of which are interpreted in the language of a home invasion: “Shoot that dog.” “Cover up the evidence.” “I found cocaine. It’s pretty good.” “Wrong house. Let’s boogie!”

These ideas are not particularly new among the more openly cynical participants in far-right conspiracism and survivalism. Indeed, they were openly elucidated back in 2014 by a “Patriot” movement survivalist named Tyler Smith, who was featured on an episode of National Geographic’s TV series Doomsday Preppersboasting about his plans to invade the homes of his neighbors—particularly those who might also be preppers, since they would make better targets.One of the more commonly shared of these memes actually makes fun of other “preppers,” particularly those who are suddenly new to the business amid the pandemic. It shows a “Virgin Prepper” who is “always scared, can’t sleep at night,” and “has no fun,” then contrasts him with an obviously fun-loving “Chad Raider” who “Takes your good shit and burns all the rest so no one else can have it,” and is seen holding up a bag marked “All Your Shit.” He’s also “not scared of death or coronavirus.”[vid]

“We’re not in it to stockpile,” he proclaimed in a segment that was used to promote the show. “We’re in it to take what you have, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. We are your worst nightmare, and we are coming.”

He told the show’s producers that he only had a few months’ supplies for his family because he intended to aggressively assault his neighbors and steal their food and weapons caches.

“All your shiny ARs, your high-powered .308 rifles, your 50,000 rounds of ammo, are all going to be ours,” he said on the show.

Smith was arrested by the sheriff of Pierce County, Washington, where he resided at the time, shortly after his appearance on national TV, because he wielded multiple guns on camera in the segment, and he was already a felon (on a sexual-behavior-with-a-minor charge) forbidden from owning weapons. He spent a couple more years in prison for that, but was back on the streets by late 2016.

He was most recently spotted marching in Portland with Patriot Prayer—the far-right street-brawling group led by Joey Gibson of Vancouver, Washington—at one of its 2017 demonstrations. Gibson, as it happens, has been active in the anti-coronavirus-lockdown protests, traveling to Seattle and Olympia for protests.

Those protests, of course, featured plenty of “Patriots” wearing Hawaiian shirts underneath their body armor—a signal for what the “boojahideen” like to call “the Big Luau.” The chief organizer of the “Boogaloo” motif in Olympia was Matt Marshall, the leader of the III Percent of Washington, a “Patriot” militia group based in Eatonville, Washington, and a close ally of both Gibson and state Rep. Matt Shea, the far-right legislator whose plan for a post-breakdown society called for the execution of all non-believers.

These violent fantasies keep mounting in number and vehemence. The question increasingly is what spark will inspire them to attempt to make them manifest.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/reopen-protests-stir-up-the-far-right

right-wing protest events against states’ stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures have sprouted up across the country, attracting far-right activists who see a friendly avenue for their own extreme messages.

Protesters rallied in at least six states last week in opposition to measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, including orders to avoid public spaces, cancel social events, and close businesses deemed nonessential. The ”Reopen” events are the manifestation of a push by a powerful coalition of right-wing groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, to advance the reopening of the U.S. economy.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family, is helping organize the state events on Facebook, and NBC News found that a family-run network of pro-gun Facebook groups is responsible for some of the largest protest pages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protests have received glowing coverage in right-wing media. Fox News has advertised the protests while the network’s hosts have spoken favorably about participants. The sudden spark of big-donor groups, state organizing, and right-wing media coverage invokes strong parallels to the astroturf origins of the Tea Party movement.

Minutes after a Fox News segment Friday about the protests, President Donald Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” All three states are led by Democratic governors.

[twt]

NBC News reported that Trump’s tweets led right-wing extremists online “to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict,” which extremists have spent decades claiming is inevitable in the United States. According to NBC News, the Network Contagion Research Institute recorded a major spike in the term “boogaloo,” which is a phrase popular with far-right extremists online to refer to a supposedly inevitable modern civil war.

In Michigan, protests reportedly attracted members of the violent hate groups, anti-government militias, anti-vaccination groups, and religious-right fundamentalists. The Guardian reports GUK that members of the Michigan Proud Boys hate group participated in a vehicle convoy, and an activist from Michigan Liberty Militiawhose Facebook page “features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front” was interviewed by local radio.

At the Texas state capitol in Austin last weekend, members of the Infowars entourage including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reportedly attracted hundreds of protesters for a rally called “You Can’t Close America” organized byInfowars host Owen Shroyer.As Right Wing Watch reported earlier this month, Shroyer had threatened to encourage the Infowars audience into “revolting” against social distancing measures if they were not lifted in a week.After protests in Michigan last Wednesday, Shroyer followed through on the promise and announced the Texas rally, which anti-vaccine activists attended.

[A QAnon supporter is seen protesting at an anti-quarantine rally in Olympia, Washington, on April 19, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Troy Schulz)]

The Colorado Times Recorder reported that “anti-vaccination activists, conspiracy theory advocates (including a Q-Anon supporter) and members of the Proud Boys hate group” were present at a “ReOpen Colorado” rally Sunday. Nathan Bernard reported that a “ReOpen Maine” rally Monday was organized in part by a state representative who “is known locally for spreading white nationalist conspiracy theories,” such as the claim that abortion and immigration are part of a plot to eliminate white people.

Protesting against stay-at-home orders has become a common cause for those among the far-right ranks. By calling COVID-19 a big hoax, asserting that the threat is overblown for political reasons,and advancing conspiracy theories about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, right-wing activists and media figures have created an environment for these protests to take hold. Meanwhile, unabashed extremists see the “Reopen” protest movement as fertile ground for their agendas–whether it be fomenting a rebellion against the government or targeting minority groups for hate.

schol paper report

https://ncri.io/reports/cyber-swarming-memetic-warfare-and-viral-insurgency-how-domestic-militants-organize-on-memes-to-incite-violent-insurrection-and-terror-against-government-and-law-enforcement/

https://www.adl.org/blog/the-boogaloo-extremists-new-slang-term-for-a-coming-civil-war

It’s not often an old joke evolves into a catchphrase for mass violence, but that’s just what’s happened this past year when a variety of extremist and fringe movements and subcultures adopted the word “boogaloo” as shorthand for a future civil war.

From militia groups to white supremacists, extremists on a range of online platforms talk about—and sometimes even anticipate—the “boogaloo.” The rise of “boogaloo,” and its casual acceptance of future mass violence, is disturbing. Among some extremists, it may even signify an increased willingness to engage in violence.

“Boogaloo” has its roots in decades of jokes about an old movie: the 1984 breakdancing film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Almost from the moment of the movie’s release, people exploited the format of the movie’s title for humorous purposes, replacing “Breakin’” with some other film, event or person of their choice.

These jokes included “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo” references, made every so often by gamers and history buffs, among others. But its most recent, and most serious, iteration caught on and spread very quickly. Though some still use the phrase as a joke, an increasing number of people employ it with serious intent.

Gun Rights Activists Threaten Violence

This new usage seems to have started with gun rights activists intimating or promising violence if the government were to “come for their guns.” The full phrase has been used this way before; for example, in June 2018 someone started a Reddit thread titled “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo” featuring a 2012 Facebook post by Gavin Newsom, then California’s lieutenant governor, telling the National Rifle Association, “we ARE coming for your guns.” The implication made by the poster was clear—that any such effort would result in civil war.

In 2019, usage spread widely among pro-gun activists on a variety of online platforms, so much so that it was quickly pared down simply to “boogaloo” or “the boogaloo.” In August, a Twitter user warned others to buy whatever guns and ammo they wanted now, because soon the ability to do so would be “severely curtailed,” adding, “Button up for the #boogaloo. Now.” That same month someone else tweeted the hashtag #boogaloo, warning about 100 million “active shooter” situations “when the cops try to do nationwide gun confiscations.”

A range of boogaloo-related phrases also emerged this year, as the term became more popular, including: “showing up for the boogaloo,” “when the boogaloo hits,” “being boogaloo ready” and “bring on the boogaloo.” Boogaloo-related hashtags have surfaced, including #boogaloo2020, #BigIgloo (igloo-related images are now also used as boogaloo references), #boojahideen, and #boogaloobois.

Some people predicted that proposed “red flag” laws (laws allowing the temporary seizing of firearms from individuals deemed to present a danger to themselves or others) would bring on the boogaloo. Boogaloo-related hashtags now often appear along firearm-related tags, such as #2a, #gunrights, and #ShallNotBeInfringed. Many boogaloo references are directed against the “alphabet boys” or “alphabet gang” – federal agencies like the FBI and ATF – which people assume would assist in any gun confiscations.

In September, then-presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke called for a mandatory buyback program for assault weapons, sparking a rash of boogaloo references. “You realize your gun confiscation plan would set off the boogaloo, right?” one person asked O’Rourke on Twitter in October. “Do you know that you will start a boogaloo?” demanded another. “Once Beto starts taking the guns away, the boogaloo will start,” asserted a third.

[swaetshirt igloo]

The boogaloo meme soon spread from angry gun-rights activists to the militia movement and survivalists. The Telegram channel “Boogaloo: How to Survive” claims to show “how to survive in a post society world through understanding the psychology of violence, attaining resources, and organizing to accomplish post society tasks.” It currently has more than 1,700 members. A militia movement-related website now sells a “Boogaloo 2020” t-shirt—and it is hardly alone. Now one can buy boogaloo-related clothing and accessories from a variety of online marketplaces, including Amazon. Items include patches, pins and apparel (such as “Big Igloo” t-shirts).

The boogaloo meme has spread to other movements with anti-government beliefs, primarily minarchists and anarcho-capitalists, which are essentially conservative alternatives to anarchism, as well as a few apparent anarchists. Use of the term by adherents of these philosophies often refers to violence against the state and its institutions, especially law enforcement.

White Supremacists Take Up the Term

White supremacists have also adopted the boogaloo concept. A particularly disturbing boogaloo t-shirt (currently available online) features the word boogaloo under a photograph of John Earnest, the white supremacist who opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, in April 2019, killing one person.

Whereas the militia movement, radical gun rights activists typically promote the boogaloo as a war against the government or liberals, white supremacists conceive of the boogaloo as a race war or a white revolution. Some promote boogaloo-related phrases alongside hashtags such as #dotr or #DayOfTheRope, both of which are references to neo-Nazi William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, a novelized blueprint for a white revolution.

Accelerationist white supremacists are particularly apt to use “boogaloo” – they seek the violent collapse of modern society in order to bring about a new, white-dominated world. Among them is Paul Nehlen, who gained notoriety by running for U.S. Congress in Wisconsin in 2016 and 2018. After the Poway synagogue shooting, Nehlen embraced both accelerationism and the term boogaloo and has even posted photos of himself wearing the John Earnest/boogaloo shirt.

[pix]

In August, the accelerationist “Terrorwave Refined” Telegram channel posted the following call to arms:

If they are ever dumb enough to come for your guns, let the executive, legislative, and judicial workers and their kike handlers know that they had better confiscate all the manure and trucks in America…because the first places you’ll visit will be the courthouses, legislatures, barracks, and next, their personal homes, their parents [sic] homes, their kids [sic] homes…and it will truly be the beginning of the White Man’s Boogaloo.

The reference to manure and trucks is likely an allusion to Timothy McVeigh’s use of an ammonium nitrate truck bomb to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

The white supremacist (and accelerationist) group Feuerkrieg Division recently posted a song about a race-war boogaloo to its official Telegram channel. A sampling of the lyrics makes its thrust clear:

Do the Boogaloo!

Kill the kikes, and save the whites

Come on, it’s time to go!

Do the Boogaloo!

Plug a pig, and then a Yid

Let’s do the Boogaloo, all together now!

Care must be taken when evaluating boogaloo-as-civil-war references, as some people—even those in extremist movements—still use the phrase jokingly, or to mock some of the more fanatical or gung-ho adherents of their own movement.

Extremism, Terrorism & Bigotry