Who are the Boogaloo Bois and what do they want?
Clutching rifles and wearing Hawaiian shirts, they’ve shown up at Black Lives Matter rallies and anti-lockdown demonstrations. Are they far-left or far-right? Is this mysterious group a meme that’s gone too far? Or is this a serious attempt to provoke a second civil war? Holly Baxter reports
Men in Hawaiian shirts with rifles strapped to their chests march through Michigan, demanding an end to the lockdown. A young person carrying a black and white flag bearing an igloo and a palm tree gets shot by a rubber bullet at a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin. An army private and self-declared “traitor against the United States” pleads guilty to sharing classified military information with a satanic neo-Nazi group in a bid to get his own troops being killed in an ambush. A 14-year-old boy and his mother killed by US marshals during an 11-day siege in Idaho. What connects these incidents?
If you’re to believe a smattering of headlines and some well-placed experts, it could well be the Boogaloo Bois, a group that may or may not be right-wing and may or may not be violent extremists hell-bent on provoking civil war, depending who you talk to. Why are they seen at Black Lives Matter marches shouting about equality as well as at anti-lockdown protests, clutching rifles and wearing American flag bandanas? Why are Boogaloo tactics familiar to extremism experts, while others claim they are little more than glorified Doomsday preppers with an enthusiasm for military fatigues? What happens when you track down a Boogaloo Boi and ask him those questions yourself?
To get to know the Boogaloo movement, you have to follow the memes. Specifically, you have to start with the term “Boogaloo”, which comes from – stay with me – a 1980s breakdancing film called Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo ( “electric boogaloo” being a style of funk and hip-hop dancing popularised by a group of the same name). The poorly rated sequel to unexpected smash-hit Breakin’, it was released just seven months after the original. The film was received so extremely badly by critics that it generated a certain, paradoxical affection akin to the sort directed at “so bad they’re good” commercial hits Sharknado and Snakes on a Plane. “Its blithe self-confidence shows not the slightest inkling of just how terrible it all is: a wonderful kind of terrible that makes you weep for joy,” wrote Rob Vaux, the movie critic for mania.com. David Cornelius at eFilmCritic has described it simply as the “best. Bad Movie. Ever.”
There was renewed interest in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo in the early 2000s, at which point users of online message boards adopted the movie’s title as a meme. The term “Electric Boogaloo” began to be thrown around as a nod to a high-grossing movie for which a sequel would clearly be a bad idea; for example, “When are they going to bring out Titanic 2: Electric Boogaloo?” or to cast aspersions on the disappointing original; for instance, “I’ve heard Suicide Squad 2: Electric Boogaloo is coming out next year.” The joke began to be used in political contexts. Kim Jong-un’s sister was referred to as “Glorious Leader 2: Electric Boogaloo” when headlines suggested the North Korean leader might be gravely ill and poised to name her as his successor. As the joke did the rounds on political message boards, it became especially beloved among radical libertarians and right-wing American anarchists. Those who used the term most persistently coalesced around an idea that to fully rid themselves of government oversight and unjust authorities, there would need to be a second civil war in the United States. The somewhat self-deprecating term for this plan became, inevitably, “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo”. After a while, this mutated into group members simply referring to themselves as “Boogaloo” or “Boogaloo Bois”, “people of the Boog”, or even sometimes the “Boojahideen” (a play on “mujahideen”).
Nowadays, “Boogaloo” is almost exclusively associated with people who believe inciting civil war will lead to a welcome overthrow of federal power. Boogaloo Bois are notoriously hard to find, online or offline; they are secretive, suspicious of media, often paranoid about infiltration by the hated ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which might not take kindly to weapons-gathering), and rely on in-jokes to signal their whereabouts. Where “Boogaloo” was once the in-joke, now it’s things that sound like “Boogaloo”: Hawaiian shirts (often coupled with military fatigues) at protests have become a de facto uniform because “Boogaloo” sounds like “big luau”; “Big Igloo” and “Big Igloo Bois” are terms used for social media groups and accounts for the same reason. Some members even carry a mock American flag that has an igloo and a palm tree where the stars would usually be as a nod to these memes. As networks like Facebook became more savvy to use of “Big Igloo”, members have begun to create new terms that riff off the igloo theme: “ice-house” is one of them. This constant linguistic evolution means they can circumvent filters that prevent them from propagating violent ideas. It also comes with the convenient effect of making people assume they aren’t “that serious” – how radical can a “Hawaiian ice-house” really seem, after all?
If they had stayed online, doing “s***posts” (deliberately provocative messages) about inciting war and gathering weapons on the controversial messageboard 4chan or the more mainstream forums of Reddit, Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, the Boogaloo Bois would not have generated as much interest as they have in the past few weeks. Strangely enough, however, the movement became suddenly visible during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd. At marches across the country, white men armed with rifles and wearing Hawaiian shirts began to turn up alongside anti-racism protesters, either quietly marching beside protesters or standing outside businesses in danger of being looted. Some carried the characteristic black and white flag with its igloo and palm tree on the left side. Some wore face masks depicting skulls or clown noses (one being a reference to the “clowns” in liberal western governments they intend to overthrow, the other a reference to a fascist forum called Iron March, where skull masks were popularised as a neo-Nazi political statement). But why exactly were they there?
When Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked Boogaloo Bois at her local protest about their intentions, one said that he wanted to prove to other Americans that Boogaloo was not a hate group. “We’re trying to build PR and make a big stand that we are not that,” said a man who identified himself as Troy Allen. Other Black Lives Matter marchers told Barton they found the presence of the Boogaloo Bois unsettling. Were they really there to “protect” demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, as they claimed? Or were they there to incite violence?
Boogaloo Bois are a loosely affiliated, politically confusing group – and their connections to the Black Lives Matter movement are spurious. It’s useless to deny that some self-identifying Boogaloos are neo-Nazis or fascists: that much is clear if you read threads run by such people on 4chan, where boards like /pol/, the politics board, and /k/, the board for weapons enthusiasts, often host Boogaloo posts which descend into discussions about “the master race” and feature images of Pepe the frog – a cartoon co-opted by the far-right – holding a pistol and wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat in combat colours.
Nevertheless, there are many Boogaloo Bois who also identify as apolitical or even far-left anarchists, and many others who still call themselves right-wing but believe in a “colourblind” future in which people of every race are free to form self-governing militias. Some Boogaloo members may well have intended to infiltrate protests merely to “stir things up” and encourage violence from demonstrators as well as the police; online chatter suggests that a handful of them believed this could be the big “SHTF” (s*** hits the fan) moment they’ve been waiting for, the moment Civil War 2 becomes a reality. Other Boogaloos, however, are sincere anti-racists and believe – like many American progressives – that abolishing the police is the only way to prevent the continued oppression of black people. In this way, their deep distrust of authority intersected with the aims of Black Lives Matter demonstrators and tempted them to the front lines, rifles and all. But there was another reason they turned up, and that’s because of two very different killings that happened one day apart.
The first occurred on 12 March, when a Swat team in Maryland stormed into a house after being granted a no-knock warrant and shot 21-year-old Duncan Lemp. Lemp, a white software engineer and right-wing activist, frequented online message boards for conservatives and gun enthusiasts, often posting about his support for the Boogaloo Bois. It remains unclear why Lemp, who police say had procured guns he was not legally allowed to own, had been targeted for a raid while reportedly asleep in bed next to his girlfriend at his family home. The details remain obscure, and his family is locked in a legal battle with law enforcement. News reports quoting local police suggest Lemp was stockpiling weapons, and that his bedroom door was booby-trapped in a way that would have meant anyone entering was shot. Lemp’s family deny the accusations and say he had no criminal record to speak of. Either way, his association with the Boogaloo Bois online allowed him to become, in the words of one Daily Beast headline, a “martyr”. Members of the Boogaloo movement began giving his name when asked to identify themselves at demonstrations against the coronavirus stay-at-home orders. They saw him as an anti-government campaigner and freedom fighter executed by a coalition of authoritarian forces who feared his political views and affinity for guns. The use of a controversial no-knock warrant by police was a particular source of ire.
The next day in Louisville, Kentucky, an eerily similar case played itself out. Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black paramedic, was shot and killed in her own bed when armed police officers, who had been granted a no-knock warrant, stormed in to investigate her boyfriend. Taylor was not an activist, but her name – alongside Floyd’s – became a rallying cry among Black Lives Matter protesters. Similarities between the deaths of Lemp and Taylor did not pass the Boogaloo Bois by. Memes began circulating with the black and white striped igloo flag now flooded with text that read: “His name was George Floyd, her name was Breonna Taylor, his name was Duncan Lemp,” alongside references to other anti-government figures who had been killed by police, such as Samuel and Vicki Weaver, the original “militia martyrs” who were shot dead at Ruby Ridge in 1992. The message was clear: Floyd and Taylor were victims of the same kind of injustice as Boogaloo sympathisers, and the only sensible solution was to demand a permanent ban on tactics such as no-knock warrants before overthrowing the police force entirely.
Again, the demands of Black Lives Matter and the Boogaloo Bois briefly intersected. A meme on the “BIg Igloo Bois” Facebook group — followed by 34,000 people — posted on 7 April read: “No-knock raids are legal assassinations of American citizens – change my mind.” Just under 2,000 people reacted to it with hearts, thumbs-ups and sad-face emojis. One commenter wrote: “Mark my words, they want a war. They want us to get mad and stack bodies, so that they can continue to call us domestic terrorists. But once diplomatic actions fail... All bets are off.” Another asked: “At what point do we finally decide that enough is enough? Each time this happens the tyranny is empowered. Each time this happens we lose a little bit more of our God-given rights. I, for one, don’t want my family living in a world filled with the thought that our supposed protectors can barge in any time and kill anyone that dares question them.”
Further down on the Big Igloo Bois page, a news story about the death of Elijah McClain, a black man in his twenties who was killed after being held in a police chokehold and injected with ketamine, appeared. “They can, and will continue to, kill us with impunity because they enjoy immunity,” wrote an admin for the page who identified himself as “Oldmin”. “The cops created the confrontation, where there was none. They created the scenario that resulted in [ketamine] being ‘required’. Elijah was walking home. That was his crime. And somehow, the cops are not responsible for his death. Even if Elijah has resisted arrest, he had done nothing to warrant an arrest. We have allowed [law enforcement] agencies to run amok for far too long. It is past the time that they were held to the same standards we are all held.” People discussed the fact that every police officer involved claimed his body-cam fell off during McClain’s arrest; they pored over autopsy details and decried the actions of the cops involved.
Talking over Facebook Messenger, Oldmin told me he was a veteran in his 40s, living in Pennsylvania. The other admins he appointed were veterans, too, he said, “so we speak the same language”. Presumably, considering his name is a play on “old” and “admin”, the others involved were significantly younger than him; message boards like /pol/ and /k/ on 4chan and /r/Weekendgunnit on Reddit suggest most Boogaloo adherents are men in their twenties. “As for a majority being vets,” he said, “we’ve spent the better part of the last two decades at war. These guys are coming home to find out the freedom they’re fighting for doesn’t exist. At least that’s my take.”
Oldmin claimed Boogaloo was a “philosophy”, adding: “We see it as the realisation that we have no right to dictate the lives of others. By extension we also don’t have the right to elect others to do it for us. We’re for individual liberty, and self reliance.” That sounds like an argument for anarchy, I said. “Absolutely correct,” Oldmin replied. “The word anarchy does not mean chaos, mayhem, and disorder. It comes from two Greek words. An – meaning no, and Archos – rulers.” He realised that in practical terms, however, a civil war that abolished government was probably not on the horizon. “In simple terms we would like the government to actually be accountable to us again,” he added. “We are tired of seeing a two-tiered system of justice, and an increasingly hostile police state that treats us as little more than tax cattle.”
Presumably, I said to Oldmin, he was aware that Boogaloo Bois have a reputation as violent extremists and white supremacists. He told me that he didn’t recognise that characterisation: “We’re not at all pacifists, but we do not wish violence upon anyone. Least of all the citizens of this country,” he said, adding that “the freedom we seek” for Americans would be unrestricted, involving “all genders, races, classes, religions”. He said that many Boogaloo members have a long-documented history of anti-racism and that he supports the Black Lives Matter protests — so long as they don’t involve calls for “Marxism” (a general fear of communism is common among those who identify as Boogaloo, and pops up on associated forums constantly). “Because of the hit jobs by media who haven’t bothered to investigate us, we’re labelled as racists,” he said. I told him I couldn’t speak for all of the media, but I did know some very bad people had been arrested who called themselves Boogaloo Bois in the past, and that other members of the group are very secretive and often unwilling to speak to journalists. Could this be the problem? “You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head. I like to remind people that the left and right enjoy taking turns shooting up schools, bombing hospitals in foreign nations, and other fun things. Usually falls on deaf ears.”
Oldmin didn’t want to go into exactly how he came to the Boogaloo movement, but he did say that he was the administrator who started the popular Big Igloo Bois page. “I’ll be honest, I started this page a little over a year ago to s***post funny memes I made,” he said. “At times it feels more like a chore than anything. If I get anything out of it now it’s the lightbulb moment when I see someone finally realise we’re not at all in a free country. That our rights are disappearing faster than they can be listed… Guns and weapons rarely ever come into the picture. It’s part of the myth surrounding us that we salivate over guns. We enjoy all of our rights. The means of self-defence is merely what allows us to enjoy the few rights we have left.” Why the uniform of military fatigues in the streets, then? “It is a subtle [or] not so subtle reminder that a lot of people are tired of being pushed around by a government that cares nothing for them.”
We would like the government to actually be accountable to us again. We are tired of seeing a two-tiered system of justice, and an increasingly hostile police state that treats us as little more than tax cattle
Though I pushed Oldmin to discuss the specific rights he thought were being eroded, he never fully explained what those were. When I asked him how the Boogaloo Bois thought they could bring people round to their philosophy, he said simply “by changing hearts and minds” through “education, patience and honest discourse”. Such restrained eloquence reminded me, ironically enough, of a politician. However, Oldmin doesn’t believe in modern politics: “The election will change nothing,” he said. “The proverbial coin with two sides. The left and right are just two ends of the same animal. They both have the same goal: self-preservation.” He thought that the stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic were just another example of the government exercising control over its citizens for the sake of it, adding that “you saw the biggest power-grabs at the lowest levels”.
If Boogaloo Bois are as reasonable as Oldmin makes them seem, it’s confusing why they operate under pseudonyms and behind group names which rely on soundalike wordplay to stay under the radar. It is, however, fair to say that many of them believe in a wider conspiracy about government control. One political figure who pops up a lot in Boogaloo spaces is Beto O’Rourke, the one-time Democratic presidential hopeful from Texas who famously supported banning assault weapons after serving in the military and “seeing what they can do”. YouTube videos steeped in Boogaloo-esque terminology (“Booger Eater”, “Yankee Boogle” and so on) feature O’Rourke speaking on debate platforms during his run; the videos then cut to clips showing weapons being shot or tips on how to modify AR-15s – the assault rifle often used by school shooters, which comes under scrutiny in a lot of political debates – with a 3D printer. In some of these videos, the “characters” shooting the guns are wearing uniforms which say “ATF” on them, another reference to the bureau Boogaloo Bois often see as in league with gun-control advocates such as O’Rourke.
It’s easy to see why O’Rourke would become a Boogaloo enemy, but stranger to see that some Boogaloo Bois do have a political hero: Jo Jorgensen, the libertarian candidate for president this year. Though voting for a third-party candidate in the US is generally seen as a “throwaway”, some Boogaloo Bois on 4chan have made Jorgensen’s name their footer, and there is a lot of chatter across social media about her candidacy, with some group members even admonishing others for dismissing her “just because she’s a woman”. On Reddit, jokes about the fact that Jorgensen’s name is a secret dog-whistle to Boogaloo Bois have been made: an anime character called JoJo from the fantasy series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is another persistent meme among “people of the Boog”, and Jo Jorgensen’s branding happens to look like “JoJo”, with overlapping J’s and O’s at the beginning of her name.
There is, of course, no evidence that Jorgensen thought of Boogaloo Bois when she made her campaign, and few of the group’s members take those jokes seriously. I did, however, contact Jorgensen through her campaign website to ask if she knew that her candidacy was being talked about enthusiastically on Boogaloo forums, and what she thought that might mean. “I uphold every individual’s right to self-defence and oppose the initiation of force in the strongest possible terms,” Jorgensen responded, notably without asking what Boogaloo was. Of members marching alongside Black Lives Matter protesters with rifles, she said: “The right to keep and bear arms not only protects every American’s fundamental right to self-defence, it also deters violent crime. People have every right, therefore, to carry firearms, whether concealed or open-carry.”
Libertarians believe in small to no government; on the pathway to anarchy, one might say that they are the penultimate step. Most of the time, they are described as extreme right-wingers due to their attitude toward social safety nets, Second Amendment rights and healthcare. Jorgensen, however, described libertarianism to me in the same kind of terms Oldmin had described the Boogaloo philosophy to me: “Libertarians are neither right nor left,” she said. “Libertarian voters are the most diverse political group in America, comprising young and old; men, women, and other; virtually every ethnicity; values from conservative to liberal; and virtually every religious or world view you can imagine. What unites us is the recognition that government today is much too big, too bossy, too intrusive, and often hurts the people it’s supposed to help. It needs to be dramatically downsized and strictly limited to protecting our lives, our liberty, and our property from others who would do us harm.” Jorgensen added that although some young people in the US have shown a renewed enthusiasm for left-wing progressivism and socialism over the last year, “millions of young people” have also come to libertarianism after learning about it from “a wealth of information online”.
Libertarianism and the Boogaloo are two very different things — Jo Jorgensen is hardly flirting with the idea of a second civil war — but it’s interesting that both now strive to portray themselves as outside the political spectrum, when previously such “philosophies” would have been seen as clearly and proudly right-wing. On 20 June, the Department of Homeland Security angered a number of journalists after tweeting that an intelligence briefing reported to have warned about violent extremists within Boogaloo “does NOT identify the Boogaloo movement as left-wing OR right-wing”. It went on to add that Boogaloo “are simply violent extremists from both ends of the ideological spectrum”, adding – to the continued chagrin of many, especially reporters at Politico whose news story had seemingly prompted the tweet – that “this is precisely why the mainstream media is losing credibility with the vast majority of Americans”. But it’s difficult to ignore the fact that, even if Boogaloo Bois consider themselves apolitical or outside the usual spectrum, there are many more of them who post neo-Nazi memes, feature Pepe the frog on their social media or talk openly about racism and fascism than there are who consider themselves “hard-left”. As Oldmin himself told me, one defining aspect of Boogaloo is that it stands against “Marxism” and communism; Boogaloo Bois might say that this is because authoritarian communism involves big government and extensive federal oversight, but the same is true of fascism and it simply has not been rejected by the group in the same way. Interestingly, Boogaloo also appropriated some of its terminology from Doomsday preppers – that is to say, people who believe that the apocalypse is imminent and have become preparing for the eventuality by stockpiling food, weapons and sometimes constructing elaborate hideouts in extremely rural areas. SHTF – “s*** hits the fan” – is an acronym that started on prepper forums to refer to Doomsday, and now is used on Boogaloo forums to refer to that presumably imminent second civil war. Vicki Weaver, the woman killed at Ruby Ridge whose name appears on many Boogaloo martyrdom memes, was a religious prepper as well as a weapons enthusiast. It’s clear there is significant overlap between the two.
So who are these “violent extremists” of Boogaloo, if people like Oldmin running Boogaloo pages don’t recognise them? I asked him if they may be part of a different sect to his, but he dismissed that notion: “Sects? More like people not getting to know who we are.” However, there is discussion about Boogaloo sects on 4chan where people regularly argue about whether the movement is racist and white supremacist, or aligned with a particular ideology like neo-Nazism, or whether it’s more aligned with a gun-toting, freedom-loving kind of anarchism. The problem seems to occur when people disagree about whether Civil War 2 is inevitable – and therefore people should simply prepare themselves adequately, eschew the usual political structure, and wait – or whether it should be hurried along by the actions of Boogaloo Bois. On 23 June, a man who identified himself as a member of Boogaloo was arrested in Austin, Texas, in a steroid-trafficking case that ended up revealing unexpected extra information about his political activity online. Philip Russell Archibald had allegedly called for “guerrilla warfare” on social media accounts and used his Facebook page to encourage “hunting Antifa”, killing looters and shooting guardsmen policing Black Lives Matter protests. The fact that his targets included protesters as well as police isn’t particularly surprising: the most violent members of Boogaloo can often be heard online saying that in order to hasten the civil war which leads to anarchy, members should encourage violence between any groups who are currently in opposition. Provoking aggression between cops and demonstrators was seen by some as a valid tactic when BLM protests were at their peak.
Though they may not appreciate the comparison, the Boogaloo Bois have some similarities to Isis in that many “members” are more sympathisers with their ideas than members of a recognised group. That’s why some might call for armed libertarianism and equality on American streets, and others might refer to themselves as “boojahideen”. And the boojahideen is what brings me back to the case mentioned at the very beginning of this article: the man recently arrested for organising an ambush against his own troops. Private Ethan Melzer stands accused of sharing secret information about his unit with the “occult neo-Nazi group” Order of the Nine Angles (or O9A) with the aim of causing “the deaths of as many of his fellow service members as possible”. Like the Boogaloo Bois, O9A appears to particularly attract troops on active duty and veterans, with the Army publication Military Times expressing concern about the fact, adding that although many service members think of such groups as populated with “has-beens and wannabes”, they are becoming more prevalent in “violent-extremist corners of the internet”. On the /k/ forum on 4chan, one of the most popular posts asks veterans to post about their experiences; though it’s unsurprising that a weapons discussion forum might have a lot of Army and ex-Army members, /k/ is also an extremely popular meeting place for Boogaloo Bois — and 4chan is well-known for its lax position on racism and sexism (“It’s only a matter of time before everything is deemed racist and replaced by black people,” wrote one 4chan commenter on the politics forum /pol/ this week). 4chan’s sister site, which changed its name from 8chan to 8kun in 2019, is even more lax, with a self-declared dedication to keeping “constitutionally protected hate speech” online. 8chan’s brief disappearance and later reappearance and name change seems to be down to the fact that a number of shooters were members of its /pol/ board and posted their manifestos there before going on to kill multiple people. These include the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter.
There is nothing to suggest so far that Melzer associated himself with the Boogaloo Bois in the way that he did with O9A, though sympathisers for both groups do congregate together on message boards like 4chan and 8kun, and tongue-in-cheek descriptors such as “boojahideen” do seem to recall Melzer’s reported hope that Islamist extremists would target his regiment in order to escalate conflict and lead to more war. There are others with more direct connections to Boogaloo who have been charged with such crimes. In late May and early June, US Air Force Sergeant Steven Carrillo was arrested for the shooting of a federal security officer in Oakland, California and the killing of a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz. Law enforcement officers said that Carrillo and another man arrested for acting as his accomplice in the first murder had connections to the Boogaloo Bois, and that this connection may explain why they appear to have specifically targeted police.
There is a studied kind of amorality to a lot of Boogaloo online forums, one that sees violence and war as inherently desirable and the any side of a conflict as equally right or wrong. This ideology, which bleeds into other groups like O9A, could explain why someone who frequents their spaces might start to see little difference between Isis operatives, US Army troops, Black Lives Matter demonstrators, ordinary police, Democratic politicians bringing in stay-at-home orders, and indeed anyone in between. All government and most laws are seen as needlessly restrictive, especially when it comes to weapons, so legal requirements such as mental health checks and restrictions of gun types are generally disregarded. Like preppers and those who believe in a “coronavirus hoax” propagated by shady forces that somehow lead back to 5G and Bill Gates, Boogaloo Bois also often believe they are the only “enlightened” ones among scores of “sheeple”, the free men desperately trying to explain what they’ve seen to people still inside Plato’s cave with their faces turned firmly to the wall. “When you try to show how there is coming civil conflict but all your family and friends ignore your warnings,” stated one meme on the Boojahideen Facebook page, with a movie quote below that read: “The problem with being faster than light is that you can only exist in darkness.” “The gift and the curse,” wrote one commenter in response, while another added: “Oof. Big facts though. Sometimes I wish I was living in normie world.” Another popular, particularly telling meme features a picture of a cartoon Grim Reaper surfing the net, open-mouthed, with the words: “My ex-wife, my family, and friends I haven’t seen in years watching me slowly radicalise myself and others on social media via memes, convincing them to join the boojahideen and topple the federal government with me.”
Is the Boogaloo movement right-wing and violent, apolitical and libertarian, dangerous and out-of-control or populated with disgruntled veterans from middle America who simply hate the government and want to share politically incorrect memes with each other? The answer, infuriatingly, is “yes”. People who live in so-called flyover states and despise federal oversight are not new: there is a rich tradition of such groups across the US, and indeed one could say that that is the kind of philosophy America was founded on. Are they becoming emboldened under Donald Trump, a chaotic leader who likes to drop in seeming non-sequiturs about “your Second Amendment rights” and “globalism” during speeches at rallies? Most likely. But they are also likely to have been affected by a tanking economy, a pandemic and the renewed interest in socialism among young, progressive Democrats. Trouble ahead – or “the Boog coming early” – is a constant refrain among followers of the Boogaloo movement, whichever social media they use. What we have yet to find out is how much trouble they’re willing to provoke themselves.
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