“In the aftermath of the Capitol attack and a flurry of news reports documenting the involvement of service members in the chaos, the Department of Defense announced a comprehensive review of its policies on extremist and white supremacist activity to be conducted by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
“Military officials at the Pentagon told ProPublica and FRONTLINE that they have been concerned by a surge in extremist activity. 'We are seeing an increase in concerning behavior,' said one official, stressing that military leaders are 'very actively' responding to tips and are thoroughly investigating service members linked to anti-government groups.
“Experts worry about people with military training joining extremist groups.
“Boogaloo Bois with military experience are likely to share their expertise with members who’ve never served in the armed forces, building a more effective, more lethal movement. 'These are folks who can bring discipline to a movement. These are folks that can bring skills to a movement' said Jason Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.”
(A.C. Thompson, Lila Hassan, Karim Hajj. “The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government.” Frontline. PBS. February 01, 2021.)
Make no mistake, the Boogaloo movement – a decentralized successor to the militia movement of the ’80s and ’90s – is fixated on attacking law enforcement and violently toppling the U.S. government.
Researchers say the movement began coalescing online in 2019 as mostly young men angry with what they perceived to be increasing government repression, found each other on Facebook groups and in private chats. In movement vernacular, Boogaloo refers to an inevitable and imminent armed revolt, and members often call themselves Boogaloo Bois, boogs, or goons.
Frontline reports …
“In the weeks since Jan. 6, an array of extremist groups have been named as participants in the Capitol invasion. The Proud Boys. QAnon believers. White nationalists. The Oath Keepers. But the Boogaloo Bois are notable for the depth of their commitment to the overthrow of the U.S. government and the jaw-dropping criminal histories of many members …
“In its short existence, the Boogaloo movement has proven to be a magnet for current or former military service members who have used their combat skills and firearms expertise to advance the Boogaloo cause … The body of criminal law that governs the armed forces, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, doesn’t include an explicit prohibition on joining extremist groups.”
(A.C. Thompson, Lila Hassan, Karim Hajj. “The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government.” Frontline. PBS. February 01, 2021.)
The military is clearly worried about Boogaloo Bois training up civilians.
Beginnings Of Boogaloo
The “boogaloo” meme began emerging in both white power and antigovernment spaces online in the early 2010s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. "In both of these communities, “boogaloo” was frequently associated with racist violence and, in many cases, was an explicit call for race war," the SPLC said.
“The group believes that in this current moment, the chaos that surrounds us is signaling the potential for an impending second civil war which, believe it or not, they are hoping for because they believe that will rid the United States of all its problems,” Devin Burghart, executive director of the National Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, told USA TODAY.
Alex Newhouse, digital research lead at Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, said …
“There are mainly two wings of the boogaloo movement, but their objective of overthrowing the government and sparking societal collapse remains the same. One side is made up of some neo-Nazis andwhite supremacists, whose plan for destroying the government is by starting a race war.
"They want to spark some sort of confrontation that will kill both sides. They believe, 'If we start the bullets flying, then they'll kill each other' sort of thing,' with no regard for who lives or dies.
“Another side is characterized as radical libertarian, notably men carrying weapons and wearing Hawaiian shirts. Some have recently been spotted at Black Lives Matter protests, waving anti-police signs alongside protesters.
“They believe in defending the rights of individuals against the government and have been known to incite violence against police.”
(Khrysgiana Pineda. “The boogaloo movement is gaining momentum. Who are the boogaloo 'bois' and what do they want?” USA TODAY. June 19, 2020.)
Boogaloo bois often wear Hawaiian shirts, body armor and carry weaponry or tactical gear. The shirts come from the popular term in boogaloo internet spaces, "Big Luau," from the tradition of luau pig roasts, which boogaloo bois are drawn to because their common reference to police as "pigs," experts with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies say. The "Big Luau" is another code used to describe the fall of society.
The group is dangerous, and they are especially troubling considering that many have military training and experience. Today, allow me to share the story of one of the Boogaloo leaders, Mike Dunn.
October 8, 2020 Plot
Men tied to the movement were arrested in September on suspicion of being part of the October 8, 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. Half of the suspects were tied to a paramilitary militia group that called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen.
21-year-old Mike Dunn – described as “a visible face in a mostly faceless movement" and "one of the most prominent of the boogaloo bois" by media sources – joined the military at the age of 17, and stayed until the age of 19 when he was honorably discharged because of medical reasons.
President Biden referenced the plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and added, “Now we are finding out the same thing was happening in Virginia.”
Here are the possible ties to Dunn …
In a YouTube video posted October 6 – before the arrests in Michigan – Mike Dunn, a 20-year-old from a small town on Virginia’s rural southern edge and the commander of the Last Sons branch of Boogaloo, announced a call for a “Boogaloo Unity Rally” to be held in Lansing, Michigan on October 17.
This raises questions as to (1) what Dunn knew about the plot in Michigan and (2) what connections the conspirators in Michigan had with their Virginia counterparts.
“This month, 17th, 12 noon, Lansing, Michigan, the capitol building, we are having a Boogaloo Unity Rally,” Dunn wrote. He called on “traditional militias and all Boogaloo boys” to attend and “bring all your kit, make sure you’re armed.”
In June, Dunn had posted a video of himself, weapon in hand, threatening Northam. “I’m asking you to stand with me against the tyrannical government and the tyrannical governor,” he said. The Daily Beast reported that Dunn launched an event page titled “Physically DEMAND Ralph Northams Resignation” [sic].
According to the federal complaint filed against the conspirators in Michigan, representatives of militias from at least four or five states discussed planning to kill Northam as well as Whitmer during a June 6 meeting in Dublin, Ohio.
Notably, Dublin Police Chief Justice Páez told a community meeting on Tuesday that the FBI informed him the purpose of the meeting place was to allow for out-of-state participation. “The meeting location was for convenience, it was common traveling distance for people traveling from outside the Columbus area,” he said.
(Eric London. “Role of Virginia fascists in conspiracy to kill Northam and Whitmer comes into focus.” www.wsws.org. October 16, 2020.)
Newport News, October 15, 2020
Then, on October 15, 2020, Dunn and a number of heavily armed men held a rally exercising their Second Amendment after Newport News passed an ordinance banning the open carry of firearms at city buildings, facilities and parks.
Donning military fatigues, a helmet and goggles, and, of course, his assault rifle, Dunn, 20, said he would “defend himself” if police tried to arrest him.
A police chief in Virginia actually defended Dunn's actions weeks after he was filmed shaking hands, giving a gift of chocolate milk, and allowing Dunn to make a speech outside the department's headquarters while protesting new open carry laws.
During his speech, Dunn claimed that he and his men were "completely disregarding" the new ordinance by carrying their weapons outside the police headquarters. "We're here standing together openly and blatantly defying an unconstitutional city ordinance, and we will keep doing that," he said.
(Ewan Palmer. “Virginia Police Chief Defends Accommodating Armed Boogaloo Members at Open Carry Protest.” Newsweek. November 09, 2020.)
The November 2019 special election had turned the Legislature blue for the first time since 1993. After winning, newly-elected Democrats got to work writing up gun control bills, which they’d promised since a mass shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach left 12 dead earlier that year.
Tess Owen of senior reporter at Vice News reported …
“The election formalized what had been happening in Virginia for years: a spiritual rift between the increasingly wealthy and liberal urban centers and the poorer, rural conservative areas. Within weeks of the election, a majority of counties in the state had declared themselves 'Second Amendment Sanctuaries' to buttress against any new gun laws. Meanwhile, Dunn and dozens of others were moving to coordinate militia activity.”
(Tess Owen. “The Making of a Boogaloo Boi.” Vice. August 06, 2020.)
Assault On the Capitol – January 6, 2021
As the nation recoiled in horror at scenes of rioting and chaos in the U.S. Capitol, right-wing and anti-government extremists like Dunn saw the violence as the fulfillment of a patriotic duty or opportunity to advance their agenda.
Just a couple days after the riot, Dunn said while he did not participate in the Capitol siege himself, he shared footage on social media that purported to show boogaloo members tussling with police and forcing their way through barriers outside the building.
Dunn said “three or four groups of loyalists under his command helped storm the Capitol amid a mix of rioters who supported Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the November presidential election.”
Dunn’s hope was that the incident – which resulted in five deaths – would trigger more actions in the months ahead. He said his group would seek to advance its own agenda by participating at protests and other events with those angry over Trump’s loss, even if they held other beliefs.
Dunn said boogaloos would be “working overtime” to advance their cause. When asked whether boogaloos had planned to attack the Capitol, he responded: “Just know there is more to come.”
(Ted Hesson, Ned Parker, Kristina Cooke, Julia Harte. “U.S. Capitol siege emboldens motley crew of extremists.” Reuters. Januaryy 08, 2021.)
“I really feel we’re looking at the possibility — stronger than any time since, say, the 1860s — of armed insurrection,” Dunn said in an interview with ProPublica and FRONTLINE a few days after the assault on the Capitol. Dunn said members of his Boogaloo faction helped fire up the crowd and “may” have penetrated the building.
“It was a chance to mess with the federal government again,” he said. “They weren’t there for MAGA. They weren’t there for Trump.”
Dunn added that he’s “willing to die in the streets” while battling law enforcement or security forces.
(A.C. Thompson, Lila Hassan, Karim Hajj. “The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government.” Frontline. PBS. February 01, 2021.)
Richmond, January 20, 2021
In another protest on January 20, 2021, a huge gun rights rally drew 22,000 people to Richmond’s annual “Lobby Day” event at the capitol. Gun rights activists and other groups descended on Richmond that day to protest Democrats' plans to pass gun-control legislation.
Disillusioned by former President Trump’s defeat and banished from mainstream social media, right-wing groups launched recruitment drives in new radicalization efforts that turned into a “meme war” among groups such as the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters.
In the days following the Capitol riot, right-wing extremists who lost Parler accounts or were suspended from Facebook and Twitter migrated to Telegram and gained a following of tens of thousands of Trump supporters looking to vent anger and promote extremist views. The groups are competing for a surge of new users on alternative platforms while refocusing their messages on militant nationalism, white supremacy and conspiracy theories.
At the gun rights protest in Richmond, just days before the inauguration of President Biden, local Boogaloo Bois leader Mike Dunn marched with an AR-15-style rifle in defiance of a local ordinance. He would later use a photo of himself at the protest to create a meme on TikTok, where he has more than 74,000 followers. Mingling with fellow members in the group’s signature Hawaiian shirts, Dunn said he hoped the online meme war spreading across channels and forums would energize prospective followers on the right and left.
“We want people who walk away from Trump and authoritarianism to join us,” Dunn said in an interview later. “Memes play a role on the younger generation and we are winning.”
“Whichever group is the most firm in its devotion and has the best mimetic potential will win,” the right-wing Boogaloo Intel Drop channel wrote to its more than 9,000 followers before the inauguration. Civic nationalists and libertarians will find themselves in the white nationalist boat before long.”
Follower Bel Iferous responded that he had created a new Telegram “news channel” and recruited 600 Trump supporters who were baby boomers or believed in QAnon conspiracy theories.
“I just need to find memes with subtle content,” he wrote.
(Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Richard Read.“Right-wing extremists stage ‘meme war’ to compete for Trump supporters.” Los Angeles Times. January 27, 2021.)
Conclusion
It's evident Mike Dunn and the rest of the Boogaloo Bois ideology is all over the board in an effort to draw recruits to their deadly extremist activities. Don't be fooled – this is a hate group that wants to put an end to American society as we know it. Like Dunn, many of these recruits are ex-military.
Through interviews, extensive study of social media and a review of court records, some previously unreported, ProPublica and FRONTLINE identified more than 20 Boogaloo Bois or sympathizers who’ve served in the armed forces. Over the past 18 months (reported in Feb. 2021), 13 of them had been arrested on charges ranging from the possession of illegal automatic weapons to the manufacture of explosives to murder. At least four were accused of committing Boogaloo-related crimes while employed by one of the military branches.
(A.C. Thompson, Lila Hassan, Karim Hajj. “The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government.” Frontline. PBS. February 01, 2021.)
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, has monitored the links between the military and extremist groups for years, tracking each policy tweak, every criminal case. In her view, Carrillo’s grisly narrative is a product of the military’s refusal to adequately address the issue of radicalization within the ranks. She said, “The failure to deal with this problem on the part of the armed forces” has “unleashed people who are highly trained in how to kill” on the public.
Pointing to the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, who enlisted in the Army and served in the first Gulf War, one expert said it’s no secret that the military has been a “breeding ground” for extremism to some extent for decades. McVeigh’s devastating 1995 attack on that city’s Alfred P. Murrah federal building killed 168 people, many of them children.
The Boogaloo anti-government, anti-authority, and anti-police movement has already amassed a sizable track record of crime and violence.
Leah Sottile of The New York Times reports …
“Each Boogaloo group takes a different form, but memes are their common language – some funny, others less so. 'Victory or fire. I Will Not Burn Alone,' reads one.
“Posts routinely call for the shooting of pedophiles.
“'Save the Bees. Plant More Trees. Clean the Seas. Shoot Commies,' reads another.
“Fears of climate change figure into the groups’ apocalyptic worldview, but they often find themselves attaching to reactionary ideas. 'It’s very simple,' one meme reads, 'learn to hate or die silently.'
“Another: 'Environmentalism and nationalism go hand in hand. It is pride in your people, pride in your nation and pride in the very soil of the land.'
“But one common theme undergirds all these messages, regardless of which Boogaloo subset they attract: 'Do something about it. And do it now.'”
(Leah Sottile. “The Chaos Agents.” The New York Times. August 19, 2020.)
The Boogaloo group is clearly taking inspiration from the same old guard of right-wing militias they claim to resent. Yet deception is their stock and trade: Some flocked to certain cities claiming to protect them from rioting and looting. Bullshit is their game.
This fantasy about a cataclysmic end of America as we know it is the thing that binds the Boogaloo to a long legacy of violent homegrown terrorists in this country.
They use anything to advance their sick ideals.
Case in point:
Around 4:30 in the morning on March 12, a SWAT team in Montgomery County, Md., raided the home of a 21-year-old computer programmer named Duncan Socrates Lemp. They had received an anonymous tip that he was in illegal possession of a firearm, and they were issued a no-knock warrant, allowing them to enter unannounced.
A SWAT unit approached Lemp’s home, where he lived with his parents, brother and girlfriend, and, according to Rene Sandler, the family’s lawyer, shattered his bedroom window, tossing flash-bang grenades inside, and then began shooting through the window, fatally wounding Lemp before they even entered the home. (The Montgomery County Police Department, which declined to comment, has given a different account of events, saying that Lemp was armed and refused to comply with their commands.)
Lemp’s pregnant girlfriend, who had been sleeping in his bed, was forced to stay put with his lifeless body for over an hour.
On Facebook, Lemp called had himself a Boogaloo boi. Of course, the Boogaloo then took him up as a cause celebre, comparing his death to that of Breonna Taylor, the Black woman who was shot by Louisville police officers executing a no-knock warrant.
After the unfortunate killing, the Boogaloos saw an opportunity in Black Lives Matter, which they perceived to be anti-law-enforcement. At a protest over Lemp’s death in April at the Montgomery police headquarters, men in Hawaiian shirts thrust the Boogaloo flag in the air. People around the world raised over $17,000 for his funeral and the family’s legal fees in a GoFundMe campaign. In three days, they cleared out all 125 items in a baby registry for his unborn child. And then they began to invoke his name as their own.
By late July, five Boogaloo bois who showed up to a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon, told a reporter that they were there in support of the protesters, adding that the police had killed some of “our own people.” “Never forget Duncan Lemp,” one said. “Never forget,” his colleagues echoed. On Lemp’s girlfriend’s Instagram page, Boogaloo bois have promised her that they will one day avenge his death.
(Leah Sottile. “The Chaos Agents.” The New York Times. August 19, 2020.)
The Boogaloo used Black Lives Matter to advance their own unrelated, sick agenda. Of course, in doing so, they related their hate group with BLM. What a twisted message through calculated deceit.
BLM has been overwhelmingly peaceful. How does this compare to civil rights era protests? Research finds that on every measure available, BLM protests were more peaceful and less confrontational.
“The (Boogaloo) movement obviously seeks a martyr, and they really seem intent on making Duncan Lemp that martyr,” said Howard Graves, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Students of current protests and movements must dig deep to discover the real motives that cement the aims of hate groups and political movements. The Boogaloo Bois mythologizes firearms as the solution to perceived tyranny, and that has become an attractive proposition for a surprising number of Americans.
Just take our Scioto County Commissioners who took it upon themselves to officially declare the county as a “Second Amendment Sanctuary” like those in Virginia as Ohio governor Mike DeWine pushed for simple gun reform. This “sanctuary certification” was a misguided and potentially dangerous moniker that could become justification for the use of violence. (In fact, some gun-rights advocates see these sanctuaries as dangerous.) The parallels with the Boogaloos are evident: sympathies with America’s anti-tyrannical legacy and the ability to purchase a firearm without restriction.
The Boogaloo movement has successfully built its brand on distorted myths and memetics about the revolutionary founding of America, the role played by militias, and the anti-tyranny narratives associated with symbols like the Gadsden flag, along with its familiar motto “Don’t Tread on Me.”
And, this memetic movement has merged with digital marketing campaigns for ammunition and firearms sales. Companies have brazenly used both Lemp’s death and Boogaloo branding to push sales during the initial surge of anti-lockdown protests.
If you are looking for symbols and slogans and meanings, you may want to use a magnifying glass to examine those exhorting guns … and violence … and revolution as means to overcome. Look very closely at the Boogaloos armed insurrection ideals. Don't be fooled with false flags.
To emphasize this, Sottile writes …
“Guns are currency. Martyrs are never forgotten. Even the Day of the Rope is having a second life as a hashtag shared by members of a movement that some try to insist is not racist. There is no Boogaloo manifesto – not yet, at least. But there is a version of the Boogaloo flag that has been going around the internet more and more lately. It’s that same black-and-white flag with the red strip of flowers, but this time, on all the stripes, there are names:
“His name was Eric Garner.
“Her name was Vicki Weaver.
“His name was Robert LaVoy Finicum.
“Her name was Breonna Taylor.
“His name was Duncan Lemp.”
(Leah Sottile. “The Chaos Agents.” The New York Times. August 19, 2020.)
PLEASE, WATCH FRONTLINE "AMERICAN INSURRECTION" FOR A FULL REPORT. CLICK HERE: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/american-insurrection/
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