The Boogaloo movement, which coalesced online in late 2019 and manifested offline in 2020, has quickly evolved into a significant domestic violent extremist threat. It has also proven to be deeply challenging for online monitoring and evaluation due to its adaptive use of memes and coded language that blurs the lines between irony and incitement. Offline, a disrupted violent plot in Nevada targeting a racial justice protest, acts of accelerationist-inspired violence in California, and attempts in Minnesota of material support to a foreign terrorist organization underscore the gravity of the diverse threat the Boogaloo movement poses—and the need to take it seriously. The Boogaloo movement has resonated within the United States’ domestic extremist landscape through appeals to the nation’s revolutionary origins. And an accelerationist faction within Boogaloo has sought to instigate decentralized insurrectionary violence. As a big-tent movement with the ability to quickly adapt its messaging, its presence, fractured or not, will likely continue in 2021 and beyond. January 2021 marked one year of overt, offline Boogaloo movement activity in the United States by the movement’s members, often referred to as the “Boogaloo Bois.”a The movement has gained national notoriety in that time, due as much to its eclectic aesthetic of colorful Hawaiian-themed apparel as its connection to disrupted violent plots—namely, the attempted kidnapping of a sitting U.S. governor.1 In 2020, members of the movement were accused of plotting to use Molotov cocktails during a Black Lives Matter protest, conspiring to materially support Hamas, and murdering law enforcement personnel.2 The rapid evolution of the Boogaloo from niche internet forum meme to mainstream mobilization narrative in hardened violent extremist milieus suggests it presents a unique security challenge for both social media companies and U.S. law enforcement agencies going forward. The Boogaloo movement’s ambiguous, broad framing of American revolutionary ideals cloaks an inherent message of necessary violence against the U.S. government as a perceived authoritarian threat. This article will examine the history of how the Boogaloo movement arrived at its current state, detail the movement’s embrace of insurrectionary violence offline, provide a brief forecast of the movement, and suggest responses to the threat.
via combating terrorism center: The Evolution of the Boogaloo Movement