In the United States, the expression “Civil War” is overwhelmingly associated with far-wing groups who tend to self-identify themselves as libertarians or “accelerationists,” that is, individuals who seek to accelerate the fall of the Federal Government through armed actions.
It has been called boogaloo, originally a popular music genre that emerged among the Latin community of New York in the 1960s, influenced by soul and rhythm and blues, but a word adopted by them from the beginning as a synonym for “motion.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it began to predominate in early 2019 in far-right websites when it was adopted by neo-fascists and white supremacists.
In their study “The Evolution of the Boogaloo Movement,” Matthew Kreener and John Lewis characterize it as follows:
The Boogaloo movement’s broad appeal stems from a set of abstract virtues, or ideographs, that are deeply familiar to many Americans: liberty, rejection of government abuses, and disgust at authoritarianism. Boogaloo’s corrupted conceptualization of these ideographs is largely manifested through a crowdsourced myth-building in the form of memes, and derive political and moral legitimacy by tapping into (and distorting and hijacking) the United States’ founding narrative of a struggle against tyranny.
Furthermore, the Boogaloo has rapidly incorporated current events into its mobilization efforts, drawing disparate interests into one broad river targeting a perceived tyrannical system. And despite varied paths to the Boogaloo milieu and the ideological differences within it, Boogaloo adherents largely maintain alignment over political grievances such as over gun control measures — particularly through the use of so-called red flag laws….
Like other phenomena of its type, it is also characterized by adopting its own codes, not only for reasons of identity but also to make its detection by federal authorities more difficult. The use of words on networks such as big igloo and big luau — phonetic derivations of the word boogaloo — has led its members to incorporate igloos, Hawaiian shirts and other distinctive features on their clothing. Its followers often refer to themselves as boogaloo bois, boogs or boojahideen.
As one analyst puts it, members of this rather amorphous movement appear to have conflicting ideological views. Some identify as anarchists; others reject formal labels. Some have supported white supremacy; others reject it. But they have at least two things in common: an affinity for carrying weapons in public and a war cry: boogaloo. That is to say: a code to designate/summon the long-awaited second American civil war.
Some have become visible alongside protesters for racial justice, which, according to some, makes the movement difficult to pigeonhole. But when you look at it, it is an attitude that seems to take advantage of the opportunity. During 2020, Boogaloo supporters attended racial protests and riots and often attempted to take advantage of street tensions to fuel violence and chaos.
The above leads to a point of the greatest importance. Having been born, as was seen, on the internet, the year 2020 marks, in effect, the moment when the representatives of the movement decided to come out into the open reality on the occasion of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota. Among the actions carried out then, the following stand out:
- The first case of organized Boogaloo mobilization occurred during Virginia Lobby Day in January 2020. Thousands of people organized by Second Amendment groups gathered there to oppose possible state gun control legislation. Armed and defying the emergency order of the governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, some 22,000 participants made known their opposition to the gun control legislation proposed by him. Among those present were documented armed far-right activists, members of various militias and individuals armed to the teeth wearing Hawaiian shirts. “Some believed the day could result in opening scenes of a new American civil war,” one witness said.
- Bugaloo’s first act of terrorism occurred on May 29, 2020: a drive-by shooting that targeted Federal Protective Service (FPS) officers outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and the Oakland, California Department of Justice. The perpetrators, Steven Carrillo and Robert Justus Jr. shot and killed one officer and wounded a second.
- In June 2020, the FBI arrested three Boogaloo followers for plotting to bomb an electrical substation during racial justice protests in Nevada.
- Subsequent federal investigations have uncovered an interconnected online network of movement supporters who coordinated efforts to promote their violent goals in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Michael Robert Solomon and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, arrested in September 2020 in Minnesota for attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, were charged with organizing their offline mobilization efforts on May 26, 2020, in response to the death of George Floyd.
But there is more. Boogaloo followers have also attempted to attack government figures often singled out by the movement for being perceived as contrary to liberty. In October 2020, Michigan authorities charged 13 people involved in a plot to kidnap Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and start a civil war. They belonged to a militia group called the Wolverine Watchmen, which had been conducting training activities preparing for the upcoming boogaloo. One of the founders, Joseph Morrison, used the pseudonym Boogaloo Bunyan.
We are talking about a social minority, but quite high in the media due to their mentalities and actions; so much so that Hollywood has decided to venture into the subject of the Civil War in a movie that plays, in its own way, with those codes and with the separation of California and Texas from the Union, another of the mantras of the ultra-conservative Republican agenda (in popular culture there have always been mocking jokes about Texas independence).
Secessionism is nothing more than a way to express the growing frustration that conservatives have with the Federal Government. According to Matthew Wilson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, “it’s not going to go anywhere, but it’s a way for conservatives to vent and express their dissatisfaction with the national government.”
According to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll (April 4, 2024), most Americans, regardless of party affiliation, do not believe violence is a solution to internal political divisions. “Violence is not the way to get our country back on track,” said David Avella, president of GOPAC, a Republican state and local political training organization.
Only one in five adults believes that violence should be used to solve problems. Those are the ones who participate in the Boogaloo wet dream.
Author
Alfredo Prieto
