Saturday, October 24, 2020

Per Strib local content, Boogaloo Bois are not white supremacists. "Anarco-capitalists?" Hat tip to Gary Gross for earlier emailing the clarification.

 Strib headlining: Inside Minnesota's Boogaloo movement: Armed and eager for societal collapse - Militia-style extremists "know we have a target on us," a New Brighton man says.  -- By Stephen Montemayor Star Tribune - July 18, 2020

Quoting, starting with reportedly secret law enforcement document disclosure:

According to the documents, authorities raced to confirm reports that white supremacists were planning to burn Black churches in Minneapolis. Agents also tracked the movement of both local and national Black Panther activists participating in Floyd demonstrations.

Another bulletin later described motorcycle gangs capitalizing on the unrest to move increased amounts of heroin into the Twin Cities.

The files also mentioned antifa activists, citing at least one police informant warning that antifa would use “vehicle borne improvised explosive devices” to target National Guard and other law enforcement. There have been no confirmed reports of such attacks.

Correspondence among law enforcement in Minnesota reflects the growing profile of the Boogaloo Bois as unrest spread beyond the Twin Cities. Solomon also appeared on camera in a Daily Mail news report as he and others helped guard a tobacco shop.

[...] Both Solomon and experts who have tracked the movement add that it was initially miscast as an offshoot of far-right white power extremism.

“Our whole thing is, we believe in freedom and absolute liberty for everyone regardless of race, creed, sex, gender, whatever; we don’t care,” Solomon said.

J.J. MacNab, a fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said the confusion can distract from the movement’s true beliefs and plans, particularly “accelerationism,” which holds that the political order can be dismantled through increased civil disorder.

“Just because they’re not white supremacists doesn’t mean that they aren’t antigovernment extremists wanting to take down cops and the rest of the government,” MacNab said. “What they want to do is to kill cops, to kill politicians, to start chaos so that their anarcho-capitalist world can emerge. It’s accelerationism. It’s just not white supremacist accelerationism.”

Kathleen Belew, an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago, called the Boogaloo Bois “a new name for something that is very old,” following in the footsteps of survivalist movements. It draws on some of the same paramilitary strategies deployed by other movements in trying to generate an apocalyptic war, she said, in this case against the government rather than among races.

In Minnesota, Solomon said, Boogaloo Bois rarely gather in groups of more than 20 or 30. More common are training exercises in smaller “squads.”

The takeaway, what one local Minnesota individual says of his allegiance may not be a script for a covert strictly organized movement, but rather his view of himself and others he congregates with. Whatever the national impact, these allegedly are not ultra right wing white supremacists, per the local description and quoted sources. More like wanting a different government and law enforcement orientation; neither populist, socialist, religio-extremist cultists [unlike Ms. Barrett], nor biker types. More loosely Pepe the Frog adherents. Reportedly, an off-island market for uglier than average Hawaiian shirts. 

Strange? Decide that for yourself.

UPDATE: Gary had earlier emailed a link to an online report consistent with Strib's latest. With the one source and uncertainty Crabgrass did not then post. This latest item fits the earlier Strib item Gary pointed out. Armed, apparently, but not antifa nor rigidly anti-antifa. Bois just wanting to be free? Okay. Good enough. Moving on.