Boogaloo members take up arms in protests
Benjamin Ryan Teater was at his home in Hampstead, North Carolina, when the call to action came. It was a wake-up call from the violent protests in Minneapolis, posted to an online forum by a fellow member of the Boogaloo Movement, a loosely knit group of heavily armed extremists and government opponents.
The "alert" came from a man who had collided with the Minneapolis police while he was on the front line of police brutal protests that erupted with the death of George Floyd.
"He caught his attention, and he placed a national notification for our network," said Teter.
Benjamin Ryan Teater, in the foreground, during a protest staying at home in the North Carolina Rally last month.
After Teeter - who goes along with Ryan - says he saw online publishing, it's filled with a handful of other Boogaloo friends in the area.
They grabbed their rifles - mostly assault rifles - they jumped into their cars, and made an 18-hour trip to Minneapolis.
Boogaloos is an emerging embodiment of extremism that appears to defy easy classification. They are another perplexing factor in the ongoing effort among local, state, and federal officials to overcome political sympathy for the agitators appearing in the George Floyd marches that destroyed property, plundered corporations, or - in the case of the bugalos who landed in Minneapolis - marched in the streets with assault rifles.
Boogaloo members seem to hold conflicting ideological points of view with some being branded anarchists and others rejecting official titles. Some group pockets adopted white supremacy while others rejected it. But there are at least two things in common: a convergence of arms in public spaces and a "boogaloo" cry, which is usually seen as a symbol of another civil war in the United States.
Megan Square, a professor of computer science at Elon University in North Carolina who monitors extremism online, said the movement started on mysterious online platforms.
"It is now growing on mainstream platforms, and at this point in the protests, it has started to move without an Internet connection," she said. "It is similar to the militia movement that preceded it and was well documented as a force to encourage violence."
Teter told CNN in an interview that he was considered chaotic. He said his mission in Minneapolis was to protect demonstrators from abuses by the police and white racists who denounced them.
"If people are going to start using lethal force against us, we have to be ready and able to release lethal force in return," said Teter, 22.
Despite having Teter, he said, dozens or so of his countrymen, federal, state, and local officials have provided little evidence yet indicating extensive organization and mobilization by any ideological group. A CNN review of detainees' backgrounds during the first three days of the protests in Minneapolis showed no clear links to well-known organizations.
Some police said they suspected that most of the riots and looting were not committed by ideological extremists, but smaller groups of criminal opportunists seeking profit by stealing goods.
"These are direct criminals. These are not protesters," said a senior Los Angeles police official. He said that in Los Angeles, itinerant gangs of robbers wandered around in cars, communicating via mobile phone, and outlining which companies should be looted.
However, there are some documented reports of individuals from left and right groups mixing the extreme spectrum with the least organized.
In Nevada, federal prosecutors this week charged three men with allegedly identifying with the Boogaloo movement of possessing an explosive "Molotov bomb" and plotting to "cause destruction during the protests in Las Vegas," according to a press release issued by the US Attorney's Office.
The complaint was attended by Stephen T. Kiwi Parshall, Andrew Linnam and William L. Loomis, all with military experience, protested on May 29 to honor George Floyd in Las Vegas, according to the criminal complaint. Parshall is alleged to have attempted to encourage violence by "telling demonstrators that peaceful protests are achieving nothing," the complaint said. The three men were arrested on their way to a second demonstration related to Floyd the following day, allegedly armed with Molotov cocktails, according to the records.
Boogaloo members taking up arms also appeared in the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta and elsewhere, according to The Washington Post.
The decentralized Boogaloo Movement, sometimes referred to as "Boogaloo Bois", is sometimes known as "Boogaloo Bois" - to the extreme right, is known as Hawaiian sports shirts and access to heavily armed public protests.
JJ said: "It is far from a coherent group." MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University studies anti-government extremism.
"Although there are pockets of white fanatics Bogalos, the smaller and larger groups are generally not," she said in a recent post on Twitter. “While Boogaloos support the police, smaller and older groups hate them. While Boogaloos want to discredit angry protests over the killing of a black man, there are younger Boogaloos who are outraged by the murder and want to join the protests.”
MacNab added that these internal divisions do not always play according to age.
"They share terms, clothes, the love of firearms, and the desire to use violence to gain power, but they don't really share a common goal once power is achieved," she said.
It is believed that the origin of the name dates back to the sequel to the 1980s movie about dance dance called "Breakin '2: Electric Boogaloo". The term "boogaloo" has become famous in recent years as a crafty online reference to the desired social upheaval and civil war II.
A white book released in February by the Infection Network Research Institute, a group of "Bugalo Mimi" says "Joke to some", but "serves as a violent meme that circulates instructions for a violent viral rebellion to others." Independent researchers monitor misinformation and hate speech, in cooperation with Rutgers University.
The report says: "This idea has been dubbed" boogaloo, "which is self-organizing across social media communities, boasts tens of thousands of users, offers a complex division of labor, and develops well-developed channels for creating and distributing violent advertising. "
There are signs that their followers have been venturing out of chat rooms and into the real world, especially in the various demonstrations that reopened during Covid-19 closings. In April, a Boogaloo fan in Texas was arrested for allegedly trying to find and kill police officers while filming on Facebook Live, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The movement appears to have gained much momentum in recent months.
The tech transparency project for a nonprofit monitoring group called Accountability Campaign released a report this spring that concluded that more than 60% of 125 Boogaloo's recognizable Facebook groups had appeared since January, and gained momentum after Covid appeared. Closures -19.
Talking to Teeter - who also recently attended protests denouncing the Covid-19 closure - is getting an idea of how deeply Boogaloo's doctrine was affected.
"I am a member of the gay community," said Teter, who describes himself as non-messy. "Anarchist has left ... People think I'm part of a Nazi group; I'm not."
But he added, "I don't think people should be forced to bake a cake," referring to the US Supreme Court case that arose from a Christian owner of a bakery in Colorado refusing to offer a gay wedding cake. A couple.
Titer said that in Minneapolis, he and others in his group stood subject to firearms outside mom and pop stores, but expressed solidarity with the black community in opposing police brutality.
"We are very careful to make sure that people realize that we are on their side. We are here to defend them ... Once people realize that we are by our side and we are here to protect them, everyone was - almost everyone was happy to be here."
Tetter said he was educated at home, but he did not complete his university studies despite granting scholarships.
"I have always been able to self-learn," he said. "We have the Internet. You can learn anything you want to learn for free."
He has some brush with the law. He said in his last podcast that he had been imprisoned "eight or nine" times, although he suggested at least that some of these incidents involve actions related to his activity.
An official at the New Hanover County Criminal Court in North Carolina told CNN that Teeter had a pending charge as of January 2019 to unload a firearm at the city limits. Teter told CNN that an accidental discharge occurred while cleaning the weapon.
His posts on social media appear to be consistent with his unique political convictions: portraying himself in a windbreaker or participating in reopened protests, memos mourning police brutality, celebrating black men with guns, mocking both President Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, glorifying a movement Boogaloo and the idea of "the next civil conflict".
Extremists say other militias are starting to adopt the nickname Boogaloo.