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   From: jthomSq@gmail.com   
      
   A far-right extremist movement born on social media and fueled by anti-   
   government rhetoric has emerged as a real-world threat in recent weeks,   
   with federal authorities accusing some of its adherents of working to   
   spark violence at largely peaceful protests roiling the nation.   
      
   At a time when President Trump and other top U.S. officials have claimed —   
   with little evidence — that leftist groups were fomenting violence,   
   federal prosecutors have charged various supporters of a right-wing   
   movement called the “boogaloo bois,” with crimes related to plotting to   
   firebomb a U.S. Forest Service facility, preparing to use explosives at a   
   peaceful demonstration and killing a security officer at a federal   
   courthouse.   
      
   Prosecutors even successfully argued before a federal magistrate in Texas   
   last week that a drug possession suspect with alleged boogaloo ties should   
   be denied bond because Facebook and Instagram posts advocating violence   
   against National Guard members and threatening to kill looters showed he   
   was a “threat to the community.”   
      
   Boogaloo is more of a violent anti-government ideology than a formal   
   movement, say those who study extremist groups. They say they cannot   
   identify a leader, headquarters or command structure, just loosely   
   affiliated social media pages ranging from explicitly violent to merely   
   commercial, peddling boogaloo-themed merchandise.   
      
   But the visibility of boogaloo supporters at recent protests — dressed in   
   trademark Hawaiian shirts and carrying military-style rifles — had alarmed   
   researchers who for months had warned about the danger the groups posed.   
   U.S. Air Force Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, is seen in an image from   
   surveillance video outside a business near the location where he was   
   arrested in Ben Lomond, Calif., on June 6. (Justice Department/Reuters)   
      
   Now federal prosecutors in California, Texas, Nevada and Colorado appear   
   to be endorsing those concerns with a series of criminal charges against   
   self-described boogaloo supporters, whose arrests often were accompanied   
   by the seizure of weapons and explosives.   
      
   One boogaloo supporter, Steven Carrillo, an active-duty Air Force staff   
   sergeant, is charged with killing a security guard at the federal   
   courthouse in Oakland last month. Court documents allege he scrawled the   
   word “Boog” in blood on a car he had stolen.   
      
   “The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the   
   extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies   
   extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a   
   think tank in Philadelphia.   
   U.S. Attorney David Anderson announced on June 16 that two men had been   
   charged for the May 29 murder of a federal courthouse guard in Oakland,   
   Calif. (Reuters)   
      
   Men wearing Hawaiian shirts and carrying guns add a volatile new element   
   to protests   
      
   The shooting that killed one security guard and injured another took place   
   May 29, near where demonstrators had gathered to protest the police   
   killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis.   
      
   Facebook posts also figure in Carrillo’s prosecution, with court documents   
   quoting one attributed to him: “Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think   
   outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.”   
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   Carrillo also is accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy in a separate   
   incident in California’s Santa Cruz County. Carrillo’s lawyer has   
   cautioned against a “rush to judgement” on the charges.   
      
   The boogaloo movement was born on fringe social media forums such as 4chan   
   but migrated to more mainstream ones such as Instagram, Twitter and   
   Facebook, where researchers have found some groups had at times hundreds   
   of thousands of followers. The name of the group comes from a 1984 break-   
   dancing movie sequel regarded as almost indistinguishable from the   
   original — boogaloo supporters contend that a second civil war will   
   resemble the one in the 1860s.   
      
   Their names and symbols have evolved rapidly online, amid calls for   
   violence against police and other authorities, with boogaloo becoming “Big   
   Igloo” and “Big Luau,” which inspired a proliferation of movement symbols,   
   including the Hawaiian shirts. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted an image   
   of apparent boogaloo supporters, carrying rifles, atop an overturned and   
   vandalized police car in Salt Lake City last month.   
      
   An officer was gunned down. The killer was a ‘boogaloo boy’ using nearby   
   peaceful protests as cover, feds say.   
      
   The boogaloo ideology has proved adaptive as well, with supporters   
   appearing regularly at a rallies opposing government coronavirus   
   restrictions before shifting to the Floyd rallies — sometimes in avowed   
   support of the protesters, sometimes to allegedly quell unrest and   
   sometimes as provocateurs seeking to inflame it.   
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   The role of social media in incubating the movement and spreading its   
   ideology has prompted several researchers to compare boogaloo to foreign   
   militant groups, such as the Islamic State, which used memes and other   
   forms of online messaging to spread extremist rhetoric, raise money and   
   recruit new members.   
      
   “The extremism and the radicalism and the recruitment are nothing new. The   
   methodology is new — that you can reach tens of millions of people with a   
   click of a finger,” Paul Goldenberg, a senior fellow at Rutgers   
   University’s Miller Center and a member of the Department of Homeland   
   Security Advisory Council.   
      
   Federal authorities this month accused three men in Nevada, all with U.S.   
   military experience, of planning to use molotov cocktails and other   
   explosives to trigger a violent reaction among protesters gathered in Las   
   Vegas last month. An FBI SWAT team arrested the men with fireworks,   
   accelerants, an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, according   
   to charging documents. The men also were charged with crimes related to   
   planning the firebombing of a Forest Service facility at Lake Mead, east   
   of Las Vegas.   
   A patch on a ballistic vest seized during the arrest of Carrillo included   
   images of an igloo and a Hawaiian-style print associated with the boogaloo   
   movement. (Justice Department/Reuters)   
      
   Like Carrillo, these men were advocates of the boogaloo ideology,   
   according to the charging documents, with a goal of causing “an incident   
   to incite chaos and possibly a riot” among the largely peaceful protests.   
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   Denver police last month separately seized military-style rifles,   
   handguns, ammunition and gas masks from the car of a man claiming   
   allegiance to boogaloo ideas and attending a Floyd protest rally but did   
   not charge him with any crimes.   
      
   In Texas, a bodybuilder alleged to have run an illegal steroid   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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