Thread by @gwensnyderPHL

(thread)

Loathe as I am to do this, there is very bad information going around about what this Boogaloo stuff is and what it means.

The boog is very much a 4chan/8chan/Telegram meme, and I have spent the last year monitoring the people who use it.

*SIGH*

Let's talk about it.

https://twitter.com/gwensnyderPHL/status/1268313788521963520

The first, most basic thing you need to understand is, "Boogaloo" is a meme, not a movement.

It's not an organization, it's not a subculture, it's not even a Telegram channel.

It's just a wildly popular Nazi meme.

The second thing you need to know is that a lot of media sources are citing @MeganSquire0 as an expert, and that is a good thing.

Listen to direct Megan Squire quotes.

Take the rest of it (including paraphrasing) with a big grain of salt.

Here are some signs that the people you're listening to don't know what the fuck they're talking about:

- they call them the "Boogaloo movement" or "the Boogaloos"

- they downplay or ignore the fact that it's almost always an reference to race war, not generic "civil war"

Listen, there's a huge divide between Boomer white supremacists and online millennial/zoomer white supremacists.

The millennial/zoomer white supremacists are largely on Telegram and fetishize terroristic accelerationist violence.

The boog meme is their baby.

A lot of news outlets are talking about how the "Boogaloo movement" is organizing to turn out to stuff on Facebook, and uh, they're basically talking about cringe militia/3%er Boomers trying to mimic their kids' slang without totally understanding it.

Most of these "Boogaloo movement" people certainly aren't the actual boog memers and aren't even really part of any organized militia/3%er effort as far as I can tell.

They're just pissed-off MAGA chuds who would really fucking like an excuse to shoot Black people.

As most outlets discussing the origin of the meme correctly point out, it's a reference to "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo."

Originally it was just a meme-y way to say, "sequel."

Just generally "boogaloo" became a shorthand for "shit going down," especially wars ("Iraq War 2: Electric Boogaloo" was popular back in the early 2010s)

I wasn't around doing this research in 2017-2018, but from what I can tell, "boogaloo" didn't really take off as a major Nazi meme until after Unite the Right, as far right online extremism split over schisms between the street gangs, the civ nats, and the accelerationists.

Unite the Right really put a stake in the heart of civnats— civic white nationalist Nazis like American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) who were inspired by Trump's victory and dreamed of taking over the country with good optics and, preferably, electorally.

Unite the Right was supposed to be a unifying, peaceful rally with good optics, and other Nazis saw its failure as a final proof that civnat ideas were pipe dreams.

It also brought police attention to and fractured brownshirt gangs like Vanguard America.

More than anything, Unite the Right became a reference point for many younger far right extremists on internet forums, who announced that public-facing organizing and "political solutions" like electoralism had proved unworkable, and that that the system was unredeemable.

Since the system was unredeemable, they said, it would have to burn down before their new Nazi society could be built.

There was "no political solution."

The only option was to accelerate the destruction of the government and society to clear room for a new replacement.

These accelerationists weren't an entirely new phenomenon; they'd been operating and having sort of a cultural ferment on the Iron March forums, which birthed the terrorist group Atomwaffen and planted the seeds for many imitators and also-rans.

A few months before Unite the Right, Atomwaffen and accelerationism in general had taken a pretty big hit.

It's a long, bizarre story, but basically Atomwaffen had started a training compound. One of its members murdered the other dudes at the compound.

washingtonpost.com/news/post-nati…

Atomwaffen was widely considered to be basically toast, and Iron March shut down completely.

Accelerationists scattered across various other forums, the most notorious being 8chan.

Unite the Right became the shot in the arm they'd desperately needed.

As 4chan and Reddit began to crack down on overtly violent forums, 8chan became the default site for many displaced extreme right white supremacists, and (to a lesser extent) displaced pro-terror incels.

A lot of the language and culture of incel terror began to seep into 8chan white supremacist culture.

"Blackpilled" used to refer to incels who'd decided the world was hopeless and that death (ideally through suicidal act of terror) was the only way out.

Accelerationist white supremacists started to use it to mean coming around to their worldview.

Accelerationists began to "saint" terrorists like Dyl*n R**f the way incels "sainted" terrorists like Elli*t R****rs.

Where Iron March had a serious, even ponderous tone most of the time, 8chan accelerationists adopted alt-right style meme culture to push their propaganda.

Accelerationist meme culture started partly because 8chan had become a core recruiting ground for white supremacist terror, and recruiters used the shitpost style of 4chan/8chan to appeal and propagandize to young image board users.

Just like the alt-right had used disingenuous irony to pretend to the outside that its violent racism was just an ironic in-joke, accelerationists were able to very effectively use disingenuous irony to pretend that their advocacy for literal terror was protected humorous speech.

The boogaloo meme is an example of that.

See, one of Iron March's most obvious legacies in Nazi terror other than Atomwaffen is its embrace of "Siege," a formerly-obscure book by James Mason, a fringe-of-the-fringe accelerationist shunned and mocked by traditional US Nazis.

The central point of "Siege" is basically, Charles Manson had the right idea, he just didn't go far enough.

Mason called for an absolute campaign of terror similar to but bigger and more sustained than Manson's effort to spark a "Helter Skelter" race war.

"Siege" accelerationists believe in campaigns of terror meant to spark race war by any means necessary.

"Kill your mailman," they'll tell you, because the idea is to do anything you can to create mass unrest and fear and suspicion (especially of Black people).

I haven't tried to pinpoint the exact moment the boogaloo meme joined the canon of top terror Nazi memes (and I don't have an archive of 8chan, so I don't want to try).

Accelerationists had already begun to use Telegram to supplement their 8chan propaganda efforts when 8chan shut down in Aug 2019 after the El Paso massacre, though.

In July, even before they shifted there entirely, racist boog memes had started popping up in extremist channels.

Groups like the Proud Boys-- who are older millennials and young Gen Xers very much still linked to Trump and the electoral-- talked about the boog more or less actually ironically.

For accelerationists, though, it became very much an affectionate nickname for violent race war.

To say it for the millionth time: this isn't a group or an or an organization. It's a meme, one created and popularized in the sewer system of the chans, especially 8chan, that migrated mostly to Telegram and is most beloved by Nazis openly advocating for violent terrorism.

So here's the core problem with all this "Boogaloo movement" shit: it's a nonsense, imaginary creation that the mainstream media is using to avoid talking about the fact that TRUMP'S BASE has actively adopted an explicitly pro-race war Nazi meme.

This Boogaloo stuff isn't some new, emergent white supremacist group that all the cool kids are talking about these days.

These are racist MAGA chads who are variously accidentally and on-purpose telling on themselves by theming their Facebook chats after a Nazi terrorist meme.

It's not a new white supremacist movement.

It's Trump's white supremacist movement, and it's at least as old as his presidential candidacy.

These aren't mysterious new nazis.

The "Boogaloo" guys are just the president's most enthusiastic brownshirts.

Outlets like @CNN want the sexiness that comes with covering scary sensational topics like white supremacy, but they don't want to deal with the heat that comes with just being like, "look, Trump's supporters are mask-off race war brownshirts, now."

So they call it "Boogaloo."

It's absolutely dishonest, and people like @jjmacnab need to just admit they don't know what the fuck is going on instead of grabbing at straws trying to invent an explanation for a movement that doesn't fucking exist-- or rather, does exist, has existed, and goes by "MAGA."

The "Boogaloo movement" is MAGA chuds who now feel safe taking the step of openly marking themselves as literal pro-terror white supremacists by stealing terrorist race war memes from accelerationists and using them in cringe-inducing ways.

It's like if Debra Messing tried to adapt something she'd pulled from Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash.

The fact that she'd suddenly gotten into birds would be kind of beside the point.

The big story would be, HRC stan gives props to democratic socialism.

(lol that isn't to equate democratic socialism with terrorist nazis, btw, I'm just trying to communicate the cringe factor weirdness of thinking the meme itself is the story here)

And look, I'm not saying there aren't also militia dudes and various and sundry other anti-government movements (including the Nazis) overlapping in this ecosystem.

But these are guys are wearing flag t-shirts and carrying "Deplorable" signs.

These are by and large MAGA chuds trying to climb aboard a Nazi terror meme and doing it badly.

Even the organized white supremacists (like this guy below in a Proud Boys-linked chats) are confused by this shit.

Like, the reason it took me so long to write this is because I monitor extreme right terror and explicit white supremacist Telegram and had never seen anyone MENTION Hawaiian shirts before.

I thought it must be that I'd been too distracted by other protest stuff, but no!

It's just some weird obscure twist on the meme that I guess some Trump chuds decided they liked and went with.

And you know, the media is KIND OF right.

These guys totally are organized white supremacists.

It's just, they're not organized by shadowy terrorist Nazis or militias.

They're electorally organized by Trump, and they're just egging each other to go mask off online now.

And if you haven't figure it out yet, they're the perfect foil for Democrats looking for an excuse to bust heads and gas us and shoot us when we're out in the streets.

They don't want to admit they want to attack a genuine civil rights uprising, so they make up imaginary Nazis.

Listen, Nazis and Nazi-lites (like the Proud Boys) have long shown up at the fringes of left protest to try and intimidate.

That's nothing new, and whether they're wearing Fred Perry or Hawaiian print or "antifa"-wear, we nearly always identify them pretty quickly.

The mainstream media is right that the appearance of these cringe af Boogaloo meme fans at our edges is something new and disturbing.

They aren't infiltrating us, though, and they aren't fringe Nazis.

They're mostly just Trump voters.

This "boogaloo movement" isn't a new movement.

It's Trump's movement deciding to go explicitly, openly, mask-off extreme right white supremacist.

That should be FAR MORE TERRIFYING than the idea that a few neo-Nazis have taken to wearing floral print.

Don't let the media get away with letting Trump off the hook by pretending that MAGA chuds showing up to civil rights protests wearing Hawaiian print and carrying rifles are anything other than emboldened Trumpian brownshirts hoping for a chance to kill a Black person.

Don't let cowardly Democratic mayors and governors pretend there's some gang of shadowy "Boogaloo" infiltrators in order to get away with macing, gassing, shooting, arresting, and torturing us for simply practicing First Amendment-protected free speech in support of civil rights.

I'm sure it would be more comforting to believe that the hateful gun-toters showing up hoping to kill protesters are

a) fringe Nazi extremists (if wearing floral print) or

b) virtuous cops fighting a violent nazi infiltrator plot (if wearing blue).

Neither is true, though.

The fact is, there are no evil Nazis lurking in the shadows, pulling the puppet strings of our protests.

The folks showing up referencing Boog memes aren't part of some mysterious new movement; they're mostly just brownshirts that stan our president, hard.

Don't fall for the deception.

Overt, mask-off white supremacy isn't fringe anymore.

It's out of the shadows, all the way, and it wears a MAGA hat.

Fomenting race war isn't some fringe Nazi fantasy anymore.

It's Trump's pet project.

These brownshirts are just helping.

The end.