Salon's boogaloo informant talks up BLM alliance, disavows Gretchen Whitmer plot. But he still wants destruction
This is the second of two parts. Read the first part here.
Salon's informant within the boogaloo movement, whom we're calling Sam for this article, frequently wanted to talk tactics, and often flexed military lingo in conversations. He believed his tactical revelations would be of particular value to the public, presumably to prevent or combat cells he believed were pursuing illegitimate methods.
"If the boog is intent on violence they aren't stupid enough to wear Hawaiian shirts or even body armor," Sam said. "A rifle and a van are sufficient, as demonstrated by Carrillo. [That would be Steven Carrillo, who is accused of killing a federal officer and a sheriff's deputy in California last year. More on him later.] When engaged in illegal activity the movement wants to stay grey. Concealed pistols. Short barreled rifles. Blend into the population."
The guns strapped across boogaloo chests at demonstrations, or "actions," in Sam's parlance, are a mix of threat and theater, he said: "They will claim they are carrying those rifles for media attention, and they are, but every one of those rifles and handguns are loaded and those boys are carrying extra magazines."
He scoffed at the amateurism of many boogaloo cells, but prided his small group of 12 on its discipline.
"Smaller numbers mean less infighting and higher quality," he said. "Some take whoever with minimal vetting. We vet people very carefully using commercial databases and current member vouching. If one member objects they are rejected. We look for people with specific skills. Communications, cybersecurity, weapons handling and medical are usually the top priorities."
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Go To Video Page He described his cell's principal recruitment targets: "Disaffected zoomers through memes. Veterans and [active-duty military] through rhetoric about liberty and tyranny. Videos and pictures of previous operations that were nonviolent."
"Violent radicalization takes time," he said.
In 2009, DHS and the FBI released a study that showed that right-wing extremism had surged after the election of Barack Obama, an event that radicalized white supremacists and offered an opportunity for groups to reach out with new propaganda campaigns. The report specifically listed "disgruntled military veterans" as key targets: "Right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."
The boog's distant dream of starting an actual war relies on the possibility of triggering violence among other groups. Perhaps surprisingly, Sam said he thinks leftist radical groups are more dependable: "In terms of willingness to act, antifa and BLM are tied. Any excuse to hit the streets. Right-wing militia is mostly useless unless directly threatened."
His cell has a hard limit of 12 members, he said: "We've concluded that eight is golden and there's always a few that can't make it. Eight gives us a squad broken into two fire teams. Adaptable and easily dispersed." They communicate mostly via encrypted messaging apps, but conduct their most sensitive conversations in person.
"Everyone here understands marksmanship, small unit tactics, trauma care, police responses to crowds and crowd violence and COIN [counterintelligence] tactics," Sam said. "We're a bit more selective in who we recruit. Other movement factions and groups have differing levels of training. For instance the people [at a recent anti-ICE rally] in Atlanta were an absolute joke. A cursory glance at gear, age and fitness was enough to determine that. Beyond speeches and sign waving they had no discernible objective."
He added: "If waving signs and talking solved problems, [Breonna] Taylor and [George] Floyd would have gotten justice."
Police Like many far-right extremist groups, the boogaloo harbor a virulent antipathy toward law enforcement.
Sam points out that the government already grants the right of force to that armed group: "Breonna Taylor. Floyd. Duncan Lemp. Garrett [Foster]," he said, referencing two unarmed Black people whose police shooting deaths sparked nationwide unrest last year, alongside two white members of his own movement, whose deaths did not. "Dozens and hundreds more murdered by an institution that can claim 'they were scared' and execute someone. How are they different from a death squad?"
It may come as a surprise given the widespread support police enjoy from white conservatives, but fringe-right militia groups generally despise police as part of an intrusive government, and have frequently been willing to kill them.
From 2001 to 2016, white supremacists killed 34 police officers, compared to 10 killed by left-wing extremists — half of those 10 killed within minutes of each other by a Black military veteran in Dallas in 2016. But before Dallas (and the Baton Rouge shooting after that) white non-Hispanic men, who are slightly more than 30% of the U.S. population, were responsible for 70% of police killings that year.
The police, Sam noted, are less restrained in use of force than the military in most active war zones, where the terms of combat are at least officially regulated by the Geneva Convention. "And yet some 22- year-old with three or six months training is entrusted with the power of life and death domestically," he said.
(Sam never answered questions about whether the boogaloo counted active law enforcement in its ranks.)
One of Sam's more critical comments about the boogaloo referred to the movement's "martyrdom complex." Last year they found two martyrs, mentioned above: Garrett Foster and Duncan Lemp.
"Everyone wants to be the next Duncan Lemp," Sam said.
Lemp, a white 21-year-old right-wing activist, was shot dead in his suburban Maryland home during a "no-knock raid" on March 12, 2020. One day later, police in Louisville shot and killed 26-year-old medical technician Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, under similar circumstances.
While the boogaloo professes its support for Black Lives Matter, and has frequently shown up for anti-police demonstrations, their celebrated martyrs are generally white. It was Lemp who inspired the movement last year, not Taylor or George Floyd, and not the innumerable Black Americans killed by police before then. Indeed, it's worth noting that if the boogaloo were to achieve their improbable goal of destroying the government, they would also destroy institutional support systems that sustain many people in the marginalized communities they profess to support.
This reveals a stark ideological break between the boogaloo and leftists of almost any orientation, and it's a big reason why many experts categorize the boogaloo as a far-right movement, whatever their ideological nuances.
Black Lives Matter and the far left, in most cases, do not simply or literally want to abolish police departments and the entire apparatus of the state that stands behind them. They want to replace or augment the institutions of state violence with new and arguably more sprawling institutional systems that deliver greater equity, guarantee health care, that seek to level the field in areas such as housing segregation and discrimination, and that work to eliminate racial and economic inequality.
The boogaloo basically just want to tear everything down, believing that the entire government apparatus is coercive and oppressive by nature, and cannot be trusted to deliver justice or protect the vulnerable.
Jared Holt of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab told Salon that the vast share of the boogaloo's left-positive messaging rings hollow. "In some recent public appearances, some organizers and followers of the boogaloo movement have sought to soften their image or build bridges with social justice groups. I believe that very few of those efforts are genuine," he said. "Even though we need to take the boogaloo movement seriously, we shouldn't take them literally."
A number of boogaloo adherents tried to exploit the unrest surrounding the George Floyd protests as accelerating events. One member was arrested for firing a gun amid the first protests in Minneapolis, and three more were arrested on terrorism charges for planning attacks on Las Vegas police. Boogaloo member Steven Carrillo (mentioned by Sam above) allegedly murdered a federal security guard during the protests in Oakland, California, last May, and a few weeks later ambushed two sheriff's deputies, killing one of them, in Santa Cruz County on the central California coast. June ambushed a police officer at his home. He now faces first-degree murder charges.
Sam called Carrillo "a monster" who had shot "innocent people just doing their job."
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