What Is The Boogaloo Movement? Far-Right Group May Be Planning Attacks In Washington, DC, Says Intel Report

The Trump administration is warning that the far-right Boogaloo movement could be targeting Washington, D.C., to create unrest. The Boogaloo movement is named after a 1980’s breakdancing movie, with its members seeking to incite a civil war in the United States.

The National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium (NTIC) said in a June 15 assessment obtained by Politico that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of US law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here.”

A June 19 note from the Department of Homeland Security, also obtained by Politico, says “domestic terrorists advocating for the boogaloo very likely will take advantage of any regional or national situation involving heightened fear and tensions to promote their violent extremist ideology and call supporters to action.”

There are generally two factions of the Boogaloo movement. One faction is tied to neo-Nazis, while a newer iteration has a libertarian bent. Both groups want to overthrow the U.S. government and cause American society to collapse. The neo-Nazi wing of the movement wants to start a race war and has cheered on violence following the George Floyd protests.

The other faction of the movement has a radical libertarian ideology, with members wielding assault weapons and wearing Hawaiian shirts. They have sometimes tried to incite violence against the police during the Floyd protests.

"The earlier boogaloos were white supremacist," J.J. MacNab, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told USA Today. "The ones that came later did not inherit that side of the belief system. Most of them aren’t even aware of white supremacy in subsets of the movement until they read it in the newspapers. A vast majority on Facebook are adamantly against it."

In California, an alleged Boogaloo member, 32-year-old Steven Carrillo, was charged this week after he allegedly joined an accomplice to kill a federal protective services officer in Oakland, California, during the Floyd protests. In Las Vegas, three men tied to the group were arrested this week for trying to destroy federal government property during the demonstrations and for possessing Molotov cocktails.

Various far-right groups have emerged in recent years. The Proud Boys group was founded by commentator Gavin McInnes and has become a white supremacist organization, with Proud Boys members attending the 2017 Unite The Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Base, a white-supremacist hate group, was formed in 2018 and has organized attacks on synagogues in Wisconsin and Michigan.

In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation elevated its assessment of racially motivated extremists to a “national threat priority” for the 2020 fiscal year.