Picture of a young man flashing a semi-automatic assault rifle in the streets of Kenosha in Wisconsin is doing the rounds on Twitter. The discussion about extremist group Boogaloo Bois started trending on social media after the killing of two people on Tuesday. Here's a look at who are Boogaloo Bois and what the movement wants.
Who are Boogaloo Bois?
Boogaloo Bois is an online community of extremists who wants to start the second civil war in America. The network is deemed a national threat.
How the group came into existence?
Though there is no clarity on how the group came into existence, experts on the subject say that the network emerged among the pro-gun groups during the 2010s. The group got its name from a 1984 movie "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo", which is about a group of young dancers trying to save their community center from corrupt politicians and corporate development.
The group is largely active on Facebook but is also organized through Reddit and Youtube too, according to The Tech Transparency Project, a public research and data initiative. It says that over 50 percent of the Boogaloo Bois network subgroups were created between February and April this year.
What is their agenda?
Regardless of the platform, Boogaloo Bois membres are joined by the mission to dethrone the government and start the civil war. In theory, they believe that few armed men might be able to use violence at the right moment and can begin the second civil war in America. The group believes that the war would end all the problems that the USA is facing in current times.
The group is not homogeneous in members' race or class as it has both whites and blacks as their affiliates. Though the network has many facets it is mainly divided into two wings: white supremacists dominated neo-Nazis wing and a newer section of racial libertarian that has been seen supporting the Black Lives Matter movement recently.
"It is very difficult to know if the 'Boogaloo boi' you see standing in the middle of the street at a protest is there in solidarity or to incite violence," Alex Newhouse, digital research lead at Middlebury Institute's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism told USA Today.
Different in their makeup they remain the same in their mission: to overthrow the government and spark societal collapse.
On the one hand, white supremacists want to destroy the government by starting a race war.
On the other hand, the radical libertarian wants to instigate violence against police and law enforcement as the way towards the second civil war.
Boogaloo Bois supporting BLM
It's for this reason, that some of its members were seen at the Black Lives Matter movements organized to denounce the killing of black man George Floyd. In public, the racial libertarian wing members are characterized by their peculiar outlook, gun-carrying men wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Both groups look for methods and avenues so that they could onset unrest and begin the civil war. Over the years they have been involved in shooting and killings across the US.
