The Boogaloo movement has a new strategy
Members of the anti-government Boogaloo movement are adopting a new strategy to achieve the end of the US government.
Adherents are calling for cooperation with left-wing organisations – previously considered adversaries by some in the Boogaloo – to foster a mass withdrawal from the political and economic systems overseen by the United States government.
Based on the political philosophy “agorism”, it aims to bleed the government of tax funds through a “Counter-Economy”, compliance with laws and mandates given by voters.
The desired result: the collapse of the US government through “death by a thousand cuts”.
The move marks a divide between the Boogaloo’s base that eschews government and white nationalist members who tried to stoke violence during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests to start a new civil war.
Magnus Panvidya, a vocal Boogaloo member working to unite left- and right-wing anti-government groups, told Al Jazeera the “idea of Agora … that practice is very ubiquitous almost anyone you speak to” in the Boogaloo.
Panvidya identifies only as “anarchist”, but said his “actions and goals pull very heavily from agorism”.
Broadly, members of the group, called Boogaloo Bois, have “no issue with violating the law to accomplish what they’re doing”, he said, referring to the exchange of goods on grey markets without government oversight, which are “popping up” throughout Boogaloo networks to sell “equipment”. Tax evasion is encouraged, too.
Rise in use
The Boogaloo movement made its mark over the summer of 2020, when men clad in Hawaiian shirts bearing AR-15-style guns began showing up at Black Lives Matter protests after the May 25 death of George Floyd.
The group attracted white nationalists that hoped the tumult of a nationwide protest movement could be harnessed to start a “Boogaloo” – a term for a second US Civil War born of online meme culture – that would devolve into a race war.The Boogaloo movement is half “Libertarian with a big ‘L’”, referencing the political party that advocates for limited government and “then the rest of us are just a wide spread of different forms of anarchism”, Panvidya sad.
The Boogaloo movement is decentralised, making it difficult to gauge agorism’s popularity in the movement.
According to data tracked by the Social Media Analysis Toolkit (SMAT), a tool designed to track conversations and key terms across social media and messaging platforms, “agora” saw similar spikes across Telegram and Reddit since the Black Lives Matter protests began.
