{"id":7345,"date":"2021-01-12T23:47:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T23:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149253"},"modified":"2021-01-12T23:47:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T23:47:52","slug":"on-telegram-the-paramilitary-far-right-looks-to-radicalize-new-recruits-ahead-of-inauguration-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/12\/on-telegram-the-paramilitary-far-right-looks-to-radicalize-new-recruits-ahead-of-inauguration-day\/","title":{"rendered":"On Telegram, the Paramilitary Far Right Looks to Radicalize New Recruits Ahead of Inauguration Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the wake<\/u> of last week\u2019s deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol Building, a publicly accessible chat group devoted to sparking a civil war is telling its thousands of subscribers that the moment they have all been waiting for is here.<\/p>\n

Since the events last week, \u201cBoogaloo Intel Drop,\u201d a channel on the Telegram messaging app with more than 6,600 subscribers, including some self-described active-duty U.S. military personnel, has pushed its followers to usher in a new epoch of political violence in the United States. Subscribers and administrators have called for the murder of police officers with increased fervor and elevated Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran killed by Capitol Police during the riot, to the status of a martyr.<\/p>\n

The channel is a mid-sized player in a larger, established network devoted to the spread of right-wing terror, a race war, and the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Within this so-called Terrorgram network<\/a>, which appears to have grown in the past week, the assault on the Capitol and its political fallout is being treated as an opportunity to enlist and radicalize new recruits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alex Newhouse, research lead at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said \u201cBoogaloo Intel Drop\u201d appears to be the \u201cmost active\u201d channel in the Terrorgram network currently looking to peel off individuals booted<\/a> from other social media networks and recruit them into militant extremism. It has also been the most open in calling for violence in the days ahead. \u201cThey have been talking in the most specifics that I\u2019ve seen yet,\u201d Newhouse told The Intercept. \u201cBut their rhetoric does reflect what\u2019s happening in the other white supremacist accelerationist channels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boogaloo movement is part of a broader ecosystem of far-right groups committed to pushing the country into civil war. The boogaloo itself is the desired civil conflict and its proponents, who sometimes refers to themselves as \u201cboogaloo bois,\u201d have been known to pair tactical gear with Hawaiian shirts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey have been talking in the most specifics that I\u2019ve seen yet. But their rhetoric does reflect what\u2019s happening in the other white supremacist accelerationist channels.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Newhouse said the \u201cIntel Drop\u201d channel represents the most openly white supremacist wing of the boogaloo movement. \u201cMy personal feeling is that the entire boogaloo movement has white supremacy at its core, but there are obviously varying levels of explicitness with how they talk about things like the Jewish question and how they refer to Black people and how they refer to the Black Lives Matter protests,\u201d he said. While \u201cthe boogaloo movement broadly is composed of some people who call themselves libertarian,\u201d Newhouse explained, \u201cBoogaloo Intel Drop\u2019s network is not \u2014 they fully believe in totalitarian, white, Aryan government.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, the FBI issued a bulletin warning of armed protests planned in all 50 states<\/a> in the coming days. HuffPost reported that Capitol Police have briefed House Democrats on three plots targeting the Capitol<\/a>, and that the police and National Guard \u201cwere preparing for potentially tens of thousands of armed protesters coming to Washington and were establishing rules of engagement for warfare.\u201d The FBI\u2019s Minneapolis field office has zeroed in on boogaloo adherents in particular as potential perpetrators of political violence, according to a situational report<\/a> obtained by Yahoo News.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a mistake that the FBI is warning specifically about the boogaloo bois,\u201d Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a research organization focused on the far-right, told The Intercept, noting that in the span of a year, the movement has been linked to multiple acts of violence and terror plots.<\/p>\n

Despite its memes and millennial bent, the movement is awash in classic American racism, anti-Semitism, and gun worship, all filtered through the usual conspiracy theories that have consumed the far right for generations. \u201cThey\u2019re dressed up in these ironic things like their Hawaiian T-shirts and very savvy in the world of memes and spreading internet viral communications,\u201d she said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, they\u2019re no different, really, than many paramilitary movements we\u2019ve had in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boogaloo Telegram<\/u> channel has been active since at least October 2019. Initially, much of the media it shared focused on survivalism and the \u201ctacti-cool\u201d gear popular with a particular set of post-9\/11 American men. In keeping with the boogaloo movement more broadly, it catered to an internet-conversant crowd, with activity picking up during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns. Chatter on the channel intensified over the summer with the police killing of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed. Early on, Newhouse said, Telegram channels in the wider \u201cTerrorgram\u201d network \u2014 which according to an analysis<\/a> by the Daily Beast caters to an estimated 120,000 subscribers \u2014 would recommend the Boogaloo Intel Drop channel as a place to find information on tactics and gear, but in time it too became a source of extreme hard-right propaganda. \u201cAt this point, it\u2019s one of the bigger accelerationist propaganda channels out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The \u201cboogaloo bois\u201d cast the summer\u2019s racial justice protests as a useful cover to kill law enforcement, and according to federal prosecutors in California, that was exactly what Steven Carrillo did<\/a>. In late May, Carrillo, a sergeant in an elite Air Force security unit, allegedly assassinated a federal court security guard in Oakland before going on the run and killing a sheriff\u2019s deputy days later. The FBI claims<\/a> the airman was taken into custody with a ballistics vest bearing a boogaloo patch and that he scrawled phrases popular with the movement on a vehicle in his own blood. The alleged assassination was followed by the arrest of three suspected boogaloo bois in Nevada, all military veterans, who were accused of plotting to bomb<\/a> a Black Lives Matter protest. According to federal law enforcement, members of the paramilitary group accused of plotting to kidnap <\/a>Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in October are tied to the boogaloo movement.<\/p>\n

As the boogaloo movement garnered increased national attention, the Telegram channel grew in subscribers \u2014 a dynamic that seems to be playing out yet again.<\/p>\n

In the wake of last week\u2019s siege, Amazon Web Services shut down Parler, a right-wing social media platform catering to Trump supporters. The shutdown appears to be fueling a migration to Telegram<\/a>. Over the weekend, Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University focused on far-right extremism and hate groups, noted that a single Telegram channel devoted to the Proud Boys \u2014 a neo-fascist paramilitary group loyal<\/a> to the president \u2014 had attracted nearly 6,000 users in four hours. On Monday, The Guardian noted that a Telegram channel dubbed \u201cParler Lifeboat\u201d had pulled in more than 15,000 members<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a Parler exodus,\u201d Newhouse said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAt this point, it\u2019s one of the bigger accelerationist propaganda channels out there.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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On the boogaloo channel, conversations have swung from outrage to opportunity. Responding to Monday\u2019s FBI bulletin regarding the planning of nationwide armed protests, one user replied, \u201cUm yes they are FBI, your kind of slow to pick that up,\u201d while others advocated for creating small cells of trusted fellow extremists committed to a long-haul violent struggle. \u201cWhile you guys have been sitting on your asses we\u2019ve been preparing for such an event for years,\u201d one user boasted. Another added: \u201cSpeak for somebody else. I\u2019m enlisted and I hate all of this shit but prep has been made on my end.\u201d<\/p>\n

For much of the country, the president\u2019s video message to the mob he directed was abhorrent, and his milquetoast tweets calling for peace were seen as shameful and inadequate. On the Boogaloo channel, they were received as an unforgivable disappointment from a man who was supposed to be one of their own. \u201cAaaaaaand he betrays the white race again,\u201d an administrator wrote on the afternoon of January 6, citing a tweet by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany that asked the mob to \u201cremain peaceful\u201d and claimed the National Guard would soon arrive on the president\u2019s orders. \u201cAt least his betrayal will be met in full,\u201d said another subscriber.<\/p>\n

Across the channel, eagerness for continued violence, particularly the killing of lawmakers and law enforcement, is everywhere. \u201cIf you don\u2019t leave the politicians alive, you cant get charged as a terrorist,\u201d wrote a user whose avatar is an image of a rioter carrying a Confederate flag through the Capitol building and whose screen name is \u201cGas (((Them)))\u201d \u2014 the parentheses signal<\/a> Jews. \u201cThe right learned what the left already knows. Mask up. Be unidentifiable to the pig system,\u201d said another subscriber. \u201cThe only rule now is: Don\u2019t get caught.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the<\/u> conversation on the channel over the last week has focused on converting so-called normies \u2014 Trump supporters booted from platforms like Parler \u2014 to the accelerationist cause. \u201cTime to press on. Deplatforming \u2018normies\u2019 will only drive them to alt-right platforms,\u201d said one user. Another said they were advertising the Telegram channel on their Twitter page to pull in new recruits. \u201cSome people need converting, don\u2019t ban moderate commenters from chats, it will take time to enlighten them,\u201d they said. An admin praised users for their radicalization efforts: \u201cThank you to those as well spreading this channel and others to normie platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Trump cast himself as the ultimate law enforcement supporter, the boogaloo movement is expressly committed to killing law enforcement officials.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Channel users see the killing of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer during the Capitol attack, as \u201cgood optics\u201d and a chance to pull in new recruits. One popular Babbitt tribute graphic \u2014 an increasingly popular Telegram subgenre as she becomes something like a far-right martyr \u2014 depicts the pro-police \u201cthin blue line\u201d motif as a bullet\u2019s path entering Babbitt\u2019s neck and turning red on the other side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are normies. \u2026 They haven\u2019t been trampled on for years like us,\u201d an admin wrote, arguing that Babbitt\u2019s death should be used as a potent radicalization tool. \u201cWtf is a normie,\u201d replied a user whose avatar was a selfie of a police officer in uniform. \u201cI guess I\u2019m behind on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of the role police can or should play in a right-wing insurgency appears again and again in the channel. While Trump cast himself as the ultimate law enforcement supporter with rallies consistently featuring \u201cback the blue\u201d imagery and rhetoric, the boogaloo movement is expressly committed to killing law enforcement officials, especially federal law enforcement officials. For many in the Telegram channel, the events of last week present an opportunity to bring others around to that worldview.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice are traitors always were,\u201d wrote one member. \u201cFuck macing the pigs,\u201d wrote another member beneath a video of rioters appearing to spray a chemical agent at Capitol Police. \u201cUse lead.\u201d Some saw the riots as a turning point in the American right\u2019s relationship to law and order: \u201cWhatever happens, today was a success. \u2026 Because today the Blue Lives Matter ideology died,\u201d wrote another Telegram user.<\/p>\n

Newhouse said while some of the channel\u2019s subscribers will \u201csee opportunity in the authoritarian impulses of the Proud Boys, the QAnon movement and other sorts of movements like that,\u201d thus creating opportunities for collaboration and recruitment of law enforcement, <\/b>others believe that it is \u201cantithetical to their mission.\u201d \u201cThe reason why this network in particular hates the police is because they\u2019re seen as guardians of the Zionist-occupied government \u2014 a government of degeneracy that allows for multiculturalism and Jewish influence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Newhouse was careful to note that while the channel\u2019s subscriber number could be seen as an army of right-wing insurgents in waiting, the number of individuals who actually see and engage with the content on channels like Boogaloo Intel Drop remains small. At the same time, he added, \u201cthe lesson of the boogaloo movement is you only need one or two people to take it seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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