4chan. Each Boogaloo group takes a diff erent
form, but memes are their common language —
some funny, others less so. ‘‘Victory or fi re. I Will
Not Burn Alone,’’ reads one. Posts routinely call
for the shooting of pedophiles. ‘‘Save the Bees.
Plant More Trees. Clean the Seas. Shoot Com-
mies,’’ reads another. Fears of climate change
fi gure into the groups’ apocalyptic worldview,
but they often fi nd themselves attaching to
reactionary ideas. ‘‘It’s very simple,’’ one meme
reads, ‘‘learn to hate or die silently.’’ Another:
‘‘Environmentalism and nationalism go hand
in hand. It is pride in your people, pride in your
nation and pride in the very soil of the land.’’ But
one common theme undergirds all these mes-
sages, regardless of which Boogaloo subset they
attract: Do something about it. And do it now.
B
ack in November 2019, Mark Pitcavage, a senior
research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s
Center on Extremism, issued a warning about
who was using the word ‘‘Boogaloo’’ and why, in
the form of a blog post illustrated with bizarre
memes pulled from their forums: Pepe the frog
fi ring a bazooka, a laser-eyed storm trooper with
a black-sun halo, a big igloo. Though some still
use ‘‘Boogaloo’’ as a joke, Pitcavage wrote, ‘‘an
increasing number of people employ it with
serious intent.’’ Still, he fi nished with a note of
caution: Some people use the word ‘‘Boogaloo’’
to ‘‘mock some of the more fanatical or gung-ho
elements of their own movement.’’
‘‘By that time it had crystallized from more
than just a concept or a term,’’ he told me in July.
‘‘The beginnings of a movement had already
started.’’ He went on: ‘‘It also started manifest-
ing in the real world, with people showing up
at events, self-identifying as Boogaloo.’’ The
spring of 2020 was like a coming-out party for
the movement, as men in colorful fl oral shirts
and body armor festooned with igloo-shaped
patches, semiautomatic weapons in hand,
showed up at reopening rallies against Covid-
19 restrictions across the country, from Lan-
sing, Mich., to Denver, to Harrisburg, Pa. Some
carried black-and-white American fl ags with a
red stripe of fl oral print through the middle and
an igloo in the place of stars.
In March, a Missouri white supremacist told
an undercover F.B.I. agent he planned to det-
onate a car bomb outside a hospital treating
Covid-19 patients. He called the plan ‘‘Opera-
tion Boogaloo.’’ When the F.B.I. tried to serve
the man a probable-cause warrant, a fi refi ght
ensued, and he shot himself before he could be
apprehended and succumbed to his wounds at
the hospital. In April, a man in Texarkana, Texas,
who identifi ed with the movement streamed a
live video on Facebook while dressed in body
armor and a Hawaiian shirt, telling viewers he
was ‘‘hunting the hunters’’: searching for police
offi cers to ambush. He is accused of leading
several offi cers on a high-speed chase, continu-
ing even after his tires were defl ated by a spike
strip. He was later apprehended and pleaded
not guilty to attempted-murder charges.
As the movement’s profi le rose, catching
the attention of the media, Boogaloo bois bent
the word to shield it from the eyes of content
moderators. ‘‘Boogaloo’’ became ‘‘big igloo,’’
then ‘‘big luau’’ — hence the Hawaiian shirts.
Boogaloo bois became ‘‘boojahideen.’’ On the
forums, they would joke about a ‘‘pig roast’’
— code for killing police offi cers. In June,
Facebook claimed that it deleted hundreds of
accounts and pages devoted to the movement;
by mid-July, the Boogaloo bois were back on
Facebook talking about a ‘‘spicy fi esta.’’
‘‘The problem with the Boogaloo bois is
they’re not a cohesive movement,’’ J. J. MacNab,
a fellow at George Washington University’s Pro-
gram on Extremism, said during testimony to
the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and
Counterterrorism in mid-July. ‘‘You could actu-
ally, in a really bizarre world, have two Boo-
galoo groups shooting at each other.’’ It is on
the issue of law enforcement that the Boogaloo
seems to greatly diverge from the militias that
came before it, which in many cases collabo-
rate with or even have members that are police
offi cers. ‘‘They’re really anti-police,’’ Pitcavage
says of the Boogaloo; they may say they want
to fi nd common cause with anyone protesting
the police — but some want to act as agents
provocateurs, accelerating street violence and
furthering any confl ict. For many of them, the
protests following the killing of George Floyd
on Memorial Day looked like the perfect oppor-
tunity to create mayhem.
On May 29, according to a criminal com-
plaint, Steven Carrillo — a 32-year-old Air Force
sergeant who has served in Kuwait, Syria, Iraq
and Afghanistan — tapped out a message on
Facebook to other Boogaloo bois he had met
online. Carrillo was stationed at Travis Air Force
Base in Northern California and saw potential
in the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in
Oakland. ‘‘Go to the riots and support our owncause,’’ Carrillo instructed his friends. ‘‘Use their
anger to fuel our fi re. Think outside the box.’’
That night in Oakland, the police clashed
with protesters again and again, fogging the
crowd in clouds of tear gas. Marchers blocked
the freeway. Around 9 p.m., according to local
reports, the police tried to disperse protesters
again with crowd-control munitions. It was 9:44
p.m. when a white van with no plates and what
looked like a missing hubcap rolled through the
intersection of 12th and Jeff erson in the mid-
dle of downtown Oakland, about nine blocks
from the protests. As it rolled by the Ronald V.
Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse,
the side door slid open, and gunfi re came out
in bursts of twos and threes. Nine-millimeter
rounds ripped through the courthouse’s squat
guard station — a beige hut with an eggshell-blue
roof dripping with rust stains.
Inside were two contracted federal security
offi cers. One was David Patrick Underwood, a
53-year-old Black man who had recently bought
an engagement ring for his girlfriend. The bul-
lets from that white van killed Underwood and
seriously wounded the other offi cer. The van was
there one second — a fl ash of white on security
footage — and then it was gone.AT A NEWS CONFERENCE in Washington the
day after the shooting, Acting Secretary Chad
Wolf of the Department of Homeland Security
stood behind a wooden lectern and called the
shooting part of ‘‘an outright assault on our
law-enforcement community.’’ Ken Cuccinelli,
the senior offi cial performing the duties of the
deputy secretary, was more fi rm. ‘‘Let me be
clear,’’ he said. ‘‘When someone targets a police
offi cer or a police station with an intention to do
harm and intimidate, that is an act of domestic
terrorism.’’ Cuccinelli suggested it was related
to the growing Black Lives Matter protests.
Reporters asked if it could have been the work40 8.23.20
‘GO TO
OUR OWN
‘USE THEIR
THINK