Extensive purge on Facebook and Instagram. Over 300 accounts, 100 groups and 26 pages belonging to the Boogaloo nebula have been deleted. The Internet giant has decided to treat them the same as terrorist groups like the Islamic State organization, the New York Times reports.

It is not too early, according to experts from radical movements in the United States. Two independent reports, published in February and April 2020, highlighted how Facebook had allowed a motley team of Americans to unite around the rallying cry Boogaloo, which is a reference to an Afro-Cuban musical movement of the 1960s On the social network, these groups - who called themselves BoojieBastards, Boojahadeen Memes or even Big Igloo Bois - were able to organize violent actions against the institutions and the police in favor of demonstrations against police and police violence. anti-containment movement.

Hawaiian shirt, skull mask and clown nose

It took the murder of a federal agent in Oakland, California, on May 30, that of a sheriff in Santa Cruz, six days later, and the arrest of a man - killed during his arrest - who had planned a hospital bombing to push Facebook to take action. In each of these three incidents, the Boogaloo had been invoked to justify them.

It is easier to identify a person who joins this movement than to define it as such. Generally, the “wooden Boogaloo” arrive at heavily armed demonstrations, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt over which they have donned a military jacket, decorated with certain distinctive signs specific to this nebula. To complete this disguise, they wear, on occasion, a skull mask on which is drawn a clown's nose. 

A veritable Prévert inventory of symbols that borrow both from the Internet subculture and from neo-Nazi imagery. For example, the Hawaiian shirt is a reference to a Hawaiian-inspired variant of the term Boogaloo - Big Luau - used online to escape possible censorship. The clown's nose is found in the iconography of certain groups of white supremacists to designate the “farce of multicultural societies”, underlines the Southern Poverty Law Center, an observatory of the American far right.

From 4Chan to Facebook

An outfit, a love for firearms and a tendency to violence, which soon earned the Boogaloo the media label of the extreme right group. The kinship is undeniable and American political figures like the former Republican candidate for Congress and declared supremacist Paul Nehlen have taken Boogaloo on their own. 

It is not, however, an ideologically homogeneous bloc and it took time to reach media maturity. Originally, the term Boogaloo was used on a forum dedicated to gun enthusiasts of the 4Chan community site to designate the hope that the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012 would lead to a second American civil war, according to a investigation by the Center for Studies on Terrorism and Extremism at the University of Middlebury in Vermont.

This word then turns into a meme on this forum frequented by libertarians, fierce defenders of the right to carry firearms, anarchists or racists of all stripes. This is where the ideological backbone of the Boogaloo is formed: it becomes a rallying cry for all those who call for an armed uprising against the State, notes the authors of a study published in February 2020 by the Network Contagion Institute, an American online hate research center.

In 2018-2019, the Boogaloo leaves its niche on 4Chan to launch itself in the big leagues on Facebook. The number of aficionado groups exchanging advice on the best way to prepare for confrontation with the authorities or circulating anarchist manifestos crammed with advice to make bombs is growing steadily, the Tech Transparency Project found, an American NGO which analyzed how the promoters of Boogaloo spread their web on Facebook. 

2020 and the spark of protests in the United States

But the start of 2020 marks a kind of “big night” for this nebula. “Wood boogaloo” made their first public appearance during a demonstration against restrictions on the right to bear arms in Virginia in late January. Then, between February and late April 2020, more than 100 groups, with tens of thousands of subscribers, appear on Facebook, notes the Tech Transparency Project. The Covid-19 pandemic and the containment measures that followed, then the demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement gave them the impression that the advent of the long-awaited second civil war was near. All it takes is a spark ...

And the “Boogaloo wood” are determined to give a boost. Hence their appearance alongside protesters against police violence when ideologically everything seems to separate them from the Black Lives Matter movement. But some authentically take the side of the black minorities because they see the fight against the State as “ethnically neutral”, underlines the site of investigation Bellingcat, which has dissected the diversity of the speech within the mobility Boogaloo. Others, the most extremist, see it only as a means to achieve their ends: "Sinking society into chaos to take power and establish a new fascist state," notes the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The hope of the experts in the fight against radical movements is that the great spring cleansing of Facebook will put an end to the online contagion of the Boogaloo. Deprived of their platform of choice, the “wooden boogaloos” will find it more difficult to organize. But “it's too little and too late,” fears Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, interviewed by the Guardian. His organization found that dozens of groups similar to those who had been banned have emerged. Facebook recognizes that we will have to be vigilant against activists, who will do everything to circumvent censorship. It is therefore a game of cat and mouse that promises. Except that the mouse is here armed to the teeth and ready to take action.

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