Tom Lonero
11/09/2020
EXTREMISM IN AMERICA
Why whats going on today is unlike anything in our lifetime
PHOTOS BY: Thomas Lonero
When the plot to kidnap the sitting Governor of Michigan by a group called the Wolverine Watchmen was uncovered, some of us probably asked ourselves, “Is this really happening?” I know I did. The group was deemed dangerous enough for the FBI to infiltrate. Although it’s believed the group had only formed this year, it’s widely known that many of the members had been visible participants in the militia movement in Michigan for years, if not decades. Some members have also been tied to the Boogaloo movement, AKA the Boogaloo Bois.
They are a group that doesn’t claim any organizational structure but they sure seem to have all the makings of an organization. So far they’ve been involved with:
· Plotting to kidnap or kill a sitting Governor.
· Directly inciting Minneapolis riots after the death of George Floyd. A member shot up the police precinct that incited mobs to later loot and burn it. He was arrested in Texas.
· Numerous members have been arrested of Federal gun charges.
· One Michigan man died in a shootout when they attempted to arrest him. It’s alleged he also had white separatist ties.
· A police officer was killed in Oakland CA by a member who was also an active duty Air Force Staff Sergeant. Contact between the Sergeant and members nationwide were said to include plans to attack other law enforcement officers and government facilities.
· Three Boogaloo members were arrested in Las Vegas on domestic terrorism charges after looking to take advantage of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. They made bombs they intended to detonate at protests. All three were either current reservists or recently became ex-military.
· Armed members have stormed the State Capitals in Michigan and North Carolina as well as the Federal Courthouse in Portland Oregon demanding States open back up. Other States like Kentucky, Pennsylvania and New York have experienced similar armed events at government buildings.
· A Maryland man was shot and killed by police during a no knock warrant for illegal firearm possession, His family insists he was not an extremist but members of the Boogaloo movement have claimed him as their own. On-line social media posts threaten a day a reckoning for his killing. His own social media posts indicate a connection.
· At least two members of the movement attempted to join Hamas. Their plan was to raise funds to support the movement. They are now charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terror organization. They also were involved with the riots in Minneapolis. It’s alleged they belong to a sub-group of the Boogaloo movement called the “Boojahideen”. The term “White Jihad” has been used in social platforms to push their extremist rhetoric.
So who are the Boogaloo Bois? According to them, they are individuals who seek to bring about a second American Civil War they call the “Boogaloo”. Their enemy is the Federal government and left wing political opponents, which is why their reported involvement and support of a left wing organization like the BLM movement, is suspect.
The unorganized, seemingly better organized than we are made to think group, claim they are not built on racist ideology. Yet numerous members use racist and bigoted language along multiple social media platforms that implies there is a hidden agenda. Experts on militias and domestic terrorism point out the ‘Boogaloo’ started as a racist (1) meme. Yes, some members are minorities. The only requirement to join appears to be a commitment to help facilitate the end of the Federal Government no matter what color one may be. How can the two facts coincide?
Those who call themselves Boogaloo come from groups like the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, the Michigan Militia or similar groups. They can be neo-Nazis, black militants and members of the KKK, as long as they leave that ideology at the door and remember the main requirement is the defeat of the Federal Government and any leftist influence. For that reason they may be more of an ideology. They seem to be building an alliance of sorts through online resources. Ultimately, organization of the Boogaloo Bois may prove inevitable. Some members have already been called leaders.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Oath Keepers are believed to have a (2) membership around 25-35 thousand. If certain players were able to coordinate efforts between multiple groups then all of a sudden you could be looking at between 100-200 thousand members of fringe groups working together on some level. The Oath Keepers claim the most active duty Police, Military and First Responders. Their ability to work from the inside could make them a threat. That doesn’t mean all members of other groups actively participate or engage with the Boogaloo movement, but most members of other groups consider themselves anti-government so collaboration and cooperation is happening on some level. For comparison, National Guard Troops number around 450,000. Police number between 600-700 thousand. What side are the active duty police or military that pledged to a particular group? The numbers mean that within the US we have a private army splintered into different factions that are 25% the size of law enforcement and military. At this time not all groups get along. Some groups have accused the Oath Keepers of (3) not being racist enough.
With significant Boogaloos espousing racist ideology how can they claim they support BLM? The simple answer is they don’t. They support anti-police. There’s a difference. Their intent is to cause mayhem. It’s not to bring about better sociological reforms for the black community. Consider the story of the Trojan horse. Images of fires burning and precincts destroyed take away sympathy from the white community. There’s a video online of the first major building attacked in Minneapolis during the protests. It was an Advance Autoparts store that was looted and burned to the ground, but first a white man with a gas mask, now referred to as “umbrella man”, is seen busting out all the windows. He avoided real participation in the BLM protest except for this solo event. Protesters actually confronted the man to ask him to stop his actions, but instead he became aggressive toward them. Breaking the windows absolutely worked in inciting an already angry mob.
It’s a simple but effective playbook. Incite; use the protest platform. Pass blame while taking no blame. What’s unclear is why BLM would ever consider an alliance. It should be clear that while both movements are anti-government that the objectives are completely different. Since the Bois are at best a loosely organized movement, it’s possibly only low level members get involved thinking they are there as actual support. It’s easier to pitch an idea if you believe it. There’s plenty of online racist rhetoric leading up to any protest that indicates there’s another piece to their involvement though. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s interesting that when Boogaloos have been permitted to participate where there’s also been rioting, there have been no recorded confrontation between the provocateurs and the Boogaloos who claim they are there to protect the event. Confrontations recorded have only been with protesters or protest organizers. It seems suspicious.
In a way, the BLM Movement has been a gift to White Nationalists. Not only does it appear the media, protesters and the public are being manipulated. It’s become a real recruitment opportunity. If you pretend on one hand to help the BLM movement it becomes easier to recruit police and military with the other hand or with a different group.
The psychology behind mob mentality and the manipulation of large crowds is well studied going back over a hundred years by such notables as Gustav Le Bon, Sigmund Freud and more recently Stephen Reicher. It doesn’t take much thought or planning to incite a mob that feels they have legitimate grievances. Organizers can lose control very quickly if they do not keep protesters moving and engaged with productive dialog. It’s no accident that many of the bad actors wait till after the organizers end their participation before they then move the crowds off into a different direction. There’s a scene in the movie Animal House where the late actor Doug Kenny (who’s playing the character Stork) steals the baton at the parade from the bandleader to divert the band into a alley that dead ends. It’s a scene that pokes fun at how easy it is to control a crowd. Controlling a really angry crowd is even easier. A small group with a different agenda can easily pit main protagonists against their main rival. It just takes a nudge like breaking windows at an Advance Autoparts. The Bois and other groups may be playing both sides against each other. Although some groups have minority members, they can never be equals in any White Nationalist movement if their main objective of bringing down the government is realized. With vast numbers of the Bois having ties to Neo-Nazi groups and Militias that only accept White Nationalists, rest assured the true nature of the movement isn’t to help the BLM movement. Bringing down the government may be their first priority but going back to a white separatist country is the ultimate objective for many militia members.
Throughout history, the other side has infiltrated protests ever since there were protests. Kings and Queens mastered crowd manipulation long ago by placing agents in among the crowds to focus the attention of the crowd elsewhere. (4) Gustave Le Bon, considered a foremost expert in crowd and herd behavior, believed that a collective mind would always emerge due to a crowd’s organization. If you can change the mood of a crowd with simple actions like angry words and damaging of property then the crowd becomes subject to manipulation from those trying to facilitate an often different agenda.
Violent mobs turn the support of sympathizers away from protesters and their agendas. When businesses get burned down and looted, then it’s easier to justify bringing in all the kings men like the police or even the National Guard. While many still sympathize over the original reason the protest started in the first place, it’s easier now to turn a blind eye. Who will the average person sympathize with? The storeowner who lost everything or the mob who burned down the business? A single person can affect and instigate a crowd. In turn that affects the police, news media and those at home watching it on CNN. It’s a militia recruiter’s dream.
Black Lives Matter Protests, June 1st, 2020
The Rise of the Militia’s
In order to understand where we are today we have to go back a few decades to see where most of this began.
Modern day militias and movements like “Boogaloo” started to become a legitimate threat soon after two big events; one being an 11-day siege at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in late 1992 and the other being a 51-day siege on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas in early 1993.
At Ruby Ridge, US Marshalls had shown up at the residence of Randy Weaver and his family to serve a bench warrant against him for not showing up for a hearing on firearms charges. Weaver said he had been told three different dates and had become afraid there was a conspiracy against him. He refused to surrender to authorities. During the authorities reconnaissance of the property and prior to attempting to serve the warrant, Weaver’s 14-year-old son along with a Deputy, were killed in a shootout. Weaver’s wife was later killed by sniper fire. Eventually the standoff was resolved and the remaining family members surrendered. In court the Federal Government attempted to press first-degree murder charges on Weaver and one of his associates who had been in the original shootout with Weavers deceased son. The courts disagreed and acquitted everyone on all charges except Weavers original charge of missing his court date. He did 18-months in jail and paid a 10,000 dollar fine.
Less than six months later the FBI laid siege on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas that resulted in the deaths of 86 Branch Davidians and 4 ATF agents. Originally the FBI was attempting to execute a warrant over sexual abuse and illegal firearms allegations. Part of the reason the storming of the compound was authorized by then Attorney General Janet Reno was a rumor, which was being spread throughout the FBI, that Militia Groups were on their way to Waco to either help the Davidians or go after the Davidians. That rumor never materialized. The FBI had also reported to Reno, who had only become Attorney General 10 days after the siege had started, that kids were being abused inside the compound even though that allegation was never fully proven. Reno later expressed regret for giving the order to storm the compound.
Over the next two years, Militia recruitment would skyrocket.
Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial
Just a tiny moment in time
On April 19th, 1995 at 9:01 I honestly couldn't tell you what I was doing or where I was. It’s possible I was sleeping. My view of the world at that time was fairly naive. MTV was still a thing. Alternative Rock ruled the airwaves. Friends, Seinfeld, Roseanne and the X-files were top shows. San Francisco had won its 5th Super Bowl. Michael Jordan came out of retirement after his baseball hiatus. Windows 95 was released, DVD's became a thing and E-bay had just started. Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Bill Clinton were world leaders. Technology was going through the roof it seemed but the world still appeared relatively normal. At this stage in my life my world was still small. I hadn't done much traveling and I was struggling with understanding who I was and where I was going. I had two very young daughters and had separated from my ex a few years earlier. She and I had moved on from each other and I had been relegated to a part time dad. I had a business I had been trying to make work, but it was failing. In truth, I wasn't in a good place in my life. What was about to happen would remind me that I had more to be grateful for than I realized. I don’t like that other peoples tragedies remind me I should be more grateful and yet there it is.
On April 19th, 1995 at 9:03 am, the world for the most part... changed for everyone. Even if we couldn't see the bigger picture at that time of the consequences of such an action, it still forever changed. The way the government did business and perceived threats changed. Laws changed. Our personal privacy changed. American eyes became a little wider open and the worldview of the United States was dramatically revised. Till this day, on April 19th at 9:02 am, church bells ring and people still stop what they are doing or pull over in their vehicles to give 168 seconds of silence.
Some of those people are survivors or maybe they actually lost loved ones in what is still the largest domestic terror event caused by an American citizen. At 9:02 am a massive bomb went off and decimated 1/3 of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Around 90 minutes after the explosion Timothy J. McVeigh was pulled over for a traffic stop because his vehicle didn't have a license plate. In 2001 he was executed.
Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial
Recruitment Needs Manipulation and Planning
Timothy McVeigh earned a Bronze Star for his service along the Kuwaiti border during the first Iraq war. His commanders suggested he could be a candidate for Green Beret training but McVeigh never followed through. After his military service, McVeigh spent significant time at gun shows and hanging out with militia groups in Michigan. Inspiration for how to carry out his attack came from a book called the (5) Turner Diaries. It’s a fictional dystopian novel about a white supremacist revolution in a future that overthrows the Government. It echoes the dogma embraced by today’s Militias. In the book, a truck bomb similar to the one McVeigh built is used for similar purposes.
White Nationalist groups have held the book sacred and the writer of the book, William Pierce, became the leader of the National Alliance, which at one time had been called the most dangerous and well-organized neo-Nazi group in U.S. History. After his death in 2002, the group splintered and lost significant members but around 2017, largely due to current political rhetoric, recruiting picked up and they now claim thousands who have shown up at their events and rallies. They too are Boogaloos.
The Turner Diaries also inspired Dylann Roof who murdered nine innocent black parishioners in cold blood in South Carolina in 2015. The hope was to start a race war. (6) It's claimed the book has inspired more than 200 murders.
The group that McVeigh had held in high regard, the National Alliance, had been around since 1974. In 1995 on April 19th at 9:02 am, their dreams had become realized with the blood of McVeigh's 168 victims, 19 of which were children. McVeigh later claimed that the FBI raid on both Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian complex in Texas served as the moment he decided to plan out the attack. He claimed both incidences were overreaching by the government.
At 9:03 am, on that fateful morning, we became aware no one was safe and living was a daily reprieve. The naive notion that life was somehow fair or that racism and bigotry was mostly a thing of the past would come to light over the coming weeks as the motivations for McVeigh's heinous crime became apparent. After the attack, many who had followed in the same footprints McVeigh had walked in began to distance themselves from the militias and the rhetoric they had followed in cult like fashion. McVeigh, after all, looked exactly like many of them when they looked in the mirror. The wake up call was short lived. 9/11 came along and gave new reasons to hate and justify bigotry. It moved the needle away from the Oklahoma bombing as the largest terrorist attack on American soil but still holds the distinction of being the largest homegrown domestic terrorist attack. 9/11, to a degree, took away white America's concerns about their white neighbors and instead focused them on others who were culturally and religiously different. Governmental agencies will say they never stopped focusing on domestic terrorism, but the general publics attention span moved away from white America to anyone who resembled Middle Eastern descent... even if they just looked Middle Eastern. 9/11 helped bigotry and racism and militias grow, while McVeigh's act just over 6 years earlier, made many in the movement stop and question the roots that gave rise to a McVeigh.
The next big recruiting event, even bigger than 9/11, was the election of the first Black President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. The conspiracies leading up to the election and those that came after he was in office; like the conspiracy pushed by then citizen Trump, that Obama was not born in the United States fanned the flames of discontent. Recruitment rose dramatically throughout the White Nationalist community. Groups like the Oath Keepers who claim to be non-racist were born directly out of the election of Obama and the conspiracies surrounding him. That newly energized and growing White Nationalist movement is the same base that played a pivotal role in Trumps the narrow victory in 2016. It appears the right wing media acted as the inside man to push the conspiracies to an already angry ‘at home’ mob. Preparation for where we are now may have started as far back as Barack Obama’s first campaign as President.
9/11 World Trade Center Memorial
What makes today different?
In 2020, we find ourselves in a vastly different world than existed prior to April 19th, 1995, but the underlying disease of racism seems more prevalent now than back then. The groups today have only changed names not objectives.
My personal experience when I had visited the Oklahoma Memorial in 2010 was one of somber remembrance. The Gates of Time were striking in their poignant philosophy regarding the passage of time and the changes we experience in our lives. It reminds change can happen in the blink of an eye and that some change is far from good. The 168 empty chairs (19 of them child size) are heartbreaking. The names of over 600 survivors, inscribed in four granite tablets saved from the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building, is a reminder that even in the face of great evil and pain we somehow still manage to survive and move on.
In the Turner Diaries, anyone who was a "race traitor" would be marked for planned mass murder the neo-Nazi's believed would happen after they defeated the American Government. Yes, there are militia members and Boogaloo Bois who view anyone who speaks against them out as race traitors. They believe those who continue to speak out will one day be pulled out of their homes and dragged out into the street on a day of reckoning they refer to as the ‘Day of the Rope’ just as it happened in the Turner Diaries.
Since 2017 the (7) National Alliance neo-Nazi group are actively once again recruiting and growing. It’s been energized and organized behind new leadership. Many forget it was the same group McVeigh aspired to be a part of. Many forget McVeigh and Terry Nichols hung out with militias in Michigan just like the Wolverine Watchmen. Sure, after Oklahoma many groups learned to not push or advertise racist agendas and today instead concentrate on their anti-government message but are they really much different than Pierce’s National Alliance? Groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters or even the Wolverine Watchmen are just reincarnations of past groups preaching similar antigovernment rhetoric. They follow similar pathways born out of dogma William Pierce preached. Now, with the Boogaloo ideology, they may have something that helps binds them together. They now also believe they have a man in the Whitehouse that supports them. Those two things are what make what we are seeing today unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our lifetime.
Something’s coming. We all feel it. The tension on the strings can only get so tight before it snaps. COVID contributes to the tension by putting financial stress on poorer white populations. In 2009, the mortgage crisis placed a similar financial burden on many Americans. Both time periods emboldened militias who spewed conspiracies that resulted in increased recruitment.
In 1995, I didn’t see Oklahoma City happening. In 2001, I didn’t see 9/11 happening. In 2020, how can we not see something big is about to happen? The Election is sure to be a catalyst for whatever is coming. The question then becomes: What, if anything, can we do to stop it?
1 https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/06/05/boogaloo-started-racist-meme
2 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/
4 Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 1995), 24 and 41.
5 https://icct.nl/app/uploads/2016/09/ICCT-Berger-The-Turner-Legacy-September2016-2.pdf
6 J.M. Berger, The Turner Legacy: The Storied Origins and Enduring Impact of White Nationalism’s Deadly Bible; Counter Terrorism Strategic Communications Project. September 2016
