Facebook Inc stepped up the battle
against the amorphous anti-government "boogaloo" movement on
Tuesday, banning accounts of adherents who encouraged violence
during recent anti-racism protests across the United States.
The social media company for the first time designated a
subset of boogaloo followers as a dangerous organization,
marking them for the same sanctions Facebook applies to
250 white supremacist groups and organisations it categorizes as
supporting terrorism around the world.
The move came four days after Attorney General William Barr
established a Justice Department task force to counter violent
anti-government extremists including boogaloo as well as the
left-wing antifa movement.
The boogaloo movement's name is inspired by the 1984
breakdancing film "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." Followers
suggest that, just as the movie was a sequel, any coming
conflict would be the sequel to the American Civil War.
"This violent network is banned from having a presence on
our platform and we will remove content praising, supporting or
representing it," Facebook said in a blog post. "It is actively
promoting violence against civilians, law enforcement and
government officials and institutions."
Facebook said it its policy was a blunt instrument that
included removing praise for the banned network and shared
pictures, so that many who thought posts were funny will also
see their material taken down. The targeted network includes 106
Facebook groups and 220 accounts, and another 400 groups were
also removed for hosting similar content.
Prosecutors have linked boogaloo followers to several
violent incidents during the recent wave of protests across the
United States following the May police killing of George Floyd
in Minneapolis.
Two men inspired by the boogaloo movement were charged in
California in the killing of a courthouse guard during a night
of nearby protests.
In Las Vegas, three people who prosecutors say are members
of the boogaloo movement were arrested and charged with planning
to incite violence and destruction during protests.
Evidence of US law enforcement's concern over boogaloo
emerged in hacked documents published June 19 by the leaks site
Distributed Denial of Secrets. Dozens of analysis documents
concluded that the term is used by racially motivated and
far-right actors encouraging violence against police.
The Southern Poverty Law Center advocacy group said the term
boogaloo "is regularly deployed by white nationalists and
neo-Nazis who want to see society descend into chaos so that
they can come to power and build a new fascist state".
FAST-CHANGING SYMBOLS
Instead of using widely known symbols, boogaloo imagery
evolves rapidly, even shedding the word boogaloo in favour of
homonyms like big igloo and big luau - and then adopting new
symbols like igloos and Hawaiian shirts.
"Members of this network seek to recruit others within the
broader boogaloo movement, sharing the same content online and
adopting the same offline appearance as others in the movement
to do so," Facebook said.
The company said it anticipated a complicated cycle of
objections, evasions and evolutions as some of the banned
account holders come back under new names.
Before Facebook's move, Reuters spoke with two
administrators of a boogaloo Facebook page called Big Igloo
Bois, created about a year ago, which has nearly 37,000
followers. Both are military veterans, one in his 40s from
Pennsylvania and the second in his 30s from North Carolina.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, they rejected
accusations that the boogaloo movement is extremist or
violent.
"We're vehemently opposed to the idea of using violence to
get your point across. We get kind of shoehorned into the idea
of being violent extremists because we support the Second
Amendment," one of the administrators said in reference to the
US Constitution's right to bear arms.
The Justice Department in a memo to law enforcement and
prosecutors said extremists including boogaloo adherents had
committed acts of violence.
"Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress,
but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and
coercion," Barr said.
The Big Igloo Bois Facebook account appeared to have been
among those taken down on Tuesday. Last week, one of the group's
administrators said: "Everyday I'm happy that we're still on
Facebook."