I live in the middle of NYC, which has had several scenes of looting not 30 min from me broadcast to the entire nation, and I haven't heard of any such movement here. Maybe this is my east coast classist bubble, but I'd appreciate being educated on this matter?
So there’s the boogaloo movement. There’s the Calexit campaign that was propped up by Russia in California last election. Probably you’re not seeing it because you’re not being targeted on social media for it and not going those parts of the internet. I really hope Zuckerberg was serious about policing foreign governments from buying ads on their platforms.
For the record there are some of us who actually have uninfluenced interest in breaking apart the US either into separate countries or at least geographic regions with a significantly weakened federal government modeled after the Articles of Confederation from 1781.
My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems.
So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
There's been a lot of reporting on it as they've stepped up action over the last year. Did you not see the news stories about these individuals stationing inside the Michigan Capitol with assault rifles?
"Boogaloo" is a longstanding meme that refers to a possible upcoming civil war, that the media has recently misconstrued into a movement trying to cause a civil war.
I got about 1/5th through before I couldn't help but wonder if this was a satire site. He's uncomfortable with decades-old common internet acronyms, and unable to recognize a joke, taking several used in the article completely seriously.
One of the comments there puts it better than I can:
> Honestly, most of it is genuinely trolling. I don’t go on it anymore (used to more often), but really the whole thing is a meme. Sure, a few people take it seriously, but I have no doubt it is no statistically different than any other group that has a subculture.
> 4chans entire subculture exists to start trends, meme, and get a reaction. The boogaloo movement was always a meme and it is only now being legitimized because of mainstream news coverage. Now, people who aren’t about of the Chan subculture see it and start to believe in it legitimately.. when that never was the case to begin with.
> They did this with the “OK” symbol, Waterproof Iphones, TayTweets, and most recently Boogaloo.
> Now they are doing it with #goBaldForBLM (or at least trying to).
> Just kind of sad to see a credible investigative journalism site constantly spending time to focus on 4chan.. when it’s trolls.. and the only people who take it seriously are the ones who read about it through the lens of an article.
It's the media not understanding the internet and creating their own boogeyman.
Err.. I hate to break it to you, but the Chan trolling culture has been used a a deliberate way of pushing extreme views into the mainstream for a long time now.
Look no further than Pizzagate and now QAnon. Boogaloo may have started out like that but people quickly made it a real thing long before mainstream media jumped on board.
The whole "oh it's only trolling, can't you take a joke" is just a front used for people to shield their true beliefs behind.
Here's a criminal charge[1] against one Boogaloo person. I'd note this sentence: "During the rally LYNAM stated their group was not for joking around"
