A leaked September 29 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intelligence report prepared by the Dallas, Texas, field office warns that leading up to the November election, “boogaloo adherents” and “militia violent extremists” are increasing “violent and criminal activity” in the Dallas area.
The assessment was made the same day President Donald Trump, in the first presidential debate with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, refused to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, instead instructing the fascistic street gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
“Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem... this is a leftwing problem,” Trump added.
The intelligence document, leaked to the Nation ’s national security reporter Ken Klippenstein, confirms that the federal government continues to downplay the threat violent far-right groups pose to the general population. It also demonstrates that homicidal terrorist violence overwhelmingly emanates not from amorphous “Antifa” or “insurrectionary anarchist” groups, as the New York Times recently argued, but from far-right anti-communist and racist groups. These include the Proud Boys, “Boogaloo” and “back the blue” militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters (III).
A database published in July of this year by researchers at the Washington, DC think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that in the last 25 years there have been zero people killed in anti-fascist attacks. Conversely, the researchers linked 329 victims to right-wing violence since 1994.
Sourcing for the FBI report was based on social media activity, news reports, government surveillance of text communications and information provided by two well-placed “FBI human sources.” One of these, it appears, has been working with the agency for three years.
The unclassified report states: “Two human sources were critical to the key analytical judgments in the product. One of the sources has reported various threats since 2017, and some of the information reported has been corroborated.”
It continues: “Another human source with direct access provided context on the anti-government or anti-authority threat due to historically providing corroborated anti-government or anti-authority extremists reporting in the FBI Dallas AOR [Area of Responsibility].”
The report noted that in June 2020, one of the FBI sources had “direct access” to “self-identified boogaloo adherents” who had been seen in downtown Dallas at multiple protests. One of these adherents told the source they would “hunt anti-fascist anarchists and kill any Dallas looters.”
Approximately four months later, days before he was assassinated by US Marshals and local police, Michael Reinoehl expressed his fear that right-wing groups and the police were “hunting me.”
“There’s nightly posts of the hunt and where they’re going to be hunting,” he told an interviewer. “They made a post saying the deer are going to feel lucky this year because it’s open season on Michael right now.”
The level of police infiltration of far-right militia groups must not be underestimated or dismissed. Just over a month ago, two Boogaloo bois, Michael Solomon, 30, of New Brighton, Minnesota, and Benjamin Teeter, 22, of Hampstead, North Carolina, were indicted on federal charges of attempting to provide weapons to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist fundamentalist group, in exchange for funding for their local “boojahideen.”
The “Hamas” contact was, in fact, a confidential informant, who arranged a hotel meeting on June 28 with Teeter, Solomon and an undercover FBI agent posing as a more senior member of Hamas. At the meeting, the pair agreed to supply silencers as well as unregistered gun parts to the informant/agent in exchange for money. In an affidavit, the US government alleges the four shared their “anti-US views” and Teeter and Solomon expressed their desire to become “mercenaries” for Hamas.
In subsequent meetings over the summer, Teeter and Solomon are alleged to have discussed targeting a county courthouse for destruction, as it was “a symbol of the unjust laws that America upholds.” On July 30, the pair allegedly delivered five suppressors to the undercover agent for $1,800. Both are facing federal charges for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. They face 12-14 years in prison.
Fellow Boogaloo boi Air Force Staff Sergeant Steven Carrillo, 32, remains in custody awaiting to see if he will face the death penalty for his alleged role in the killing of Federal Protective Security Officer David Patrick Underwood, 53, on May 29, as well as Santa Cruz County Sheriff Sergeant Damon Gutzwiller on June 6. The day after Underwood was killed, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Chad Wolf called the shooting “an outright assault on our law-enforcement community,” while his deputy secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, called it an “act of domestic terrorism.”
At the press conference, Wolf did not name any groups potentially responsible, except one. “The investigation is very early on,” he said. “We have seen reports out there that a number of different groups are involved in these, whether it’s Antifa or it’s others.”
The Boogaloo movement, whose followers refer to themselves as “Boogaloo bois,” “boojahideen” or simply “boog,” began as a meme that was shared across internet forums, including 4chan and the largest Nazi board in the world, Iron March, in 2013. Members are overwhelmingly ex-military, racist and share an apocalyptic worldview that understands their antisocial actions as the catalyst to a “second American revolution” that will culminate in a race war ending in the establishment of an anarcho-capitalist fascist state.
In a New York Times interview from mid-August, 39-year-old Kris Hunter of Waco, Texas, a self-proclaimed Boogaloo boi and member of the “United States Boogalier Corps,” estimates that “80 percent” of the members of his group are military veterans. Unlike other right-wing militias in the US, such as the Oath Keepers, Boogaloo ideology is virulently anti-police, leading to more ex-military followers as opposed to former cops.
Despite the Boogaloo movement possessing a clear anti-government, violent ideology that calls on adherents to use the cover of anti-police protests to carry out terrorist attacks against property and state agents, and its decentralized cell-based organizational structure, the report warns only of the increased threat of “violent lone actors.”
While a relatively new formation, the Boogaloo movement shares many characteristics of previous right-wing anti-government militias, drawing inspiration from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Anders Breivik, the Norwegian fascist who carried out the mass murder of Labor Party youth in July 2011.
The proliferation of flowery pastel Hawaiian shirts among members, generally worn under body armor, first began to appear at far-right anti-lockdown rallies this past spring in Lansing, Michigan; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Denver, Colorado and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The intelligence report notes that on April 30, “two armed individuals who both identified themselves as Duncan Lemp... patrolled a Dallas parking lot near [a business] to protest the business being cited for reopening in violation of local and state stay-at-home orders.”
Duncan Lemp, 21, was fatally shot by members of the Montgomery County Police Department’s SWAT team on March 12, 2020 during a no-knock 4:30 a.m. raid on his apartment. Lemp, a software developer, lent his expertise to far-right groups, including the Three Percenters, helping to design and maintain websites. He has become a symbol for the group and a way for members to feign solidarity with anti-police protesters. Boogaloo bois have been spotted at demonstrations carrying signs with the names of Duncan Lemp as well as Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner.