Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists

[babylonsister]

https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/


Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists
by Mia Bloom
May 30, 2020

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A report by Vice News about right-wing infiltrators in the protests notes “hardcore ‘accelerationists’ … are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people.”

Accelerationists follow the blueprint laid out by neo-Nazi James Mason in The Siege (not the film with Denzel Washington) whose writing inspires Charles Manson types of killing sprees. Mason, living in obscurity in Denver until he was brought out of retirement by Atomwaffen, a right wing Neo Nazi group. The goal of accelerationism is to burn everything down and to use violence both to target enemies and instigate an overt and extreme response from the government. Their strategy echoes Gustavo Gorriti’s writings about the Shining Path terrorist group that the movement’s “goal was to provoke blind, excessive reactions from the state… Blows laid on indiscriminately would also provoke among those unjustly or disproportionately affected an intense resentment of the government.”

Similarly accelerationists hope to “demolish the state apparatus that stands between them and a white-dominated future.” And the White Supremacists here could be of a different orientation too – organized to discredit the protestors with no clear or deliberate vision for greater political change in mind.

Bellingcat has documented the involvement in the protests of a largely white, and far-right movement called the Boogaloo, whose leaders “expect, even hope, that the warmer weather will bring armed confrontations with law enforcement, and will build momentum towards a new civil war in the United States.” “As protests over the death of George Floyd heated up in Minneapolis on May 26th, members of Boogaloo groups across Facebook considered it a call to arms,” wrote Bellingcat’s Robert Evans.

On Twitter, Evans has said he does not think the Boogaloo group is behind the destruction of property. Vice News’ Tess Owen wrote about the Bugaloo Bois, anti-government extremists recognizable by their Hawaiian shirts, that “in addition to their physical presence at the protests, the #boogaloo hashtag on social media has been flooded with memes in the last couple days egging on violence, and talking about how they hope this is the beginning of a civil war.”

Sounds like a subplot of the X files, sounds unlikely, or too conspiratorial…maybe. But recall the Russian Internet Agency posted ads and pages for demonstrations for Black Lives Matter as well as Pro Trump anti immigrant groups on Facebook in the months leading up to the 2016 election. The protests have changed the national conversation from over 100,000 dead and counting to rising violence and chaos on American streets. Tossing gasoline onto an already explosive situation, President Donald Trump tweeted and posted on Facebook about the George Floyd protests, including one in which the president warned, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The president tried to walk back the tweet later saying he had no idea of the racist use of that phrase to support extrajudicial killings by police. Yet he can’t deny that several hours after experts pointed out the origins and meaning of the phrase, the official White House twitter account reposted Trump’s statement. Then on Saturday, the president retweeted a post saying, “In an ironic twist of fate, CNN HQ is being attacked by the very riots they promoted as noble & just.”

It is worth reiterating what Loren DeJonge Schulman argued, that even if the protests include outsider participation to foment chaos and spark an overreaction it doesn’t mean that the driving sentiment launched by these protests should be minimized or ignored.

If the protests are being infiltrated by police provocateurs, accelerationists or other bad actors, we can expect a lot more violence in the lead up to the 2020 election.