Over the past month or so, multiple crimes and acts of violence have been attributed to men associated with online Boogaloo groups, including the murder of a police officer and an attempted terrorist bombing. “Boogaloo” — sometimes styled as Big Igloo or Big Luau — is code for a second Civil War, a take on the classic 1980s dance movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, and members of these groups are hoping to be on the front lines. Or so they say on the internet. They wear Hawaiian shirts (because “Big Luau”) and hoard weaponry in preparation for this coming Civil War, which won’t actually happen because probably no one is going to beg them to stay.
And it’s worked. One of the biggest offenders, Fenix Ammunition, went from an average of $4,000 in sales per day to $40,000 per day, after the company — and its owner, Justin Nazaroff — jumped on the Boogaloo bandwagon.
“It’s something that gun people enjoy joking about,” he says. Because sure, what’s more hilarious than murdering a bunch of people?
As The Trace points out, using humor to make radical ideologies more palatable to people who might otherwise be turned off by them is a common tactic, particularly on the far right. Rewind back to 2015, and we saw a whole lot of people trying to claim the anti-Semitism and racism on 4chan and other right-wing sites and message boards was just totally ironic and not at all serious. Fast-forward a few years later and they’re marching down the streets of Charlottesville angrily chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
It wasn’t a joke. It was never a joke. It was a purposeful erosion of societal norms. Once you can actually say or even type a racial slur “as a joke,” it’s a lot easier to jump on the White Power train than it might have been before.
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Article URL : https://www.wonkette.com/gun-companies-get-in-on-the-boogaloo-market-to-dopes-who-want-another-civil-war