Almost four decades after officials dismantled the Order, a violent far-right group, experts see echoes in the far right of today.
They robbed an armored car outside a sprawling Seattle shopping mall.
They bombed a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and within weeks assassinated a Jewish talk radio host in Denver.
Then a month later, they plundered another armored car on a California highway in a spectacular daylight heist that netted more than $3.6 million. Continue reading.
Steven Carrillo’s path to the Boogaloo Bois shows the hate group is far more organized and dangerous than previously known.
It was 2:20 p.m. on June 6, 2020, and Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Air Force sergeant who belonged to the anti-government Boogaloo Bois movement, was on the run in the tiny mountain town of Ben Lomond, California.
With deputy sheriffs closing in, Carrillo texted his brother, Evan, asking him to tell his children he loved them and instructing him to give $50,000 to his fiancée. “I love you bro,” Carrillo signed off. Thinking the text message was a suicide note from a brother with a history of mental health troubles, Evan Carrillo quickly texted back: “Think about the ones you love.”
In fact, Steven Carrillo had a different objective, a goal he had written about on Facebook, discussed with other Boogaloo Bois and even scrawled out in his own blood as he hid from police that day. He wanted to incite a second Civil War in the United States by killing police officers he viewed as enforcers of a corrupt and tyrannical political order — officers he described as “domestic enemies” of the Constitution he professed to revere. Continue reading.
TORONTO — Canada on Wednesday declared the Proud Boys a terrorist entity, adding the far-right group to a list that includes al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Shabab inan effort to crack down on “ideologically motivated violent extremism,” described bythe country’s public safety minister as the “most significant threat to domestic security.”
The announcement by Public Safety Minister Bill Blair cameless than a month after some Proud Boys joined the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol after attending a rally by then-President Donald Trump in the hope of overturning the presidential election. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died in that attack.
It also followeda warning last week by the Department of Homeland Security about the heightened threat of “ideologically motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition” and “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.” Continue reading.
When the FBI arrested Edward “Jake” Lang on Jan. 16 for his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol attack, court documents show agents had followed a seemingly straightforward trail from his public social media to collect evidence. “THIS IS ME,” Lang wrote over one video that showed an angry mob confronting police officers outside the Capitol. The same post showed him trashing a police riot shield.
The government charged Lang with committing assault and other crimes, but the account of his activities spelled out in court papers doesn’t mention how the 25-year-old spent the 10 days between the riots and his capture: recruiting militia members to take up arms against the incoming Biden administration by way of an invitation-only group on the messaging app Telegram.
“Everyone needs to get 5 patriots in this group tonight that’s the goal 🙌🏻🇺🇸🗽,” Lang wrote in a chat on Jan. 9, one of more than 2,500 messages obtained by ProPublica. “We need each person to go out and fight for new members of this Militia like our lives depend on it.” Continue reading.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio had already publicized his plans to participate in the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. The 36-year-old Miami resident and national chairman of the Proud Boys posted on social media that he would direct small teams of his far-right group with a history of violence to wear black and fan out across Washington.
But when he arrived in D.C. on Jan. 4 ahead of the scheduled demonstrations, he said, “15 cop cars” swarmed his Honda Crosstour soon after he passed through the Third Street Tunnel. Tarrio was wanted on a misdemeanor charge from December accusing him of setting fire to a historic Black church’s Black Lives Matter banner.
During the traffic stop, authorities found high-capacity firearm magazines in his backpack, resulting in felony weapons charges, according to court records. And as he sat in a jail cell for 24 hours, Tarrio said, he thought about how he would need a lot of money to get out of this mess. Good lawyers, he said, don’t come cheap. Continue reading.
