# Boogaloo The *word* — the linguistic-and-meme-aesthetic dimension paired with the existing organizational entry [[Boogaloo Movement]]. This entry tracks the *vocabulary* and its rhetorical work; the organizational entry tracks the actual movement-and-personnel-and-incident structure. The term descends from a specific sequel-comedy convention: *Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo* (the 1984 sequel to the 1984 breakdance film *Breakin'*) became, via Internet-meme convention, the canonical example of *unnecessary sequel with an over-the-top subtitle*. By the early 2010s on 4chan and adjacent boards, *X 2: Electric Boogaloo* had become a stock phrase for *the second installment of any X*. Applied to the prospect of a second [[American Civil War]], the joke construction *Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo* compressed the absurdism (the speaker is "joking") with the substantive content (the speaker is anticipating actual civil war). By 2018–2019 the vocabulary had migrated from joke-register to operational-paramilitary-subculture vocabulary; the *Boogaloo* alone, without the *Civil War 2* prefix, came to refer to the anticipated armed insurrection. The vocabulary subsequently acquired *linguistic-camouflage layers*: as platform content-moderation pressured the explicit term *boogaloo*, users adopted homophone-coded variants — *Big Igloo* (boog→big igloo), *Big Luau* (boog→bo-oog→Hawaiian luau), *Boog* alone — that retained in-group recognition while evading keyword-based moderation. The Hawaiian aesthetic — *aloha shirts* / *boogaloo bois* iconography — emerged from the *Big Luau* variant and became the visual-recognition signature. ## What the term does linguistically Three interlocking linguistic features make *boogaloo* a high-fidelity case study in dissident-right linguistic-camouflage strategy: **1. The joke-register cover.** The original *Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo* construction is *funny* — it leverages the absurd-sequel-naming convention to discuss something serious in a register that maintains plausible-deniability about whether the speaker is *actually* anticipating civil war. The joke-register is the original cover. **2. The homophone-camouflage layer.** When platform-moderation pressured the explicit term, users moved to homophone-coded variants. *Big Igloo* and *Big Luau* are *not* arbitrary — they sound similar enough to *boogaloo* to function as recognition-tokens for in-group members while reading as innocent-content for outsiders and automated systems. The migration is documented in detail in Tech Transparency Project, ADL, and academic-extremism-research work. **3. The visual-aesthetic complement.** The Hawaiian shirt aesthetic — directly linked to the *Big Luau* variant — provides a *visual* recognition system that doesn't require any text at all. A man in an aloha shirt at a paramilitary-coded gathering is a recognized boogaloo-identifier without the word being spoken or written. The visual layer is *deeper* camouflage than the verbal — even if all word-variants get moderated, the visual aesthetic remains. ## The aesthetic-and-cultural cluster The full boogaloo aesthetic-vocabulary cluster includes: - **Hawaiian shirts / aloha shirts** — primary visual marker; documented in detail across the 2019–2020 wave - **Igloo iconography** — the *Big Igloo* variant produced igloo-shaped patches, flags, and tattoos - **Boog / boogaloo bois** — verbal in-group member self-naming - **"It's so over"** / **"It's just begun"** — standard verbal-affirmation phrases - **Hawaiian / igloo-coded patches on tactical gear** — the operational-aesthetic version - **The roman numeral III combined with boogaloo iconography** — overlap with the Three-Percenter militia-aesthetic cluster - **The crossed-arrows / hawaiian-pattern flag** — unofficial movement banner - **Pepe-and-frog memes with boogaloo coding** — the broader meme-ecosystem connection The cluster is sufficiently developed that ADL, SPLC, and FBI domestic-terrorism-monitoring tracks it as a recognizable extremism-aesthetic category. ## What the vocabulary signals substantively Three substantive commitments are signaled (with varying degrees of explicit endorsement) by deployment of boogaloo vocabulary: **1. Anticipation of armed civil conflict.** The vocabulary's compressed claim is that armed civil conflict in the United States is *coming* — whether soon (some accelerationist variants) or at some future inevitable moment (more diffuse variants). The user is positioning themselves as *prepared for* rather than *in opposition to* this anticipated conflict. **2. Identification with one specific side.** Boogaloo vocabulary is *not* civil-war-neutral — it identifies the speaker with a specific political-ideological position (broadly: anti-government, libertarian-or-far-right, often racially-coded though with significant variation). The vocabulary signals which side the speaker is *on* in the anticipated conflict. **3. Operational-paramilitary preparedness.** Boogaloo deployment is typically paired with *operational* preparedness — firearm acquisition and training, tactical-gear acquisition, paramilitary-skills practice, sometimes formal-organization participation. The vocabulary is not purely speculative; it accompanies tangible preparation. The variation across these commitments matters. Some boogaloo-vocabulary users are *fully* operational-paramilitary-aspirational; others are *primarily* online-aesthetic-coded with limited operational-tangibility; the boundary is fuzzy and case-by-case. ## Documented incidents Specific incidents have substantially associated the vocabulary with operational mass-violence: - **Steven Carrillo (2020)** — [[U.S. Air Force]] Sergeant; killed federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood in Oakland (May 2020) and sheriff's deputy Damon Gutzwiller in Santa Cruz (June 2020); explicit Boogaloo-aligned ideology in social-media history - **Boogaloo-coded participants in 2020 BLM protests** — multiple cases of boogaloo-aesthetic individuals attempting to instigate violence at protest events (the dual-use phenomenon: protesting law enforcement *and* attempting to escalate protest-violence) - **Specific arrest cases** — the Las Vegas 2020 conspiracy (intent to instigate violence at Black Lives Matter protests), the Minneapolis 2020 incidents, multiple subsequent prosecutions documented in DOJ filings The documented-incident layer establishes that boogaloo vocabulary is *not merely* aesthetic-meme deployment — for some subset of users, the vocabulary corresponds to operational mass-violence aspiration and execution. ## Distinct from neighbors - **[[Boogaloo Movement]]** — the *organizational* dimension; this Terminology entry is the *vocabulary* dimension. The two pair: this entry covers the word's rhetorical-linguistic work, the Organization entry covers the movement-and-personnel-and-incident structure - **[[RWDS]]** — adjacent paramilitary-aesthetic vocabulary; RWDS is more explicitly Latin-American-death-squad-coded; boogaloo is more *civil-war-2-coded*; substantial wearer-and-aesthetic overlap - **III%er / Three Percenter** — adjacent constitutional-restoration-paramilitary aesthetic; some user-overlap; boogaloo is *more* explicitly anti-government and *less* constitutional-fidelity-coded - **[[Patriot Front]]** — explicitly white-nationalist successor to Vanguard America; some user-overlap, more ideologically-developed program; boogaloo is more diffuse and meme-aesthetic-coded - **Civil War 2** (general vocabulary) — the broader American-civil-war-anticipation discourse; boogaloo is the specific meme-aesthetic subset within it - **[[The Turner Diaries]]** (Pierce 1978 white-nationalist novel) — older intellectual-precedent for civil-war-2 anticipation in the American far-right; some boogaloo writers reference Pierce, more do not - **Hawaiian shirt as fashion** (general) — the genuine non-political wearer category; the boogaloo deployment specifically pairs aloha shirts with paramilitary tactical gear / firearms / political-coded environments ## Right-wing-KB relevance The vocabulary is one of the most-tracked dissident-right linguistic-camouflage cases for several reasons: - Documented cases of operational mass-violence by boogaloo-vocabulary-using individuals establish the connection between aesthetic-meme-vocabulary deployment and tangible political-violence outcomes - The *linguistic-camouflage layering* (boog → boogaloo → big igloo → big luau → Hawaiian shirt) provides a clean case study of how dissident-right vocabularies adapt to platform-moderation pressure while maintaining in-group recognition - The vocabulary's *bipartisan operational-instigation* register (the dual-use 2020 BLM-protest incidents) provides an unusually well-documented case of paramilitary-aesthetic users attempting to escalate political-violence regardless of the explicit political-coalition context - ADL, SPLC, FBI, and academic-extremism-research tracking of the vocabulary is unusually thorough; the entry can be supplemented from the substantial documentation base ## See Also - [[Boogaloo Movement]] — the paired Organization entry covering movement-and-personnel structure - [[Authoritarianism]] - [[RWDS]] — adjacent paramilitary-aesthetic vocabulary - [[Dark MAGA]] — adjacent dissident-right aesthetic-political faction - [[Authoritarianism Lexicon]] — alphabetical MOC