Charles Manson and his followers called it "helter skelter" in the 1960s and 70s,

Their aim was to foment a racial civil war in America.

Law enforcement sources say the Boogaloo Bois are a far right hate group with similar goals.

Along with white supremists and neo-Nazis, they plan to bring down the government and take control of America.

What they envision may be similar to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

Although they share similar violent motives with far left Antifa groups, the right wing considers the left their enemy,

This Chronicle special report by Editor Jerry Bellune is based on digital research into these groups, their methods and motives since 2 possible members have been arrested in the Saturday, May 30, violence in downtown Columbia,

We have asked the Lexington County Sheriff's Department and the Lexington Police Department for any additional informatiuin they can share.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “the term ‘Boogaloo’  ... began as a shorthand for civil unrest following potential local or federal firearms confiscation and has been embraced by anti-government and white nationalists.”

The word has been embraced by alt-right extremists, some involved in the George Floyd demonstrations.

3 things to know about them:

1. Boogaloo Bois Have Been Charged With Domestic Terrorism

People shout slogans and hold placards, on June 1, 2020, in downtown Las Vegas, as they take part in a “Black Lives Matter” response to the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.

3 men who identify as Boogaloo Bois and who are all former members of the military, according to Business Insider, were charged with domestic terrorism, conspiracy to damage and destroy by using fire and explosives, and possession of an unregistered firearm, Las Vegas police reported.

Andrew Lynam Jr. 23, Stephen Parshall, 35, and William Loomis, 40, are each being held on a $1 million bond.

J.J. MacNab of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told The Associated Press that she has seen Boogaloo Bois in crowds of George Floyd protestors wearing tactical gear and carrying high-powered rifles.

“They want to co-opt them to start their war," McNab told the AP. “They see themselves as being on the side of protesters and that the protesters themselves are useful in causing anarchy.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, a 2018 Reddit post carried a 2012 photo of California Gov. Gavin Newsome in which he talked about coming for private owners' guns.

The post included the words, “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

That was believed to mean arms seizures would set off a civil war.

Gun-rights enthusiasts shortened the term to Boogaloo.

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” exchange insluts with counter-protesters during the “Unite the Right” rally August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Accelerationists are white supremacists who want to see Americans at war against each other,

According to the The Brookings Institution, a research and public policy group in Washington:

Accelerationism is the idea that white supremacists should try to increase civil disorder — accelerate it — to foster polarization that will tear apart the current political order…Accelerationists hope to set off a series of chain reactions, with violence fomenting violence, and in the ensuing cycle more and more people join the fray. When confronted with extremes, so the theory goes, those in the middle will be forced off the fence and go to the side of the white supremacists. If violence can be increased sufficiently, the system will run out of lackeys and collapse, and the race war will commence.

Brookings reported that neo-Nazi James Mason came into his ideologies in the 1960s.

The SPLC said that Mason believed, “that only the full collapse of American democracy and society will bring conditions sufficient to bring order through Nazism.”

Mason was a fan of Charles Manson, according to the SPLC.

2. Not All Boogaloo Bois Claim to be Racist But All Are Anti-Police

All the groups that want a civil war do not have the same ideologies.

The use of the term Boogaloo is not exclusive to white supremacists.

It is used by others who think law enforcement and the government should be overthrown.

Experts say groups will jump into causes that are not really their own to try to create disorder and to invoke police or other law enforcement to respond with violence.

Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the ADL Center on Extremism in Chicago said:

I think for a lot of boogaloo-ers, their primary interest is resisting the state, what they believe to be state tyranny. They have this hostility towards law enforcement…. They oppose these [pandemic] directives. They’re upset about no-knock raids, police brutality. The George Floyd case ... is an example of police brutality, this willingness of the state to execute those who disobey — so it’s not surprising that they showed up to protest.

On a Boogaloo Facebook Page called Big Igloo Boys with nearly 34,000 followers, the administrator wrote May 30:

Protest for support and solidarity of Minneapolis and the George Floyd protesters. Mr Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis ... by the Minneapolis Police Department. We must set aside our differences, and unite against a common enemy in the police state.
Wear your PPE. Come in peace, prepare for ... violence. Departments around the country have shown that they’re ready to agitate a crowd to illicit a violent response. This gives them an excuse to react with greater violence towards otherwise peaceful protesters. The media then uses the violence to discredit an entire event.

The group disdains what they call Alphabet Boys, meaning the FBI, ATF, CIA and the like.

In an open letter to law enforcement on the Big IglooFacebook page, the group calls for an end to no-knock raids.

In seems to refer to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American EMT was shot and killed by police who raided the wrong home in the night while the Taylor was asleep with her boyfriend.

Taylor’s boyfriend fired at the officers thinking they were intruders,and police shot back, hitting Breonna 8 times.

The April 7 post says:

This is, essentially, an open letter to all LE departments across the nation. If I could, I’d tag every single one of you. However, since I’m positive we’re being monitored ... I’ll have to hope this is enough.

I am asking you, and your agencies, to put an end to the practice of no knock raids. Once again we hear of the wrong house being entered, a man trying to defend himself from a home invasion and having his girlfriend murdered by the police.

Absolutely nothing constructive, meaningful, or worthwhile comes of this practice. What we get are ... innocent people being murdered by botched police work. Stop yourselves long enough to take stock of what you’re doing. You’re murdering citizens in their homes. You all swore an oath to the constitution. Which part of the oath, or the document mentions murdering citizens in the dark of night?

3. Boogaloo-ers Often Wear Hawaiian Shirts and/or Tactical Gear to Protests

Armed protesters demonstrate outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing May 20, 2020. The group is protesting Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s mandatory closure to curtail the corona virus pandemic.

Reports of protesters in Hawaiian shirts carrying guns started coming out this spring as people demonstrated their dissatisfaction with government directives to close much of the country amid the corona virus pandemic.

The Hawaiian shirts apparently come from off-shoots of the word Boogaloo, which began popping up online.

Words like “big igloo” and “big luau” which sound somewhat like Boogaloo became terminology for those in the know and Hawaiian shirts became an identifier of its members.

Boogaloo is an umbrella term meaning a 2nd civil war,

The ADL wrote in April of men showing up at corona virus protests in Hawaiian shirts at the behest of “Matt Marshall, a leader of the 3 Percenters, a wing of the anti-government militia movement…

The event was advertised by the Oath Keepers, another anti-government organization.

Marshall encouraged participants to wear Hawaiian shirts, referring to the ‘Big Luau.’