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

Published 1 June 2020

Mia Bloom, a Georgia State professor and an expert on political violence and terrorism, writes that the demonstrations in honor of George Floyd have been infiltrated by white nationalists who adhere to the accelerationist ideology, and that at least part of the violence and destruction – as clearly seen on TV screens – have been perpetrated by these extremists. “The accelerationists, if you have never heard the term, are an extreme subset of white nationalism whose goal is to bring about chaos and destruction,” she writes. Since Western governments are inherently corrupt, “the best (and only) thing supremacists can do is to accelerate the end of society by sowing chaos and aggravating political tensions.”

Mia Bloom, a Georgia State professor and an expert on political violence and terrorism, writes in Just Security that “When anyone studies the Middle East for as long as I have, you become practically immune to conspiracy theories.” And yet, when one watches the demonstrations, taking place in several American cities since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, with a trained eye, “The images challenge our beliefs about who is really protesting and for what reason.”

She notes, for example that the demonstration in Atlanta on Friday, 30 May, started as a peaceful demonstration in honor of Floyd – but that around 7:00pm, “the demographics of the demonstration changed in real time in front of the cameras.”  

“The demographics of a largely white, young, and destructive group fit more with a movement known as accelerationists than Black Lives Matter,” she writes, adding:

The accelerationists, if you have never heard the term, are an extreme subset of white nationalism whose goal is to bring about chaos and destruction. The basic tenet of accelerationism argues that since Western governments are inherently corrupt, the best (and only) thing supremacists can do is to accelerate the end of society by sowing chaos and aggravating political tensions. “Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms,” Zack Beauchamp explained.

White Supremacists pretending to host a protest to honor Floyd George on Facebook to whip up violence in San Diego were posted on the BLMSD social media warning people not to go and that it was a white supremacist organized rally. People attending demonstrations remarked on the fact that the demographics were wrong, in places like Oakland where the majority of the destruction was perpetrated by young Caucasian men has inspired not just people on social media but reporting in the mainstream media to properly question whether this is a form of infiltration by outside extremist elements.

report by Vice News described the infiltration of the Floyd demonstrations by accelerationists and white nationalists, and Bellingcat has documented the involvement in the protests of a largely white, and far-right movement called the Boogaloo [Boogaloo followers, who come to the demonstration wearing Hawaiian shirts and carrying assault rifles, largely adhere to the accelerationist ideology. Boogaloo followers have become a prominent feature of the anti-lockdown protests, too]. 

Bloom notes that accelerationists follow the blueprint laid out by neo-Nazi James Mason in The Siege (not the Denzel Washington film with the same name) whose writing inspires Charles Manson types of killing sprees. The goal of accelerationism is to trigger what Charles Manson called “Helter Skelter”: Burn everything down and use violence both to target enemies and randomly kill people; this, in turn, would lead to an overt and extreme response by the government and its law enforcement agencies; which, in turn, would generate a fierce and violent antigovernment backlash.

Bloom notes that this Charles Manson / White Nationalists — accelerationists / Boogaloo strategy is practically identical to that of the Marxist Peruvian guerrilla the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). Gustavo Gorriti’s wrote 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” [and all those who adopt this strategy are inspired by Lenin’s famous dictum: “The worse, the better” – that is, the worse the social and economic conditions of the working class are, the better the chances for a communist revolution].

Bloom concludes that even if the protests include outsider participation to foment chaos and spark an overreaction, it does not mean that the driving sentiment launched by these protests should be minimized or ignored.

But “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”

* For more on accelerationism, see: “White Supremacists Embrace ‘Accelerationism’,” HSNW, 26 February 2020; Mark Pitcavage, “Twenty-Five Years Later, Oklahoma City Bombing Inspires a New Generation of Extremists,” HSNW, 21 April 2020; and “Accelerationism: The Obscure Idea Inspiring White Supremacist Killers around the World,” HSNW, 19 November 2019