Sideshow Swarms

An under-appreciated conflict feature.

Living in the East Bay area, not a week goes by that I don’t see a report of a “sideshow”. Hundreds of young adults gather, take over an intersection, and a dozen or more vehicles participate in risky stunt driving, often with passengers hanging out of the windows and pedestrians dashing through the moving vehicles.

Attention Conservation Notice:

This has a sampling of flashmob event types, some thoughts on law enforcement tactics against them, and an attempt at envisioning how this youth culture feature might be weaponized. I guess this article is just a BOLO for this sort of thing.

Events:

The Bay Bridge was taken over at 3:30 AM for about half an hour. This is a minimalist example of the phenomenon, just one injury and no property damage.

While these began as risky fun, things have been escalating. Here a sideshow turns into vandalism at an auto dealership.

This one is NOT a sideshow in the traditional sense - it involves younger teens, during daylight hours, riding bicycles. Here there was violence against customers of the Safeway.

A similar dynamic occurs in smash & grab robberies. Mobs of up to a hundred will mask up, descend on a business, gut it, and be gone before the police can arrive. If there are only one or two cars available the officers will collect information without attempting to stop the crime - if they engage any of those involved, they will get mobbed.

Here we see an example of the coordination of theft activities. The thieves knew what they wanted was in the back hatch of this small sedan. The report doesn’t mention it, but this had to involve surveillance while the couple were shopping.

Background:

One of my all time favorite novels is Bruce Sterling’s 1998 political thriller “Distraction”. The book opens with a flashmob that descends on a bank, trashing everything, including poking holes in the walls and filling the space with noxious material. The narrator observes “The bank wasn’t raided or robbed, it was punished.” This segues into hackers dumping details of the bank’s activities, leading to the indictment of the management.

We didn’t have smart phones in 1998 but now we do and they afford young adults a lot of ways to network that are simply out of reach of law enforcement. Those who have experience in the drug trade may have developed tactics, techniques, and procedures to avoid law enforcement attention.

I forgive you if you haven’t read National Defense University’s Convergence, just know this - any social movement that comes to blows with its current government will begin to tax criminal enterprises, and any armed conflict group will inevitably devolve into an organized crime network once they reach a static standoff position with the government.

We do not know how these “boys behaving badly” groups may act, should the upcoming election result in civil disorder, but the bones of an urban militia can already be seen. What these mobs are doing is a tactic (not a group!) known as “black bloc”. When everyone is dressed similarly it’s difficult for observers to sort out who is who. This TTP is associated with Antifa (also not a group!), and false flag players can and do join protest groups.

The most notable example of a false flag came during the George Floyd protests, when Boogaloo Boi Ivan Harrison Hunter fired shots during the arson of a police precinct building, and may have participated in setting the blaze.

Ignorant Policing:

Police struggle with groups such as these and sometimes there are synthetic efforts created as “strange attractors” for those who may become radicalized. While Blood Tribe was a legitimate neo-Nazi group, there have been a number of attempts to use their brand for such purposes. Faux Blood Tribe efforts on social media have been so painfully obviously illegitimate that anti-fascists, who would normally tolerate policing of this type, have chased them away.

We do not yet know much about how these things work against right wing extremists. The leadership of the rummies that made up Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have been put away, but the large numbers of religiously motivated groups are a quite different problem. The members tend to be older, more settled in their ways, and they have long association via their churches. There the problem isn’t synthesis, it’s an undercover recruiting issue.

The urban youth culture is more impenetrable due to age and ethnicity, but they will be much sloppier in their operations. I have not seen anything on the undercover/intel effort against this problem in the East Bay.

Overall the U.S. is poorly equipped in this area, due to the ancient definition of provocative speech boundaries enshrined in Brandenburg v. Ohio and the excessive protection services providers have due to the CDA Section 230. The young urban flashmob players are likely using Discord for some organizing, but Snapchat, with its disappearing messages feature, is another candidate for the safe creation of unsafe entertainment.

Usually what happens in this area is the proffer of some sweeping anti-encryption law that immediately gets curb stomped by civil liberties crusaders, online business operators, and security boffins. The overreach in a less than relevant direction, rather than addressing the problem at hand, has been consistently thwarted for my entire career, starting back in the 1980s.

There is a role for the Stingray cellular interception service in these events. One unmarked car or low flying helicopter would quickly identify all devices in the area, and the mapping of participants can begin in earnest. I imagine there’s already someone with skills like mine in an East Bay gang unit that’s totalling up frequent slider miles for those involved.

Conclusion:

When conflict arises humans improvise. Our ancestors grabbed a handy stick or stooped for a stone to throw. Today we’ve got assault rifles with night vision and hand grenades. The same sort of progression is going to happen with these flashmobs. Just add a little counter-insurgency background to the leadership, which is readily available thanks to our endless Global War on Islam, and you’ve got a party.

The evolving complex of flashmob troubles centered on the East Bay area has been an increasingly hazardous public nuisance that I associate with the beginning of the pandemic. This is a local thing, a kid thing, the Bay Bridge takeover was a big expedition for them. But the subculture could spread, and the tactics they use are transportable.

This is overall a negative feature for urban areas; if things go sideways, law enforcement gets more stuff on their plates and that makes openings for boys behaving badly. Nationally … swarming attacks are to be expected, but precisely how and where hasn’t been seen yet. One of the features in Distraction was flashmob attacks as a cover for … other activity.

The most visible source of agitation in this area is Russia, but here in 2024 we’re subject to that ancient Chinese curse - “May you live in interesting times.”