ALERT! Bill Barr is Paving the Way for Fascist Clampdown and Election Theft

September 21, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Bill Barr is a Christian fascist¹ and die-hard Trump loyalist. As the top law enforcement officer, sworn to protect the Constitution, Barr has trampled on and twisted it to fascist ends—repeatedly. He has repeatedly lied, twisted the truth, and bent the law to defend Trump, advance the fascist agenda and program, and keep Trump’s allies out of jail.²

Barr heads the Department of Justice (DOJ), with more than 100,000 employees, including hundreds of prosecutors, and tens of thousands employed by “law enforcement” agencies like the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and Drug Enforcement Agency. The DOJ also runs the Federal Bureau of Prisons, overseeing 110 prisons with over 150,000 people behind bars.

In other words, Barr commands enormous repressive power. And he is shaping and mobilizing that power into a vehicle for crushing anyone or any group that stands in the way of the Trump/Pence regime’s drive to consolidate fascism.

• In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Barr—with zero evidence—claimed that mail-in voting will be the source of massive voter fraud. Barr speculated that “Someone will say the President just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from.”³ And he went on to say “if Trump loses this election” the U.S. is “... going to find ourselves irrevocably committed to the socialist path.”
  
  This is aimed at justifying in advance Trump refusing to leave, and violently repressing anyone who objects. (Trump recently described potential Election Day protests as “riots” and “insurrection” and said that “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that ... within minutes.”) And Barr is also saying that even center-right Democrats like Biden are enemies of America who must be stopped.

• Barr attacked his own prosecutors for objecting to Barr’s violations of the rule of law, comparing them to unruly toddlers. Barr insists his authority over the DOJ cannot be questioned. This is part of transforming DOJ into a well-oiled fascist machine, without internal resistance.
• Barr is “looking into” bringing criminal charges against the mayors of Portland and Seattle for not cracking down hard enough on Black Lives Matter protests, and for opposing the insertion of federal agents into their cities. In an immediate sense this is meant to bring Democratic local officials into compliance with more intense repression, but is also putting these ruling class opponents on notice that they too can be targeted for this repression if they get in the way.
• Barr repeatedly calls protesters “rioters”⁴ and creates hysteria about a (non-existent) wave of “antifa/radical leftist” “terrorism.” Even DOJ reports recognize the reality that white supremacists pose the main danger of “domestic terrorism”—and that the “threat” from antifa is literally not worth mentioning. In fact, fascist forces (police, sheriffs, white supremacists, militias) have killed at least a dozen protesters, and have shot, run over, beaten, or gassed many thousands. But Barr ignores the facts in order to justify unprecedented levels of repression against “the radical left.”
• And most chillingly, on a phone call with prosecutors around the U.S., Barr called for bringing very heavy charges—including “sedition,”⁵ which carries up to 20 years in prison—against what he calls “rioters” who have committed “violent acts”—which in reality means defacing statues, breaking windows... and damaging police clubs with their heads while being beaten!

All this amounts to preparing the ground for a major, sweeping, and violent assault aimed at subordinating or outright crushing non-fascist forces, both within the ruling class and among the masses of people. Barr and the regime aim to usher in what BA calls “a qualitatively different form of rule, based on brutal repression and violation of what are supposed to be the most basic rights.”

This is a nightmare in the making; it must be defeated.

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1. In 2019, Barr argued in a major speech that “Judeo-Christian moral standards are ... God’s instruction manual in the best running of man and the best operation of human society” and that deviation from these “instructions” due to “secularism” (“separation of church and state,” a founding principle of the U.S. Constitution) is the cause of all social problems in the U.S. [back]

2. For instance, Trump’s first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, was caught lying to the FBI in 2016 about his discussions with Russian officials and pled guilty to this—twice! Nonetheless, Barr is fighting for the courts to dismiss the charges. [back]

3. In 2016, 21% of votes were cast with mail-in ballots, with no significant fraud. [back]

4. In fact, 93% of the over 7,000 protests against police brutality and racism this past spring/summer were completely peaceful, and when violence did occur it was mainly caused by cops and/or civilian fascists. [back]

5. Under U.S. law’s definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people to “conspire to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States or to level war against them”; “oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States”; “take, seize, or possess by force any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.” [back]

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