THE DIRECTOR of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the US ruling class has lost control of the situation and that the mass protests sparked by police killings and police brutality have the potential to escalate into civil war and revolution.
Wray said: ‘Now you’ve got an additional level of combustible violence, violent extremist groups or individuals committing violence … Now you have both groups from the opposite sides adding to the combustibility and danger of the situation. He was testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee on worldwide threats to the homeland.
US President Trump has declared that he is determined to have the anti-fascist protest movement antifa designated a ‘terror group’.
However, the FBI Director fears that the situation has gone well beyond any ‘Marxist’ group, and that making antifa illegal won’t make the slightest difference and may even make the situation worse.
‘We look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organisation,’ Wray told lawmakers.
Hours after the hearing, Trump took to Twitter to chastise his FBI director for his statements on antifa.
Referring to antifa, the president wrote: ‘And I look at them as a bunch of well-funded Anarchists and thugs who are protected because the Comey/Mueller-inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”.’
The crisis has already gone well beyond the understanding of the would-be plutocrat. In fact, US capitalism is in its death agony. It is no longer the workshop of the world, and has no alternative but to make the US working class and middle class pay for its crisis.
The wildfires currently burning in Oregon and California are not the only fires burning in the USA. City after city is in flames as youth and workers battle with the police. And behind the uprisings is the American economic crisis. The economy is plummeting, its debt has soared to over £26 trillion, unemployment is over 60 million, there is mass homelessness, joblessness, poverty and hunger. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is on the rise and has already claimed 200,000 lives and infected 6.7 million people.
Trump’s battle cry of ‘Make America Great Again!’ with a promise of jobs for millions of US workers has fallen flat on its face. It has turned into its opposite.
His only election strategy is to stir up the ultra-right wing, who are armed to the teeth, encouraging them to descend with impunity on Black Lives Matter protests and kill protesters, in the hope it will drive back the working class. Meanwhile, Trump shouts: ‘What we need is LAW & ORDER!’ – believing that this will win him the election.
But if he loses the election, he plans to cry foul, blame the postal vote and the US postal service which he has already claimed ‘is rigged’. He will refuse to leave the White House, calling for his supporters to come to his defence. The capitalist state is getting worried that when Trump refuses to go it will spark a revolution.
Trump’s top communications official at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Michael Caputo, said last week: ‘When Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.’
Meanwhile, US Attorney General William Barr has called on top prosecutors to bring a rarely used sedition charge against people protesting against police and racism.
Trump has deployed thousands of state troopers to deal, not with foreign wars as his predecessors have, but an internal one. The capitalist class fear that this war has spiralled out of control!
And this war is a class war, raging throughout the US as millions of people simply cannot live under capitalism. They are determined to fight for a socialist future and many advocate revolution and the overthrow of the US government.
The mighty trade unions in the US, which themselves have tens of millions of members, must now rise up to lead the mass movement. Now is the time to build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the USA to lead the developing US socialist revolution to its victory.
Forward to the Socialist United States of America!