Tuesday, August 11, 2020

PORTLAND - WHERE THE REVOLUTION BEGAN

 

Chad Wolf: 12 Riots in 10 Days Since Feds Left Portland

Portland riots (Nathan Howard / Getty)
Nathan Howard / Getty
JOEL B. POLLAK
1,487
3:27

Acting Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf tweeted Monday that in the ten days since federal law enforcement officials had been withdrawn from their posts in Portland, Oregon, local police had declared twelve official riots.

Riots have taken place for months in Portland, ever since the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, triggered nationwide unrest and inspired a new wave of the Black Lives Matter movement to take to the streets.

Portland has long been a hotbed of extremist and violent political activity, particularly on the left. Exactly two years ago, Activists camped outside the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and attempted to trap agency employees inside the building. Mayor Ted Wheeler refused to act for weeks, leading ICE agents to accuse him of complicity in creating a “zone of terror.” A year later, Antifa activists attacked and seriously injured journalist Andy Ngô.

The latest protests featured nightly violence against law enforcement, including vandalism and arson at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent additional agents to protect. Rioters continued attacking federal officials, injuring many — including several who were blinded by laser beams.

Democrats, including Wheeler, who joined the rioters, claimed that the presence of federal law enforcement provoked the unrest, and that the demonstrators were “peaceful protesters.” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the federal officers “stormtroopers,” and House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) called them the “Gestapo.”

On July 29, the Department of Homeland Security reached an agreement with the State of Oregon, under which Oregon State Police and local police would begin defending federal property in Portland, and federal officials would withdraw.

However, Portland has seen riots continue since then, with violence directed at Portland Police precinct offices, the offices of the local police union, and even against local residents, who have been threatened and assaulted by Antifa activists.

Monday night was no exception:

Portland Police reported: “One officer was struck in the face by a ball bearing [above]. The officer’s face shield protected him from what would have likely been a very serious injury. Another officer had an arm injury (hyperextended elbow) during a scuffle and she was treated and released from a hospital. Officers had golf balls (photo [not provided]), rocks, and potatoes launched at them.”

As Breitbart News has noted, the Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets have continued to insist that Portland has been calmer since federal law enforcement pulled back, contrary to the plain evidence on the ground there.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

US Attorney General Barr gives fascistic tirade against Antifa, Black Lives Matter


11 August 2020

In a television interview Sunday night on Fox News, US Attorney General William Barr declared that some of the Democratic representatives who questioned him at a congressional hearing two weeks ago were revolutionaries seeking to overthrow American capitalism, in league with terrorists.

US Attorney General William Barr on Fox News

The fascistic rant—whose logical conclusion is 


the criminalization of all political opposition to 


the Trump administration—came in the course


of an appearance on “Life, Liberty & Levin,” a 


Sunday night interview program.

Barr began with fulsome praise for the police, attacking the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests against police violence that swept the United States after the May 25 police murder of George Floyd. “The fact is, generally speaking, we have superb police in this country,” he said. “There will be some instances of excessive force, but by and large it’s an excellent police force. And if they’re going to be demonized like this, they’re not going to work in these cities.”

Host Mark Levin, in what appeared to be a choreographed effort, cited a report by an ultra-right think tank on the loosely organized protest group Antifa (antifascist). The Gatestone Institute, which sponsors brazenly Islamophobic “research,” was chaired until 2018 by John Bolton, who then joined the Trump administration as national security adviser.

The Gatestone report cites material produced by the Verfassungschutz, the German secret service agency that has placed the German Trotskyists of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP—Socialist Equality Party) on its surveillance list, while giving its stamp of approval to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the principal vehicle for the revival of neo-Nazi trends in Germany.

The report presents Antifa as a large, well-organized international conspiracy of tens of thousands of militants, although it is invariably described by supporters as little more than a signboard used by anarchists and other protesters in different localities, who communicate through social media but do not constitute an organization in any real sense of the term.

Barr hailed the Gatestone report—which quotes his own comments about Antifa—and launched into a diatribe against Antifa. “They are a revolutionary group that is interested in some form of socialism, communism,” he said. “They’re essentially Bolsheviks.”

He went on to claim that Antifa used “fascistic” tactics. According to Barr, they infiltrated the mass protests against police violence. “What they do is, they are essentially shielding themselves or shrouding themselves in First Amendment activity,” he said. “They hijack these demonstrations and they provoke violence. And they have various tiers of people from the sort of top provocateurs down to people who are their minions and run the violent missions.”

He continued, “It’s a new form of urban guerrilla warfare. Mao Tse-Tung used to speak about the guerrilla being like fish swimming in the ocean the way the guerrilla moves through the people. The guerrilla hides out among the people as a fish in the ocean.”


The purpose of this demented presentation, issued without the slightest attempt to present any evidence, was to make an amalgam stretching from the alleged violent protesters through Black Lives Matter and other groups organizing the anti-police protests, to the Democratic Party.

Barr described this entire range of political opinion as though it were a unified and coherent political tendency, which he described as “the left,” which was seeking power through a coordinated campaign to remove Trump from office. All those opposing Trump constituted “a Rousseauian Revolutionary Party that believes in tearing down the system.”


“Anyone with eyes can see what’s happening,” he declared. “They see the violence. They see these groups of agitators and their black outfits, their helmets and their shields, which, incidentally, have the hammer and sickle on them most of the time, are rushing the police, causing violence, throwing rocks… You don’t see it on any of the national news. You don’t see it on the networks. You don’t see it on the cable stations. And yet you hear about these peaceful demonstrators, so it’s a lie. The American people are being told a lie by the media.”The attorney general included the corporate media in this amalgam, claiming that the media deliberately concealed evidence of widespread Antifa violence in Portland, Oregon and other US cities.

There is a definite fascistic content to the type of political amalgam concocted by Barr. Just as Trump tweeted that Black Lives Matter protests constituted “treason”—a crime punishable by death—Barr suggests that “the left” is at war with the Trump administration and “America,” and should be treated accordingly.

Referring to the House Judiciary Committee hearing, where there was mild criticism of federal police tactics in Portland, Barr said that some members of the committee were “true believers” and “essentially revolutionary,” while the majority were “cowards who are mostly interested in getting reelected.”

After reading those words, dripping with menace, it is necessary to remind oneself that Barr is not a Nazi jurist condemning all opponents of the Führer to be hanged. He is the chief law enforcement official of a government that is nominally democratic, where public opposition to the president is legal, and where the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees such rights as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

Despite his phlegmatic demeanor and lawyerly

word-juggling, however, Barr has much in 

common with Carl Schmitt, the principal legal 

theorist of the Third Reich.

That such an individual is the nation’s chief law enforcement official and presides over the machinery of the “justice system” of the United States testifies to the rotted out, degenerate and profoundly antidemocratic character of “American democracy.” Genuine democracy is incompatible with the staggering levels of social inequality that prevail in the US. More accurately, the United States is an oligarchic society that has yet to fully shed the trappings of bourgeois democracy, but, in the face of mounting social tensions and a growing threat of working-class revolution, is lurching toward dictatorial forms of rule.

Trump’s attorney general is well aware that groups like Antifa and acts of minor vandalism—overturning fences outside federal buildings and setting small fires—are no threat whatsoever to the capitalist system. In his reference to the Bolsheviks, however, Barr reveals his real fears and those of the entire American ruling elite, whether pro-Trump or anti-Trump.

For their own political reasons, they choose to lump together the threat from below, from the working class, and their opponents within the ruling elite, in the Democratic Party. But it is the working class that is the real target of the repressive measures that Barr & Co. are preparing.

 

Seattle Rioters Ransack Amazon Store, Whole Foods, Bank Ahead of Defund the Police Vote

A protester carries a sign during a "Defund the Police" march from King County Youth Jail to City Hall in Seattle, Washington on August 5, 2020. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images
KRISTINA WONG
1,344
2:00

Riots broke out in Seattle on Sunday evening ahead of an expected city council vote to defund the police, according to videos on social media.

Video by @BGOnTheScene showed Antifa protesters attacking an Amazon store. Journalist Andy Ngo, who tweeted the video, said the protesters had been using sledgehammers and have been rioting for hours, smashing businesses in and around Capitol Hill.

“#Antifa are attacking an Amazon store again in Seattle. They’ve using sledgehammers and have been rioting for hours and smashing businesses in and around Capitol Hill. Video by @BGOnTheScene #SeattleRiots,” Ngo tweeted.

Rioters earlier also targeted a Whole Foods, the grocery-chain now owned by Amazon:

Protesters also broke into a Chase Bank:

They also ransacked a Starbucks store, spray-painting “ACAB” on the ground — which stands for “All Cops Are Bastards”:

The rioters earlier in the evening marched and chanted, “All cops are bastards”:

They began gathering in the evening at Cal Anderson Park in the evening, after a large group of peaceful worshippers held an event called “Riots to Revival” at the park:

Earlier Sunday, hundreds of pro-police demonstrators showed their support for the police at the city hall, carrying signs that said “Back the Blue” and other pro-police slogans. They were met with counter-protesters who called for defunding the police.

The Seattle City Council is expected to vote on Monday on what some members say is the first step towards defunding the police, according to KOMO News.

The council has already approved a series of amendments that eliminated the department’s mounted police, SWAT team, and navigation team, according to KOMO.

Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.

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