The Justice Department has charged more than 120 people with both property crimes and acts of violence that were associated with ongoing protests over racism following the police murder of George Floyd. In many cases, these people were involved in vandalism and destructive activities that took place during chaotic nights following days of forceful, but nonviolent, protests. In absolutely zero cases did any of those arrested claim any connection with antifa.
That would be difficult, of course, since antifa does not exist. The term, a shortened form of “anti-fascist” is simply a declaration of an attitude, not an affiliation. It’s an affirmation that someone stands against the kind of authoritarian distortion of the rule of law, and the promotion of right-wing racial and cultural injustice, being propagated by people like Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr. Antifa the group does not exist. Antifa the attitude is, rightfully, everywhere. Which is why Barr is forming a special hit team to tackle resistance to fascism, wherever he finds it.
William Barr likes him a good task force, and he likes a bad task force even better. So it’s not that surprising that Barr has cranked up yet another excuse to wipe his shoes on the Constitution.
This time, as The Washington Post reports, Barr is creating a group dedicated to “countering anti-government extremists,” and “escalating federal law enforcement’s response.” The triggering event of this task force is supposedly incidents of violence associated with the protests over racist police murders, but the relatively rare incidents of looting and destruction have been sporadic, uncoordinated, and more directed at smashing some windows in department stores than anything that seems explicitly “anti-government.”
However, Barr makes it clear that he has an extremely expansive view of that term. In his memo memorializing this new task force, Barr extends the idea of anti-government to being anti-police, and also to attacks on private property and to threats against “innocent people.” Which seems to give his new task force not just purview over every crime ever, but to a large number of things that are not crimes, as well as making them the arbiters of the First Amendment.
In that memo, Barr claims that the people at the focus of his task force are extremists who, “profess a variety of ideologies [but] are united in their opposition to the core constitutional values of a democratic society governed by law. . . . Some pretend to profess a message of freedom and progress, but they are in fact forces of anarchy, destruction, and coercion.” Ignoring the half-dozen contradictions implicit in Barr’s description, there’s no doubt that Barr’s task force exists to play up a threat that does not exist, while ignoring the genuine threat of right-wing militias who regularly invade state capitals with AR-15s in hand.
In announcing the task force, Barr mentions two groups—“those who support the ‘Boogaloo,’ ” and “those who self identify as Antifa.” That might be seen as a modicum of progress, since in previous announcements Barr refused to name any other threat than antifa, even when confronted by the fact that not one of those people arrested by the FBI or local officials was connected to the nonexistent organization.
However, the phrasing of Barr’s new announcement “those who self identify as Antifa” appears to recognize that there is no antifa. The FBI is not going to find antifa membership cards, or endlessly take down “the #2 man at antifa” (though, as past experience indicates, they can make this claim roughly once a week, forever). That doesn’t make Barr’s announcement better, it makes it far worse. Barr is declaring war on an attitude.
Since these guys are going to need some early wins, I’ll make it easy for them: I self identify as antifa. Hell, I might even be the #2 man at antifa! Just like everyone else who cares about this country.
And I feel a mixture of both pity and disgust for Barr’s pro-fa team.