In an extensive interview with nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin, Attorney General William Barr described the summer of riots by far-left terror groups as “urban guerrilla warfare,” which he says is the latest indication of the Left’s “lust for power,” as reported by the New York Post.
In a Sunday interview on Levin’s Fox News program, “Life, Liberty, and Levin,” Barr described the Anarcho-Communist group Antifa as a group of “Bolsheviks,” representing “some form of socialism,” or “Communism.”
In the Levin interview, Barr said the riots in places such as Portland and Seattle were highly organized and coordinated, calling them “a new form of urban guerrilla warfare.” Barr explained how Antifa “hides out among the people as a fish in the ocean,” which is the essence of guerrilla warfare, and that “what they do is they are essentially shielding themselves or shrouding themselves in First Amendment activity.”
Barr also noted that the Democratic Party’s embrace of the violence from Antifa as well as Black Lives Matter was indicative of a broader shift in the American Left, which has “pulled away from the umbrella of classical liberal values that have undergirded” the founding of the United States, in favor of establishing “a secular religion” with the goal of “complete political victory.”
“They want to run people’s lives so they can design utopia for all of us,” Barr said. “And it’s the lust for power. And they weren’t expecting Trump’s victory. And it outrages them.”
Watch a clip of Barr discussing Antifa with Fox News host Mark Levin:
Barr’s comments echoed what President Donald Trump said in a recent interview with “Fox and Friends,” where he described Black Lives Matter as a “Marxist group that is not looking for good things for our country.”
Looting and riots began in late May and continued throughout the country in June when they reached their peak. At the height of the violence, multiple major American cities would burn on the same night, with thousands of businesses across the country vandalized or burned, and hundreds of innocent civilians assaulted by rioters. Far-left terrorists also began a campaign of tearing down statues all across the country, from Confederate leaders to statues of the Founding Fathers and even religious figures.
As of July, the vast majority of the riots and the destruction of statues had subsided, following several actions by President Trump and Attorney General Barr; among them were an executive order signed by the president expediting the federal government’s ability to pursue, arrest, and prosecute those who vandalized federal monuments, as well as now over 300 anti-terrorism investigations by the FBI against various far-left groups responsible for the violence.
In the few cities where violence is still ongoing, such as Chicago and Portland, the Trump Administration launched “Operation Legend,” a plan to send hundreds of additional federal agents from various agencies, including FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the U.S. Marshals, into the cities to work with local law enforcement to quell the violence.