The two wings of the fascist ruling class, the Democrats on the left and the Republicans on the right, have intensified their “lawfare” campaigns this week as right-fascist figurehead Trump has been called to answer criminal charges by a Department of Justice investigation. On Tuesday, the same day Trump was arraigned in a Miami federal court, the Republican forces in Congress struck back by bringing forward a motion to censure the left-fascist legislator Adam Schiff. These groups are battling for control over the government apparatus of the U.S. Empire. On the left, the Democrat-fascists are satisfied with the current degree of fascist repression that rules in the U.S. They want to stabilize the empire. On the right, the Republican-fascists are attempting to expand the fascist terror-state and prepare for the actual murder of their enemies and the institution of a white supremacist settler dictatorship.
Representative Schiff has been at the head of Democratic lawfare efforts against the Republicans, which marked him as a target of the extreme right wing of the Republican party. He took charge of the 2020 Senate trial of Trump and also served as a long-time member of the dreaded House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the actions of the executive-branch intelligence agencies like the CIA, Defense Intelligence, FBI, and Homeland Security. It also has authority over the Departments of Defense, Justice, and State.
Schiff became a proponent of lawfare — the use of legal proceedings to wage political warfare on an opponent’s party — in 2018 with his “Open Letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” This was essentially a love letter to the FBI from Schiff, who had started his political career as a prosecuting attorney, a cop in a suit.
There is a narrow difference between the normal operation of the U.S. state regarding political corruption and the more aggressive lawfare that has been increasingly carried out by both parties since 2016. Only in periods of extreme internal dispute have the courts and intelligence services been used by one party against another. Examples of this escalation include Watergate and the Clinton impeachment. More and more routinely, on a more and more regular basis, both parties have begun using legal procedures to attack their ruling class opponents directly.
Schiff may have begun this last round of lawfare by opposing the Trump regime, but he now faces the sharp edge of the sword his party drew. The far-right clique in the GOP that has governed the party for the past six years brought a motion to censure Schiff; this resolution held that he should be fined $16 million if it’s determined he “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information.” Although the resolution was voted down on Wednesday, it signals an increasingly sharp battle within the legal structures of the U.S. Empire. The ruling GOP clique alleged that he “purposefully deceived his Committee, Congress, and the American people” and “used his position and access to sensitive information to instigate a fraudulently based investigation, which he then used to amass political gain and fundraising dollars.”
Schiff warned that the motion represents a “clear attack on our constitutional system of checks and balances.” Although it’s usually a mistake to lend credence to the words of any bourgeois politician, Schiff is waving the flag in warning because he knows the Democrats are in danger of being outflanked. Their devotion to process and norms, to playing “within the rules” of the bourgeois republic laid down by the slave owning founders they revere almost as gods, has hampered the Democrats’ ability to respond to the far-right clique in the GOP.
This ruling clique is preparing a war on two fronts, and the lawfare front represents only one. The second front is extra-legal: the paramilitary and military wing of the ruling clique (we can’t yet call it a self-contained and actualized party) that exists in every police station and gun club in the Empire. This illegalist front has already flexed its strength once on January 6, 2020. It’s only a matter of time before these two fronts opened by the GOPs ruling clique — the legalist and illegalist — meet.
We can take some comfort knowing that the illegalist wing suffered setbacks in the wake of January 6, but those setbacks are temporary. The men who have been incarcerated are biding their time, strengthening their ties to active white supremacist militants in the prisons, and waiting while the legalist, lawfare strategy proceeds. Although the Congressional lawfare front is in the ascendent and dominant position, it won’t be long before these two frontlines switch places again.
