As patriotic Americans salute our astronauts, in space through a public-private partnership of NASA and SpaceX, we are dismayed by the seeming inability of the government at all levels to keep our citizens safe on the ground. It’s time for Congress to re-establish committees designed to expose internal security problems and examine whether some of these agitators are communist terrorists who find their inspiration in history’s greatest mass murderer, Chairman Mao.

Attorney General William P. Barr warned on Saturday that groups of “outside radicals and agitators” are exploiting the George Floyd situation “to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.” Barr added, “In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from out of state to promote the violence.” What he didn’t say is that the FBI, under his jurisdiction, is clueless about who is planning and organizing the chaos.

President Trump said on Sunday that Antifa, a term referring to the latest incarnation of communists active on American soil, will be designated as a terrorist organization. But there are literally dozens of Marxist or radical organizations that are not covered by the “Antifa” designation.

While Barr noted it is a federal crime to cross state lines to incite or participate in violent rioting and said “We will enforce these laws,” the question remains: who or what is he talking about?

Sadly, the FBI doesn’t investigate communist groups on American soil anymore because some of them are integrated into the Democratic Party, whose congressional members do not go through background checks and yet conduct House oversight of America’s intelligence agencies. The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), once aligned with and funded by Moscow, openly supported Barack Hussein Obama for president in 2008 and 2012. Obama’s CIA director John Brennan voted for the CPUSA in college.

The CPUSA says, “We call on our members and friends to join the protests for justice in every way possible and to make justice for George Floyd part of every demonstration going forward.” The Movement for Black Lives calls the riots “rebellions” and is active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. “We are rising up by every means,” they say.

Some communist groups are still loyal to the memory of Chairman Mao, who said in his Little Red Book, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’"

Mao’s 1968 statement in “Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression” in the United States is significant in this regard. Mao used the occasion of the Martin Luther King assassination riots in more than 100 American cities to declare that “The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution.”

For those unfamiliar with Marxist jargon, this means that communists have been exploiting blacks to make America into a communist state. This is still the communist mission.

During a time when conservatives find themselves increasingly censored by social media, the communists are able to organize without any hindrance whatsoever. Dan Scavino, Jr., who handles social media for President Trump, recently tweeted, “Twitter is targeting the President of the United States 24/7, while turning their heads to protest organizers who are planning, plotting, and communicating their next moves daily on this very platform.…” Those protests, of course, quickly turned violent, to the point where the Minnesota governor finally called out the National Guard to restore order after the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis refused to act.

The existence of a major communist threat, China, makes some of these organizations devoted to agitation worthy of close scrutiny.

One Maoist group, the Progressive Labor Party, is “a communist organization that fights to smash capitalism and class society in order to establish a communist world!” and operates a newspaper called Challenge, with headlines about “police terror” and the “kkkiller cops.” It has a website and is also present on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Its “Capitalism is the Virus. Communism is the Cure” video is available on YouTube.

These American Maoists use American freedoms to organize against our institutions and our system of government.

American Maoist Bob Avakian started out with the SDS and the Revolutionary Union before running the Revolutionary Communist Party and setting up his own institute. He has broken ranks with another SDS leader, Mark Rudd, who was a member of the terrorist Weather Underground and has recently signed a letter endorsing “capitalist Democrat” Joe Biden for president. Avakian accuses Rudd of a “reformist accommodation” to the “monstrous system” of American capitalism.

Rudd’s fingerprints were once found in a Weather Underground bomb factory, a location that included Chinese and Russian pamphlets and books on communist revolution.

It has been dawning on many that China has been interfering in our internal and sovereign affairs. “Today,” President Trump said on Friday, “I will issue a proclamation to better secure our nation’s vital university research and to suspend the entry of certain foreign nationals from China who we have identified as potential security risks.”

Trump should ask his FBI director Christopher Wray to take a hard look at the “potential security risks” in various communist groups on the streets of America and ascertain whether they are operating at the direction of Beijing.

Congress, or at least the Senate, has a role to play, too. Senators can review the work of the old congressional committees on un-American activities and internal security problems, such as the 1971 hearings on the Progressive Labor Party, the 1973 report on “America’s Maoists” in the Revolutionary Union and the Venceremos Organization, and reports on the Weather Underground and Workers World Party. All of these groups are still around in one form or another.

FBI informant Herbert Philbrick’s 1965 book, Communism and Race in America, is another good place to look. He discusses communist use of front groups and communism's “dialectical approach” to subversion that emphasizes how anything which creates tension in society “is a part of the path of progress,” from the communist point of view.

Chances are, however, that none of these volumes is in the FBI library.

Before more lives are lost, Senator Marco Rubio, the new acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, can order immediate hearings into what, if anything, FBI director Wray has done about investigating terrorist networks.

If the answer, as expected, is that he considers them legitimate political organizations, he should be fired immediately.

*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org