US Wants To Globalize Fight Against Far-Left ‘Terrorism’
washington : The United States launched a harsh offensive against left-wing extremists on Thursday, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for global cooperation to combat “a new wave of this old evil.”
In his opening remarks to a ministerial meeting on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism,” Rubio said “far-left terrorism” had become a “blind spot” following the scrutiny on jihadist extremism following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“Even today, the idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream or worse, a dangerous fascist plot,” he said.
Pointing out that left-wing attacks have increased in Europe and the USA since 2016, Rubio called for increased cooperation to combat the ideology, which he defined as “a poisonous anger hidden in the language of equality and justice.”
Rubio, a fierce anti-communist whose parents fled Cuba, has said far-leftism is inspired by “hatred of civilization itself.”
More than 60 delegations from Europe to Asia attended the event, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also spoke.
“You are here because your political leaders have been attacked, stabbed and shot in your streets, because your businesses have been bombed, your railroads have been sabotaged, because your police officers have been beaten and burned,” Rubio told delegates.
– No right-wing terrorism –
But Rubio and Miller made no mention of right-wing violence, which has become a much bigger problem in the United States over the past 30 years, according to a comprehensive 2025 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The CSIS report acknowledged an increase in left-wing terrorist attacks and conspiracies over the past decade.
But “such violence has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence perpetrated by right-wing and jihadist attackers,” he said.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has specifically targeted Europe, calling it an “incubator of terrorist threats.”
Rubio cited several examples of acts of violence attributed to left-wing groups in Europe, including the sabotage of the French rail network for the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and the murder of French far-right activist Quentin Deranque in February.
According to a State Department fact sheet, there will be 21 attacks attributed to “far-left and anarchist terrorists” in the European Union in 2024, while there will be 24 attacks from jihadists.
-Antifa-
The “Antifa” movement, short for “Antifast,” has also been targeted by the Trump administration, which has described itself as a “domestic terrorist organization” after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk last year.
But experts say it is an obscure movement of left-wing activists with a political ideology rather than an organized group.
In the United States, the movement gained traction after Trump’s primary election in 2016, and many conservatives blamed the 2020 riots and protests after the death of George Floyd on anti-fascist protesters.
In his speech, Miller launched a scathing attack on “leftists”, saying that they were spreading “cancer” in society.
“None of the demonstrators look like a normal person,” he said. “They are all deformed in some way in their appearance, clothing and demeanor.”
Critics accuse Trump himself of encouraging violence.
When he returned to the White House last year, he pardoned more than 1,000 of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Shortly after Thursday’s meeting, Rubio announced visa restrictions on members of “far-left terrorist” groups.
Eleven Democrats in Congress told Rubio in a letter that the administration’s focus on far-left extremism is “disturbing” and deviates from previous Republican and Democratic administrations’ concerns about how “racially motivated violent extremism” poses a threat to the United States.
“The State Department has shown no indication that it is taking an apolitical, comprehensive approach to combating violent extremism,” lawmakers, led by Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote.
