Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before representatives from more than 60 nations in Washington on Thursday to launch a push for a new international counterterrorism focus — one aimed squarely at what he called “far-left terror.”
Rubio opened the conference, titled the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, by arguing that years of coordinated global action had “severely diminished” the threat posed by Islamic extremism. However, he said rising left-wing violence represented an “undeniable reality” that the world had largely ignored — calling it a “blind spot” in current counterterrorism efforts.
“We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio told the assembled officials. He characterized the danger as a transnational one, involving groups that target politicians and public infrastructure and are driven, he said, by a deep hostility toward the West.
President Donald Trump has made confronting left-wing organizations a central priority. Trump highlighted the issue during his 2024 campaign and pledged to act against groups he accuses of fueling violence, particularly following the killing of conservative activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk.
Rubio announced that the Trump administration had already held a law enforcement workshop in May to examine the far-left threat, and that a second workshop would be co-hosted with Germany.
“We will either cooperate across our borders, or the terrorists will continue to exploit the gaps between them,” Rubio said. “The United States is building the infrastructure, the partnership and the strategy to defeat the scourge of far-left terror.”
Since November, the U.S. government has designated four European organizations — Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense — as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Authorities are offering rewards of as much as $10 million for information about how those groups are financed.
Rubio also alleged that left-wing militant groups around the world are becoming more closely connected to foreign governments that oppose the United States. He pointed to Iranian proxy networks as being “increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world,” though he offered no evidence to support that claim. He also accused Cuba’s Communist leadership of having “helped build the far left” inside the United States, again without providing supporting evidence.
Not everyone is on board with the administration’s approach. The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties organizations have cautioned that labeling groups as far-left terrorist organizations could end up criminalizing peaceful protests and targeting political opponents rather than addressing real security threats.
