Rubio rallies countries to confront ‘resurgence’ of far-left political violence

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday convened officials from more than 60 countries to raise alarm over what the State Department is warning is a resurgence of far-left political violence globally.

Rubio called for an “international response” to the issue at the summit, which marks an expansion of President Trump’s focus on treating left-wing political violence as the priority terrorist threat facing the U.S. Civil rights group argue it’s a tactic to silence domestic opposition.

Rubio attacked those criticisms as a “partisan fiction” and said that such “ideological prejudice” has left a blind spot in global counterterrorism efforts. In November, the administration designated four leftist groups in Europe as foreign terrorist organizations and offered a $10 million reward for information on their financing.

Rubio said Thursday more designations are forthcoming.

“This is an international conference because we are facing an international — we are facing a transnational threat,” he said. “These are not distinct and isolated cells; they are interconnected networks.”

The Washington Post reported last week that anonymous U.S. officials raised concern that the administration was looking to unlock powerful counterterrorism tools to target U.S. activists they view as left-wing extremists.

In October, Trump vowed to expand his domestic targeting of the group antifa — a decentralized far-left political movement — to labeling the group as a foreign terrorist organization.

“Let’s get it done, OK? Let’s get it done, Marco,” Trump said at an event convening alleged victims of antifa violence.

The event came after Trump designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization and issued executive order NSPM-7, which granted broader tools to the Justice and Treasury departments, the IRS and the FBI to investigate nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations for links to terrorist acts. Watchdogs and analysts argue the executive order risks undermining the First Amendment.

The executive order was spearheaded by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser to the president. Miller spoke at the conference and urged participants to be “completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”

Miller told participants they can identify leftist threats by their “deformed” appearance.

“It’s not a coincidence that when you look at these violent antifa demonstrations, you see any photograph of those who were assembled, to be blunt, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. They’re all deformed in some way,” he said. “We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”

Rubio, in his speech Thursday, sought to draw the connection between alleged left-wing political violence in the U.S. and Europe, underscoring the transnational threat.

He highlighted recent alleged left-wing violence across Europe: The firebombing of a conservative politician’s home in Greece, which killed the politician’s 72-year-old mother; an arson attack against Berlin’s power grid claimed by a left-wing group; and the beating-death of a far-right militant in France allegedly by far-left supporters.

Some experts argue these examples are cherry-picked, isolated incidents or criminal in nature and don’t appear to represent coordination or organization among a larger group.

Rubio compared them to recent acts of political violence in the U.S., including assassination attempts against Trump; the successful assassination of the conservative political activist Charlie Kirk; the shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis; and the high-profile shooting in New York City of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“The very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy,” Rubio said.

He lodged criticism against what he said was city governments’ refusal to prosecute people perpetrating violence and vandalism amid nationwide protests in 2020 against police brutality, which erupted after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died under police restraint.

“As criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through America’s great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror,” Rubio said.

Not mentioned in the secretary’s remarks was Trump’s pardon of more than 1,600 people convicted of or awaiting trial for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to halt the certification of President Biden’s election victory over Trump.

Those pardoned or who had their sentences commuted included members of far-right extremist groups the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and people convicted of seditious conspiracy to attack the Capitol.

The summit at the State Department was dubbed the “Ministerial on Resurgence of Political Violence” but only focused on far-left political violence.

Asked if right-wing political violence would be the subject of a future ministerial, a State Department official responded that addressing and defeating the threat of far-left terrorism is the focus of the ministerial.

“We go where the threat is. Political terrorism is resurgent, and far-left terrorism specifically poses a unique and distinctive threat today,” the official said.

The summit was held in the State Department’s Loy Henderson conference room, an expansive room with rows of tables with microphones arranged in a semicircle.

The State Department sent along a list of 66 countries represented at the conference, spanning Europe, Asia and the Western Hemisphere. The protocol for representatives would typically include the country’s foreign or interior minister, although some countries were represented by their ambassador to the U.S., or deputy ambassador at their mission in Washington.

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