By Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) – Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday launched a U.S-led push to focus international counterterrorism efforts on what he called “far-left terror,” telling officials from more than 60 countries that leftist violence had been overlooked.
In a speech opening a Washington conference called the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, Rubio said the threat from Islamic militancy was “severely diminished” thanks to coordinated international efforts.
But he warned the “undeniable reality” of rising left-wing violence was a “blind spot”.
“We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio said, describing a transnational threat from groups who target politicians and infrastructure that he said were motivated by a hatred of the West and its success.
President Donald Trump has made countering left-wing groups a priority. Trump singled out the movement on the campaign trail in 2024, and vowed to take action against left-wing groups he accuses of fomenting violence after the killing of conservative activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk last year.
But civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have warned that designating groups as far-left terror organizations risked targeting lawful protests and political opponents rather than genuine security threats.
The Trump administration convened a law enforcement workshop in May to discuss the threat of far-left groups and would co-host a second workshop with Germany, Rubio said.
“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, Washington has designated four European groups — Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense — as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, offering rewards of up to $10 million for information on their financing.
Rubio said left-wing groups work with foreign states hostile to the U.S., citing Iranian proxy networks as “increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world,” though he did not provide evidence of such links. He also accused Cuba’s Communist leaders of having “helped build the far left” in the United States, without offering evidence to support the claim.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, editing by Deepa Babington)
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