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United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hosting more than ۶۵ countries for a conference focused on political violence from the far left, a designation that a number of critics say is being used to target legitimate opposition.
The “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism”, taking place on Thursday, brings together government representatives from around the world to coordinate on what the US Department of State calls a “renewed threat” that has “remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus”.
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Reuters news agency that “the far-left terrorism designations could be used to target lawful protest activity and political opponents rather than genuine security threats.”
Here’s what’s driving the summit and who’s attending:
What is this summit about?
The Trump administration’s ۲۰۲۶ counterterrorism strategy identifies three primary threats: “Islamist terrorism”, “narco-terrorism”, and “violent left-wing extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists”.
The strategy states that the third category of left-wing “extremists” has been traditionally ignored, and notes that Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September ۲۰۲۵ was executed “by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies”.
The counterterrorism strategy omits right-wing extremism and white supremacist groups, despite growing instances of violence that some of these outfits have been accused of – including several of those who attacked the Capitol on January ۶, ۲۰۲۰, in an attempt to overturn the US presidential election that Donald Trump lost.
Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said the summit reflects a fundamental shift in how the US sees the threat.
“What we are seeing now in the United States is that counterterrorism has been completely politicised, instrumentalised,” he told Al Jazeera. “For instance, the threat from far-right terrorism, which was for decades considered as the primary domestic threat, has now completely disappeared from the US counterterrorism strategy.”
Who has been invited?
Invites went to more than ۷۰ countries as the State Department wrote on social media that countries had shown “overwhelming interest”. It is reported that Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar will be present alongside representatives from multiple countries. The stated aim is to “expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms”.
The summit follows a series of smaller meetings held earlier this year, including one in The Hague with law enforcement officials.
Renard says many European nations are expressing their unease with this ministerial meeting by sending relatively junior ministers.
“They are not particularly convinced that this is a topic that justifies this type of gathering, but at the same time, they don’t want to antagonise the United States either. And therefore, this is the compromise they found,” he said.
In November, ۲۰۲۵, the US designated four European groups as terrorist organisations: The German Antifa Ost, the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), the Greek Armed Proletarian Justice and the Greek Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.
What is “far-left terrorism”?
The term is usually used by governments to describe movements accused of violence and driven by left-wing ideologies, including Marxism, socialism, or anarchism. Such movements usually describe themselves as anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.
Latin America saw several left-wing armed movements during the Cold War, a number of which carried out sustained campaigns of political violence, such as Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) in El Salvador and the Tupamaros in Uruguay. Throughout the ۲۰th century, Washington repeatedly backed hardline right-wing regimes that opposed left-wing movements across Latin America.
India has been dealing with the Naxalite rebellion, a far-left Maoist movement that started in the ۱۹۶۰s and claims to fight for the rural population. The group is seen as one of India’s most serious internal security threats. At its peak, about the year ۲۰۰۰, thousands of people were killed due to the conflict with the Naxalite rebellion.
During the ۱۹۷۰s and ۱۹۸۰s, Marxist groups like the Red Army Faction in West Germany were behind several assassinations, abductions and bombings that they argued were aimed at weakening the capitalist state.
By contrast, the Antifa movement, which the Trump administration has consistently tried to portray as a major violent threat, is a loose, decentralised collection of socialist-leaning individuals opposed to far-right extremism, white supremacy and authoritarianism. Several individuals described by prosecutors as Antifa members have been indicted on accusations of violence in US courts, especially in states like Texas that are ruled by Trump’s Republican Party, since he returned to power. In June, eight such individuals were sentenced to several years in prison: Benjamin Hanil Song, convicted of the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, was sentenced to ۱۰۰ years in prison.
Far-right political violence and terrorism in the US
But the same Trump administration has pardoned all those charged with violence during the January ۶, ۲۰۲۳ insurrection, including individuals accused of beating police officers.
This week’s summit also specifically focuses on far-left political violence but does not include the threat from far-right ideology and terrorism, similar to the counterterrorism strategy.
This, even though the Oklahoma bombing, which killed ۱۶۸ people and wounded nearly ۷۰۰ in the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the US, was carried out by the right-wing hardliner Timothy McVeigh.
The Cato Institute, a US think tank in Washington, DC, stated in February that of politically motivated terrorism on US soil between ۱۹۷۵ and ۲۰۲۵, excluding the Oklahoma bombing and ۹/۱۱, “right-wing terrorists account for ۴۵ percent of people murdered, Islamists are responsible for ۳۲ percent, left-wing terrorists are responsible for ۱۶ percent.”
Renard says the summit creates the very problem it claims to solve: “The United States, with this summit and with its strategy, is creating, actually, a blind spot about far-right terrorist threats, as that threat is strongly anchored and rooted in the United States.”
