Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to a gathering of foreign leaders in Washington on Thursday, called for an American-led international crackdown on “left-wing” terrorism.
The State Department meeting, which brought together 65 delegations from around the world, was aimed at encouraging “stronger joint action” against terrorists.
“It truly is an unprecedented event on an unprecedented … moment in our history,” Mr. Rubio said in opening remarks. “We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it … through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, to financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick.”
The event had an explicit focus on what State Department officials termed “left-wing” terrorism, which the administration asserts is resurgent across the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Asia. The groups singled out have, according to the department, used a “deliberate, ideologically motivated strategy” to target private citizens, elected officials and critical infrastructure.
Since November, the U.S. has designated four leftist groups as FTOs/SDGTs, or foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists: Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.
The U.S. is offering up to $10 million for information that could lead to disrupting the financing of those groups.
Nations represented at Thursday’s meeting included Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Britain and dozens more. Representatives from guest nations included foreign ministers, government officials and law enforcement officers.
In his remarks, Mr. Rubio sought to breathe new life into the global war on terror. He argued the initiative needs to change course after more than a decade of focusing almost exclusively on radical Islamic terror.
“For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot. A blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left,” Mr. Rubio said. “Even today, 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.”
Academic and government researchers have traditionally been more skeptical than Mr. Rubio of claims that left-wing violence poses a comparably serious threat.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a study in September that found left-wing terror events in the U.S. had risen in 2025 to their highest point in 30 years. But researchers note that the rise comes from a very low base and still sits well below the number of deaths resulting from right-wing violence.
The study found 13 deaths resulting from left-wing violence over the past decade, compared to 112 from right-wing attacks over the same period.
Still, White House officials at the meeting sought to emphasize the danger posed by left-wing groups in the U.S. and around the world.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller followed Mr. Rubio’s remarks with a significantly more aggressive speech, insisting that the danger posed by left-wing violence requires drastic measures.
“When the leftist protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying,” Mr. Miller said, dismissing what he called “completely pretextual and disingenuous appeals to civil liberties” from those accused of left-wing violence.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also addressed the ministerial, said his department is working to deploy tools originally intended for use against foreign terror threats on domestic targets, including charities and nonprofits that he said are being used “as vehicles for illicit finance.”
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned 17 charities and nonprofits in the U.S., according to Mr. Bessent, which he said helped funnel money to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza.
In a bid to quell concerns that the Trump administration’s efforts to target nonprofits and charities could infringe on civil liberties, Mr. Bessent assured the audience that Treasury’s actions would be based on “suspected unlawful conduct,” not “beliefs or ideology.”
Thursday’s ministerial follows a concentrated White House push to crack down on left-wing groups the administration deems a threat to national security.
In September, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which directed law enforcement agencies to investigate and disrupt organizations tied to “anti-fascism.”
Critics have argued that the administration’s categorization of left-wing terrorism is too broad and that the initiative could be used to unfairly prosecute the White House’s political opponents.
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