U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is convening a conference on Thursday with representatives from more than 65 countries to address political violence from the far left. The event, titled the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism,” aims to coordinate efforts against what the U.S. State Department calls a “renewed threat” that has “remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus.”
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Reuters that “the far-left terrorism designations could be used to target lawful protest activity and political opponents rather than genuine security threats.”
The Trump administration’s 2026 counterterrorism strategy identifies three primary threats: “Islamist terrorism,” “narco-terrorism,” and “violent left-wing extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The strategy claims the third category has been traditionally ignored and notes that the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025 was carried out “by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”
The strategy omits right-wing extremism and white supremacist groups, despite instances of violence attributed to them, including the January 6, 2020 attack on the Capitol aimed at overturning the presidential election lost by Donald Trump.
Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, said the summit reflects a fundamental shift in how the U.S. perceives 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 U.S. counterterrorism strategy.”
Invitations were sent to over 70 countries, and Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar is reportedly attending. The stated goal is to “expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms.”
Renard noted that many European nations are expressing unease 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. Therefore, this is the compromise they found,” he said.
In November 2025, the U.S. designated four European groups as terrorist organizations: Germany’s Antifa Ost, Italy’s Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), Greece’s Armed Proletarian Justice, and Greece’s Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.
According to the Cato Institute, from 1975 to 2025, excluding the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11, “right-wing terrorists account for 45 percent of people murdered, Islamists are responsible for 32 percent, left-wing terrorists are responsible for 16 percent” in politically motivated terrorism on U.S. soil. Renard argues 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.”
Source: www.aljazeera.com