Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the United States and its international partners can no longer afford to ignore the threat of left-wing political extremism and violence. Speaking at the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department, Rubio argued that counterterrorism doctrine has historically contained a "blind spot" regarding violence originating from the political left.
Rubio asserted that the notion of left-wing terrorism as a serious threat is often dismissed by segments of the press, academia, and established institutions as a fringe or fabricated issue. He noted that despite objective data and the presence of diverse political perspectives at the conference, such violence is frequently downplayed or characterized as partisan fiction.
"A whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken understanding among them that the only kind of political violence that was a true threat to our system... that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system," Rubio remarked, contrasting the condemnation of neo-Nazi violence with the perceived excusal of violence committed by Marxist revolutionaries.
He contended that this ideological bias has led to a situation where acts of violence and terrorism serving left-wing causes have been dismissed as legitimate forms of political expression. Rubio cited the George Floyd riots of 2020 as an example, where he claims city governments refused to prosecute individuals involved in acts of violence and destruction. He also referenced media coverage of protests, which he stated sometimes downplayed significant unrest by labeling demonstrations as "mostly peaceful."
"Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end," Rubio declared.
Rubio highlighted international incidents to underscore the global nature of the threat. He referenced the firebombing death of a 72-year-old woman in Greece whose daughter was a political candidate, a blackout in Berlin attributed to an attack that left tens of thousands without power and resulted in an 83-year-old woman's death, and the fatal assault on a young man in Lyon, France, by what he described as far-left militants.
He characterized far-left political terrorism not as a new phenomenon but as a historically dominant form of political violence, citing past groups in the Western Hemisphere such as the Tupamaros, Montoneros, FARC, ELN, and Peru's Shining Path.
Rubio presented current statistics indicating a rise in left-wing terrorist incidents. He stated that in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has reached multi-decade highs. Germany has reportedly seen a more than 40% increase in far-left violence over the past year, and in Greece, over 80% of radical violence is attributed to far-left and anarchist actors.
"Americans have seen what those numbers mean — an all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes. A transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, ‘Where is your God now?’ A healthcare executive executed in cold blood in the streets. Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president. And the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation, a man who happened also to be a husband and the father of two young children, shot and killed while speaking to a crowd of students," Rubio recounted, listing specific incidents in the U.S.
Rubio described this form of violence as driven by a hatred of civilization itself, a revolt against achievement, and a desire to destroy what others have built. He stated that regardless of the specific ideology – whether anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, or Marxist – the fundamental character remains the same.
"It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world," he said.
Rubio concluded by asserting that this violence is not utopian but rather the opposite, stemming from an inability to create and a desire to destroy. He identified targets such as pipelines, railroads, power grids, and laboratories as symbols of power and invention that are attacked by those who "despise the West because the West is great."