Facing what Secretary of State Marco Rubio will describe as a “resurgence” of “far left political terrorism,” according to a State Department official, Rubio will convene diplomats from around the world in Washington on Thursday to discuss a response.
It is a key priority of the Trump administration, which has argued in its counterterrorism strategy that “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists” are foremost terrorist threat to the United States, alongside cartels and “legacy Islamist terrorists.”
However, multiple former officials said the issue has been politicized by the administration and that the threat from the “far-left” does not rise to the level of that posed by groups like ISIS or by far-right extremists. The latter was absent entirely from the administration’s counterterrorism strategy released in May.
Thursday’s ministerial, according to the State Department, is meant to “expand coordination, enhance information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms to counter the threat” that it says has “remained a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus.”
A senior State Department official said 65 country delegations are slated to attend the event from “across the Western Hemisphere, Asia, Europe, and beyond.”
