Under the pretext of fighting ‘terrorism’, the Trump administration warned allies to back its political persecution
When Marco Rubio gathered representatives from 66 countries in Washington this month, his aim was clear and aggressive: target the “resurgence of far-left terrorism”. Framing the threat as a global emergency, the US secretary of state called on intelligence agencies and security forces around the world to unite to “crush this evil forever”.
“We can, and we must, identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio warned attendees. “Just as we have done together before, now we must do it together again.”
Referencing various left-wing guerrilla and political organisations that were active across Latin America in the 20th century, he added: “Every one of our friends here from the nations of the Western Hemisphere remember – remember the decades of kidnappings and bombings and assassinations and executions, the violent terror of the Tupamaros, of the Montoneros, of the FARC, of the ELN.”
Outside the conference room, the State Department was making the same point to the wider American public. It released a document on the same topic, which used extremely vague data to draw parallels between the Latin American guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s and very different situations in Europe and the US to demonstrate that “left-wing terrorism” exists – and has previously been ‘defeated’.
