Marco Rubio is taking “far-left terror” crusade global

In May, the Trump administration released a 16-page strategy memo outlining what it called the most significant terrorist threats facing the nation. Authored by the recently appointed senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, it drew a distinction between three categories: Narco-terrorism, Islamic terrorism and left-wing terrorism. Since Gorka himself has ties to a far-right group in Hungary, perhaps it was to be expected that the document neglected to mention the right-wing violence that has plagued the United States for the last decade or more.

It was a significant omission in a memo that was long on hyperbole and short on strategy, and offered little more than a call for aggressive, violent action against terrorism. As ProPublica reported, in other contexts Gorka has described “U.S. operations turning suspected terrorists into ‘red mist’ and stacking bodies ‘like cordwood.’” He has also sported a lanyard with the letters “WWFY & WWKY,” which stands for “We will find you and we will kill you.” Obviously, Gorka, who was fired from the White House in Donald Trump’s first term but was allowed to return to the fold in the second, is a very serious and sober person, a first-rate choice to head counterterrorism efforts.

It’s not surprising that the report, if you want to call it that, would name narco-terrorists and Islamic terrorism. Those are perennial threats named in reports by both Democratic and Republican administrations. But the focus on left-wing terrorism is new. And now the Trump administration, led by Secretary of State, and likely 2028 presidential candidate, Marco Rubio is leading the charge to take the far-left terror crusade global.

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Left-wing terrorism hasn’t been a focus until now for good reason. As TIME reported in September, “In the last five years, 81 people have been killed by political violence in the United States. Right-wing terrorists account for over half of those murders, some 54%, according to research by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Islamists account for 21%, and left-wingers for 22%.” Going back to 1975, excluding the 9/11 attacks, right-wing terrorism has accounted for 63% of deaths from political violence, while only 10% came from the left.

Colin Clark, the director of the Soufan Center, a nonprofit that focuses on foreign policy and terrorism, pointed out in an interview with PBS that the term “narco-terrorism” is a misnomer. Cartels and drug gangs are motivated by profits, not ideology, which is what defines the term. Not that the groups aren’t a threat, but they require a different approach, although the report’s emphasis on “kinetic” (violent) response is currently being enacted in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, where the military is wantonly murdering people in small boats without evidence.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been an uptick in left-wing violence in the last few years. But as Clark points out, “any time you have a rise in the far right, you’re going to have a rise in the far left. But, on balance and in aggregate, far-right terrorism still poses a far more significant threat than the far left does.”

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Nonetheless, this report wasn’t the first in Trump’s second administration to order a new focus on alleged left-wing violence. In the wake of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, Trump issued a presidential memorandum titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” that ordered a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence.” These included “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” which has “created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes.” (One could easily say that the points about “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and violence for political gain are better applied to that right, but that’s another story.)

After Gorka released his own strategy memo that isn’t really a strategy, he said, “We see a threat, we will respond to it, and we will crush it, whether it is the cartels, the jihadists, or violent left-wing extremists like antifa and like the transgender killers, the non-binary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend Charlie Kirk.”

Lest you think this is all just another onanistic show for the MAGA cult, the administration is working overtime to enlist foreign countries in its effort.

Lest you think this is all just another onanistic show for the MAGA cult, the administration is working overtime to enlist foreign countries in its effort. In late May, the State Department held a meeting in The Hague that brought together counterterrorism officials from Europe and elsewhere, and it was not well-received. According to the Washington Post, many of the invitees’ view was “we don’t see it quite the way you do.” They are rightly more concerned with the rise of right-wing violence as seen in the anti-Muslim attacks that were recently on display in Northern Ireland.

Undeterred by this rejection of the administration’s provincial obsession with their own domestic enemies, Rubio, reported the Post, has invited leaders from more than 60 countries to discuss the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism” this week, and his international counterparts are once again unimpressed, as are domestic and foreign terrorism experts. (Even some Trump officials worry that “a Gavin Newsom administration” will turn these tactics on the right.)

“Antifa” is just not a thing, but apparently, the Trump administration is determined to pretend it is so they can designate the group a transnational terrorist organization and use the extra-constitutional methods they have applied to Islamic terrorism, and, presumably, the kill order they are currently using in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific against alleged narco-terrorists.

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We can see the outlines of how this will be handled in the recent case of protesters and vandals involved in an action against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas. One group member who had been convicted of terrorist activities, among other charges, was given a 100-year sentence for attempted murder for wounding a police officer. The others got sentences of 30 to 70 years for “spray-painting anti-police graffiti, slashing tires, destroying a surveillance camera, and setting off fireworks at the building.”

Some might find it odd that Rubio, allegedly the last grown-up standing in the Trump administration, would jump on this bandwagon. Not only is it unconstitutional, it’s also flagrantly authoritarian. The secretary is supposedly planning to run as the “sane” candidate against Vice President JD Vance in 2028, and this has to be one of the least sane of Stephen Miller’s initiatives. The fact that Rubio is leading the charge here says very clearly that when Donald Trump is finally shuffled off the stage, his insane brand of politics isn’t going anywhere.

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