Rubio calls for global crackdown on far-left extremism

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on countries to collaborate against what he called a growing threat of left-wing terrorism.

The Trump administration hosted representatives from more than 60 countries in Washington, where it argued left-wing political violence was the result of a "unique evil rooted in a deep resentment towards civilisation".

Officials made no mention of countering far-right threats, and Democrats said Rubio's focus on left-wing groups was "politically partisan".

The initiative aligns with the Trump administration's stated priority of confronting left-wing groups, particularly Antifa, a loosely organised far-left movement.

At Thursday's session in Washington DC, Rubio called for a global effort to share intelligence to counter the "transnational" issue of far-left extremism.

The invitation list included officials from most European nations, several Latin American countries and India, Indonesia and Singapore, reports the Washington Post.

The Trump administration has already designated Antifa - short for anti-fascist - as a domestic terrorist group.

At the session, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller characterised leftists as "fundamentally motivated by envy, by hatred, by jealousy".

Also on Thursday, the state department announced a new visa restriction policy that targets members of what it labels as "Far-Left Terrorist and other aligned groups", including those that have allegedly participated in "economic sabotage".

Washington has already designated four European anarchist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations: Antifa Ost (based in Germany), the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (Italy), Armed Proletarian Justice (Greece) and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense (Greek).

Eleven Democratic lawmakers wrote to Rubio on Wednesday questioning whether his focus on left-wing groups might target lawful protests and political opponents.

"We strongly urge the Department to return its focus to a serious mission set that is definitionally apolitical, data-driven, and rooted in reality," said the letter, obtained by Reuters news agency.

The lawmakers suggested the state department was "rubberstamping the political priorities of extremists within the Administration".

Research presents a mixed picture of far-left and far-right extremism in the US.

A 2025 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, found that left-wing terrorism had surpassed that from the far right for the first time in more than 30 years, although it also said incidents from both sides had fallen significantly over the decades.

However, the US justice department last year quietly removed from its website a 2024 internal study indicating that far-right extremists were responsible for the bulk of ideologically motivated deaths.