Secretary of State Marco Rubio fiercely called out left-wing extremism and terrorism during a State Department summit held Thursday evening.
Attended by officials from over 60 countries, the summit began with Rubio speaking about how governments across the globe have spent too long overlooking and dismissing a rise in transnational far-left extremist violence.
“This is an international conference because we are facing an international threat,” he said of this extremism. “These are not distinct and isolated cells. They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our borders. They do not believe, in fact, in the nation state itself. They coordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train, and they act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies, sharing the same mission.”
“Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training materials and target information through shared encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safe houses and finance, and sustain their operations through transnational funds,” he added.
Every American needs to listen to this entire speech. Not just clips. It is phenomenal. Thank you @SecRubio for recognizing the severity of the problem and most importantly, working to combat it. pic.twitter.com/YGSu1buTpd
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) July 16, 2026
Continuing his speech, Rubio described far-left extremism as an ideology rooted in “poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation.”
It’s “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 explained.
As for what to do about this extremism, Rubio called for building a joint new counterterrorism strategy.
“We can — and we must — identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” he said. “Just as we have done together before, now we must do it together again. Through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, through financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick.”
“It is time for the people of the civilized world to defend ourselves, to stand united against this encroaching darkness, and fight — fight for what is ours. It is easy to destroy great things; it is far more difficult to make them. The enemies of civilization are only capable of the former. They are only capable of destroying great things. All they know is destruction. But we have built great things together. We have done it time and again. We know what we must do, and now we must do it,” he added.
After the speech’s conclusion, Rubio announced that the State Department will be “imposing new visa restrictions to bar Far-Left Terrorists from entering” the United States.
Today, @StateDept is imposing new visa restrictions to bar Far-Left Terrorists from entering our country.
Foreigners who finance, incite, or aid and abet Far-Left Terrorists are enemies of our civilization. They are not welcome in the United States.https://t.co/Xnc1dqMAHd
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 16, 2026
During the speech, Rubio also bashed the propaganda press, universities, and other “legacy” institutions for downplaying and even defending left-wing extremism and violence.
“The very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy,” he rightly pointed out. “It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions.”
“You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference. In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, we will hear this organized — that this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed. It will be dismissed as a partisan fiction,” he added.
He wasn’t wrong. CNN rushed to get a quote from a former Biden administration official supposedly debunking Rubio’s correct observations.
“We looked at terrorism of all stripes, including left-wing terrorism, but the reality and the data, both here domestically and abroad, indicate that left-wing extremism is not and has not been the type of threat or the degree of threat that far-right terrorism or extremist violence or jihadist violence have posed,” former Biden administration official Ian Moss told the left-wing network.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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