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The Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited ministers from more than 60 nations to a ministerial meeting scheduled for July 16 at the State Department in Washington, focusing on what the Trump administration describes as the "resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism," according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The call includes most European nations, major Latin American countries, and several Asian states such as India, Indonesia, and Singapore.
The invitation was sent just last week, with a confirmation of attendance required by this Friday, which caused discomfort among the recipients due to the short notice.
A "concept note" distributed to the guests describes the event as a ministerial on the "resurgence of political terrorism," explicitly focusing on "far-left terrorists" who, according to the document, "are increasingly resorting to organized and lethal violence to advance their political goals."
The spokesperson for the State Department, Tommy Pigott, justified the call by stating that extreme left terrorism is "an old threat that is reemerging with strong transnational ties and new convergences."
However, the initiative has generated backlash both within the U.S. government itself and among European allies.
Several European diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed bewilderment at the invitation. "We don't have antifa," said one.
"I don't think we can find any reason why we would be interested in attending such an event," pointed out another. A third was more direct: "Our law enforcement authorities have not focused on left-wing terrorism because it is not considered a high-priority threat in our country."
Some career officials from the Department of Justice and the White House Counsel's Office have also expressed internal concerns, and several decided not to attend the event.
The meeting is part of a series of prior attempts that did not succeed: in May 2026, the State Department held a meeting in The Hague on antifa that "fell flat," and the Netherlands declined to be co-hosts. In June, a meeting at the United States Institute of Peace was described as a "failure."
The backdrop of this policy is the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, whose alleged killer inscribed anti-fascist rhetoric on the bullets used. Following the crime, Trump issued an executive order designating antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization," a label that experts indicate carries no legal weight.
The administration's "anti-terrorism czar," Sebastian Gorka, has explored the possibility of using foreign terrorism labels against antifa in order to enable surveillance tools against American citizens linked to the movement, according to three current and former officials.
Security experts warn that this legal route is unfeasible. "If it has a significant domestic presence, it cannot be designated," explained Jason Blazakis, who led the designation process at the State Department for ten years.
The administration's counterterrorism strategy, published in May 2026, calls for the "swift identification and neutralization" of groups with "anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist" ideologies but makes no mention of nationalist neo-Nazi groups, in contrast to the equivalent strategy from Trump's first term.
The Cuban regime, through the official Carlos R. Fernández de Cossío, described the call as an "electoral smoke screen" and compared the anti-communist rhetoric to "dark episodes of 1930s Europe."
"This is the politicization of intelligence, and it's dangerous because what they are doing is essentially playing partisan politics with counterterrorism, only considering a fraction of the overall threat," warned Colin P. Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center. "If I had to rank the priorities, left-wing terrorists would not be in my top three."
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