US hosts international summit on ‘leftist threats’: Who’s coming, why it matters | Crime Stories

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host more than 65 countries at a conference on political violence from the left, a term that several critics say is being used to combat legal violence.

The “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism”, which is taking place on Thursday, gathers representatives of governments around the world to agree on what the United States Department of State calls “a new threat” that “remains indifferent to the international situation in the fight against terrorism”.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Reuters news agency that “left-wing terrorism can be used to fight legitimate protests and political opponents rather than a real security threat.”

Here’s what’s running the conference and who’s in attendance:

What is this tip?

The 2026 anti-terrorism plan of the Trump administration identifies three major threats: “Islamic terrorism”, “narcotics terrorism”, and “left-wing extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists”.

The approach says that a third group of left-wing “extremists” has not been traditionally ignored, and says that the murder of Charlie Kirk in September 2025 was carried out by “a radical who adheres to radical ideas”.

The strategy of fighting terrorism leaves extremist groups and white nationalists, despite the violence that some of these outfits have been accused of – including several who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2020, in an attempt to overthrow the US presidential elections that Donald Trump lost.

Thomas Renard, director of The Hague-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism, said the meeting marks a major shift in the way the US sees the threat.

“What we’re seeing now in the United States is that the fight against terrorism has been politicized, it’s been manipulated,” he told Al Jazeera. “For example, the threat of far-right terrorism, which for years was seen as a major domestic threat, has now been eliminated from the US counterterrorism agenda.”

Who is invited?

The invitations went to more than 70 countries as the State Department posted on social media that countries had shown “great interest”. It is said that the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Israel Mr. Gideon Saar has been there together with representatives from several countries. Its mission is to “enhance cooperation, improve information sharing, and strengthen international law enforcement mechanisms”.

The meeting follows several smaller meetings held earlier this year, including in The Hague with law enforcement officials.

Renard said that many European countries are showing their displeasure with the ministerial meeting by sending junior ministers.

“They don’t really believe that this is a topic that makes this kind of meeting legal, but at the same time they don’t want to challenge the United States either.”

In November, 2025, the US designated four European groups as terrorist organizations: The German Antifa Ost, the Italian Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI), the Greek Armed Proletarian Justice and the Greek Revolutionary Class Self-Defense.

What is “remote terrorism”?

The term is often used by governments to refer to groups accused of violence and driven by left-wing ideologies, including Marxism, socialism, or anarchism. Such movements often describe themselves as anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Latin America saw several leftist armed groups during the Cold War, several of which engaged in political violence, such as Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) in El Salvador and the Tupamaros in Uruguay. Throughout the 20th century, Washington repeatedly supported hard-line right-wing governments that opposed leftist movements across Latin America.

India has been battling Naxalite insurgency, a left-wing Maoist group that emerged in the 1960s and claims to be fighting for the rural population. The group is seen as one of the biggest internal security threats in India. At its peak, around the year 2000, thousands of people were killed as a result of the conflict and the Naxalite insurgency.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Marxist groups such as the Red Army Faction in West Germany were behind a series of murders, kidnappings and bombings that they argued were aimed at weakening the capitalist state.

In contrast, the Antifa movement, which the Trump administration has been trying to portray as a major threat of violence, is a loose, conservative group of people who follow a social culture that opposes right-wing extremism, white supremacy and the establishment. Several people who are described as members of Antifa have been accused of violence in US courts, especially in states like Texas that have been controlled by Trump’s Republican party since he left office. In June, eight such people were sentenced to several years in prison: Benjamin Hanil Song, who was found guilty of attempting to kill a police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison.

Right-wing political violence and terrorism in the US

But the same Trump administration pardoned all those charged with violent crimes on January 6, 2023, including those accused of assaulting police officers.

This week’s conference also focuses on left-wing political violence but does not include the threat from right-wing ideology and terrorism, similar to the counter-terrorism strategy.

This, despite the Oklahoma bombing, which killed 168 people and injured nearly 700 in the deadliest terrorist attack in the US, was carried out by right-wing activist Timothy McVeigh.

The Cato Institute, a US think tank in Washington, DC, reported in February that of the terrorist attacks that have been politically motivated in the US between 1975 and 2025, excluding the Oklahoma bombings and 9/11, “right-wing terrorists are responsible for 45 percent of the people killed, Muslims are responsible for 32 percent, terrorists are responsible for 16 percent.”

Renard says that the conference creates the very problem it claims to solve: “The United States, with this conference and with its methods, is making people less aware of the threat of terrorism, because this threat is deeply rooted in the United States.”