On Thursday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department. The event brought together ministers and officials from over 60 countries to address the significant and rising international threat of far-left political violence and terrorism.
Secretary Rubio delivered a powerful warning about the threat of leftists and pushed for greater international cooperation to combat their violence and extremism.
“The overwhelming share of that violence came from left-wing extremists,” Rubio stated. “Between 1970 and 1980, 93% of terrorist attacks in the West came from the far extremist left.”
“These are numbers that would shock most Americans today because we’ve been taught to believe that this kind of political violence, it simply doesn’t exist or it’s being exaggerated. But it does exist, and we’re actually underestimating it, and our nations bear the scars to prove it. And today we face a new wave of this old evil.”
“Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone. In Greece, More than 80% of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors.”
“These, these are not abstract statistics. Americans have seen what those numbers mean: an all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like ‘Where is your God now?’”
SECRETARY RUBIO: “Today, we face a new wave of this old evil. Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades.” pic.twitter.com/mEKX0w7gb5
— Department of State (@StateDept) July 16, 2026
He continued, “This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself.”
“It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can.”
“This is what radical leftism is.”
“It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalists or anti-imperialists or communists or anarchists or Marxists, but the fundamental character is always the same. It’s always the same.”
“It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice, liberation, 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.”
“Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us.”
“The old dogma was wrong. The old dogma was wrong. None of this is driven by idealism. It is not utopian. In fact, it is the opposite.”
“One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory but it never works in practice. That’s actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul.”
“The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, without— a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things.”
“And the world communism envisions is a world without God. For these architects of revolutionary violence, the towering achievement of our civilization, for them, it’s an unbearable humiliation, a reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be. So they choose instead to destroy.”
“They attack pipelines. They attack railroads. They attack power grids and laboratories, the physical embodied symbols of power and invention and achievement. This is the nature of the terrorism we face today. They despise the West because the West is great.”
SECRETARY RUBIO: “This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, for civilization itself.” pic.twitter.com/3t75pzaSRE
— Department of State (@StateDept) July 16, 2026
Watch the full speech below:
WATCH: Secretary Rubio hosts the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department https://t.co/SOdR44EiaB
— Department of State (@StateDept) July 16, 2026
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