{"id":8528,"date":"2026-07-17T10:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T05:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=8528"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T05:09:32","slug":"u-s-hosts-conference-on-far-left-terrorism-with-representatives-from-over-65-countries-what-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=8528","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Hosts Conference on &#039;Far-Left Terrorism&#039; With Representatives From Over 65 Countries: What to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<section>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/bltd1716b2036765d36\/6a595d97a1fc0604cff84600\/GettyImages-2285733518.jpg?branch=production\" \/><figcaption>Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes opening statement during an event titled &#8220;Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism&#8221; at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on July 16, 2026. \u2014Brendan Smialowski\u2014AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<section>\n<p>Secretary of State <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/collection\/100-most-influential-people\/2026\/marco-rubio\/?filters=Leaders\" target=\"_self\">Marco Rubio<\/a> hosted a conference on \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7317383\/political-violence-america-trump-crackdown-right\/\" target=\"_self\">far-left terrorism<\/a>\u201d on Thursday with representatives from dozens of countries in attendance.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting was aimed at garnering international support to combat what the State Department <a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/releases\/office-of-the-spokesperson\/2026\/07\/state-department-addresses-international-resurgence-of-far-left-political-terrorism\/\">described<\/a> as \u201cthe resurgent threat\u201d of such terrorism.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis 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,\u201d Rubio said in his opening remarks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is an international conference because we are facing an international\u2014we are facing a transnational threat,\u201d he went on, adding, \u201cWe have no choice but to confront this menace together. We will either cooperate across our borders or the terrorists will continue to exploit the gaps between them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thursday\u2019s conference comes as the Trump Administration has repeatedly <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7317383\/political-violence-america-trump-crackdown-right\/\">blamed<\/a> left-wing groups for rising political violence in the U.S. and made them a focus of its <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/article\/2026\/05\/06\/trump-new-counterterrorism-strategy\/\">counterterrorism efforts<\/a> in a reversal of past policy under the Biden Administration, even as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csis.org\/analysis\/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us\">data<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cato.org\/blog\/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states\">shows<\/a> that right-wing extremists have been responsible for a greater share of deadly attacks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read More: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7317383\/political-violence-america-trump-crackdown-right\/\" target=\"_self\"><em>Trump Called for a Crackdown on the &#8216;Radical Left.&#8217; But Right-Wing Extremists Are Responsible for More Political Violence<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what to know about Thursday\u2019s conference, and the facts about the ideologies driving political violence around the U.S.<\/p>\n<h2>Which countries were represented at the conference?<\/h2>\n<p>In attendance at Thursday\u2019s event were 66 nations, according to a State Department spokesperson, who provided the list of attendants to TIME.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The countries with officials present were Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, T\u00fcrkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Uruguay.<\/p>\n<h2>What Trump Administration officials said<\/h2>\n<p>In his opening remarks, Rubio contended that left-wing extremism has been the subject of a \u201cblind spot\u201d and \u201cextraordinary ideological prejudice\u201d in the study and discussion of political violence.<\/p>\n<p>He claimed that this has led to \u201cacts of violence and even terrorism\u201d tied to \u201cleft-wing causes\u201d being treated as legitimate forms of political outcry by U.S. officials, pointing in particular to the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s killing by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused, it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself,\u201d he said. \u201cThat era has to end.\u201d He argued that the international community must come together and rebuild its counterterrorism infrastructure to combat such violence like it did to counter \u201cradical Islamist extremism\u201d earlier in the 21st century.<\/p>\n<p>White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who spoke after Rubio, similarly characterized left-wing extremism as a growing threat aimed at \u201cthe overthrow of our system and form of government\u201d that officials previously failed to sufficiently address.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization. If the left is allowed to use the real or actual threat of violence to destabilize our institutions, then those institutions cannot and will not succeed,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent closed out the remarks from the Administration, referencing \u201cquieter\u201d forms of left-wing terrorism, such as \u201ccampaigns to suppress speech, intimidate political opposition, and sabotage our national institutions,\u201d as well as more overt acts of violence.<\/p>\n<p>The White House touted the conference in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/releases\/2026\/07\/trump-administration-unleashes-global-campaign-to-crush-radical-left-terrorism\/\">press release<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, the Trump Administration convened senior officials from governments around the world to launch an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism,\u201d the White House said. \u201cUnder the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Data show right-wing extremists commit more deadly attacks\u2014though left-wing incidents are rising<\/h2>\n<p>The Trump Administration officials\u2019 remarks on Thursday echo prior comments from President Donald Trump and his allies placing blame on left-wing extremists for increasing political violence in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But data show that political violence committed by right-wing groups accounts for a greater number of deaths.<\/p>\n<p>A September 2025 study from the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute found that in the last five years, 81 people had been killed due to political violence in the U.S. and right-wing terrorists were responsible for 54% of those deaths. Islamists were responsible for another 21% of the deaths, per the study, and left-wing terrorists for 22%.<\/p>\n<p>Over a longer time-frame, since 1975, 391 people have been killed in right-wing terror attacks in the U.S. and 65 have been killed in left-wing attacks, according to the study. Researchers categorized left-wing attacks as those motivated by ideologies such as communism, anti-white ideologies, or \u201canti-police sentiment,\u201d among others. The attacks categorized as right-wing in the study were associated with ideologies including white supremacy and anti-abortion beliefs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/a.nwps.fi\/306123.pdf\">analysis<\/a> published in the journal of the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department\u2019s research agency, in 2024 similarly found that based on the agency\u2019s studies, far-right extremists had committed \u201cfar more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists\u201d since 1990, including 520 deaths across 227 incidents, while far-left extremists were responsible for 78 deaths across 42 attacks during the same period.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csis.org\/analysis\/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us\">study<\/a> from the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that from 2016-2025, left-wing attacks killed 13 people, compared to 82 deaths from right-wing attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That study also found, however, that left-wing attacks have been rising in the U.S. in recent years\u2014and that in 2025, for the first time in its data, there were more left-wing incidents than those associated with the right-wing.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes opening statement during an event titled &#8220;Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism&#8221; at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on July 16, 2026. \u2014Brendan Smialowski\u2014AFP\/Getty Images Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a conference on \u201cfar-left terrorism\u201d on Thursday with representatives from dozens of countries in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static.time.com\/v3\/assets\/bltea6093859af6183b\/bltd1716b2036765d36\/6a595d97a1fc0604cff84600\/GettyImages-2285733518.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}