In mid-July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio concluded a “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” Delegations from 65 countries were summoned to be lectured on how leftists were destroying their respective nations from the inside, and on the need to disrupt alleged cross-border networks of support and influence among so-called left-wing terror groups. The name may lead one to believe the event was dry, national security focused, and politically neutral. But the context surrounding the event shows the continuing effort of senior Trump administration officials to restart the Red Scare and reshape the national security apparatus built in the wake of 9/11 to persecute whomever they deem to be “far-left” activists and organizations.
Just after the event, a 100-page report alleged widespread links between a so-called Cuban “sustained campaign of subversion” and just about every left political movement of the past 70 years, naming dozens of activists, politicians, and influencers with supposed links to or inspiration from the Cuban government. Several times the report makes leaps from rhetorical solidarity to material support and actual, physical links between Cuban espionage and nearly every progressive or left movement and organization over the past seven decades, from the Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground to today’s Democratic Socialists of America and the National Lawyers Guild. Also named are a wide range of activists, politicians and media members including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, and streamer and influencer Hasan Piker. As reporter Ken Klippenstein puts it: “What the report shows isn’t that any of these people are knowingly taking directions from a foreign power — only that they disagree with the U.S. government on Cuba policy (or at most, agree with Cuba).” Nevertheless, Rubio’s State Department continues to try to pin foreign influence in order to get around those pesky, so-called “constitutional rights to freedom of expression and association”.
The right wing’s attempt to quash our rights to protest certainly isn’t new, but following last year’s assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk, the Trump administration used the perceived left-wing affiliation of the attacker (who has flimsy connection to any ideology, much less a coherent connection to any left movement) to persecute leftist sentiment more broadly. In May, right-wing online and radio commentator-turned counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka released a strategy document highlighting “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as one of the three major types of terror groups faced by the U.S. government. Right-wing extremism did not make this list, nor was it mentioned at any point in the document. On live television, Trump himself ordered Rubio to “get it done” with regard to designating antifa a foreign terrorist organization.
That “far-left” or “left-wing” are terms that can mean any number of things to any number of people, or that antifa is not an organization by any definition, isn’t really important to the goals of the Trump administration. Anyone doing anything Trump’s government deems undesirable, from protesting ICE kidnappings to opposing data centers being built in their community, can be framed as “antifa terrorism.” And since they claim that all “left-wing” political activity is tied one way or another to Cuban espionage, that “terror activity” now has international links. According to Trump and Rubio, this means the rights supposedly guaranteed to you by the Constitution are undermined, enabling the government to employ surveillance and detention measures perfected during two decades of the Global War on Terror.
This is a crisis at least 25 years in the making, the wages of the U.S. government’s eroding of civil and political rights in the name of the “War on Terror” pursued by both parties. The potential consequences are alarming, but not inevitable. We must resist this effort to dismantle the rights fought for and won by our predecessors. And we must fight for a free society for future generations.
