Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently gave a Reaganesque speech to a room full of representatives from 67 different countries, urging them to join the United States in our efforts to cease the mounting, worldwide terrorist network that stems from the leftist ideologies of Marxism, socialism, and communism.

The following are three critical points that he made.

1. Too Many Dismiss Leftist Terrorism as a Right-Wing “Conspiracy Theory”

Since 2001, most of the world has rightly recognized the evil of Islamist terrorism; however, they deny the existence of leftist terrorism. Thankfully, the current Trump administration recognizes this horrific reality. In its 2026 counterterrorism strategy, it names the following three major types of terrorism: “narcoterrorists and transnational gangs; legacy Islamist terrorists; and violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-Fascists.”

Ignoring — or even justifying — leftist terrorism severely weakens nations’ security and makes millions of people around the world more vulnerable. Rubio said, “Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference.” He was right: Here is just one such example.

Rubio explained that, in the United States, “so many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression so long as they served a left-wing cause.

“It is why during those George Floyd … riots in the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through … America’s great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now infamous image — and you all recall this — of a news anchor from a very prominent agency — a news anchor standing in a neighborhood consumed in flames; meanwhile the chyron on the bottom read that the protests were ‘mostly peaceful.’ This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.”

Thankfully, more countries’ leaders (regardless of whether they agree with the Trump administration on other issues) are realizing the growth of leftist terrorism because, sadly, they are witnessing firsthand the loss of lives due to this evil. Rubio cited specific examples:

“You came here — you are here — because two weeks ago, a 72-year-old woman was burned on over 80% of her body in her own home in Greece, and she died, executed by a firebomb because her daughter dared to stand for office. You are here today because for five days this winter the lights went out in Berlin, the longest blackout in the city since the Second World War, sparked by an attack that left tens of thousands of households without power in the freezing cold and left an 83-year-old woman dead.

“You are here, and you came, because a month after that Berlin blackout, a French 23-year-old succumbed to traumatic brain injuries, beaten to death on the streets of Lyon by a group of far-left militant thugs. You are here because your political leaders are being attacked and stabbed and shot in your streets, because your businesses have been bombed, because your railways have been sabotaged, because your police officers have been beaten and burned. You are here because this is real, and it is getting worse, and it can no longer be denied, and it can no longer be ignored, because it is time to crush this evil forever.”

2. Far-Left Terrorism Is Nothing New: Remember Examples from the Last 60 Years

Secretary Rubio then reminded the world leaders that, collectively, we have suffered the horrors of leftist terrorism over the last six decades: “The simple fact is none of this that I’ve just described is new. Far-left political terrorism is not a recent-day, modern novelty. It is not a fiction manufactured by conservative politicians. For most of the modern era, it was, in fact, the dominant form of political violence.”

He listed examples that our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere have experienced: kidnappings, bombings, assassinations, and executions; terror of the Tupamaros, of the Montoneros, of the FARC, of the ELN; “the inhuman savagery of Peru’s Shining Path; the Maoist fanatics who massacred the peasant villages of Peru, hacking pregnant women and newborn infants to death with axes and machetes; you remember the tens of thousands of Marxist guerrillas trained to kill in Castro’s terrorist camps.”

He next named horrific leftist terrorist acts that Europe experienced over the years: “machine gun massacres of Italy’s Red Brigades, which held the five-time prime minister captive for 55 days before subjecting him to a revolutionary, so-called ‘people’s trial’ and executing him in 1978”; “the Red Army Faction’s nearly three-decade campaign of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations in Germany, murdering dozens and injuring hundreds more”; and “the 17 November organization in Greece, the Marxist extremists that terrorized Athens for more than a quarter century, including, by the way, shooting my country’s CIA station chief dead outside of his home in front of his wife as they were returning home from a Christmas party.”

Finally, he described the leftist terrorist acts that Americans remember: the Weather Underground, which bombed the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Capitol; “the Black Liberation Army, which staged armed robberies and executed police officers at point-blank range; the Symbionese Liberation Army, which shot a public school superintendent to death with cyanide-packed hollow-point bullets. In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil, a rate of nearly five a day. The overwhelming share of that violence came from left-wing extremists. Between 1970 and 1980, 93% of terrorist attacks in the West came from the far extremist Left.”

3. Today, We Face an Evil Driven by Hatred for Civilization Itself: The Free World Must Fight Them Together

Ultimately, Rubio explained, the world is facing a “new wave” of leftist terrorism. We have not seen this many plots and attacks in decades. Over the past year, Germany has seen a 40% increase leftist violence while Greece has seen an 80% increase.

And in America, we have experienced assaults on immigration officers; “a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, ‘Where is your God now?’; a health care executive executed in cold blood in the streets; multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president; and the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation, a man who happened also to be a husband and the father of two young children, shot and killed while speaking to a crowd of students.”

Rubio then pushed back on a notion that is often floated around: that communism “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, grey, 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, 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.”

In addition, leftist terrorists have a complex, international network: “Today’s far-left terrorists can raise money in one country; they can host their communications in a second country; they can receive training in a third country; they can recruit militants in a fourth country, and then together strike a target in a fifth country. And so, we 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.”

Thankfully, he explained, the Trump administration is building an international partnership to defeat these terrorists, to disrupt Antifa terror networks and their allies, and designate violent far-left extremist groups.

“We can — and we must — identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it. Just as we have done together before, now we must do it together again. Through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, through financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick. It is time for the people of the civilized world to defend ourselves, to stand united against this encroaching darkness, and fight — fight for what is ours.

“It is easy to destroy great things; it is far more difficult to make them. The enemies of civilization are only capable of the former. They are only capable of destroying great things. All they know is destruction. But we have built great things together. We have done it time and again. We know what we must do, and now we must do it.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

Kathy Athearn is a correspondence writer at Family Research Council. She studied Political Science and Religion at Hope College, was a Witherspoon Fellow at FRC, and is passionate about helping Christians contribute a biblical worldview to the public sphere.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

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