‘Enemies of civilization’: top Trump officials disparage leftism at event

Marco Rubio speaks during the event at the state department in Washington DC, on 16 July 2026. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters View image in fullscreen Marco Rubio speaks during the event at the state department in Washington DC, on 16 July 2026. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters ‘Enemies of civilization’: top Trump officials disparage leftism at event Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller took aim at only leftwing activism at meeting of 66 nations against political violence Top Trump officials on Thursday hosted a gathering of 66 nations to discuss the supposed threat of leftwing violence, and launched a series of diatribes, harsh even by the standards of the Trump administration , against leftism. The conference, convened by Marco Rubio , the secretary of state, and attended by Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, was billed as a “ministerial on the resurgence of political violence” but the focus was solely on crushing leftist violence. It came as Donald Trump ramps up his efforts to label his political opponents, and a rising number of politicians identified with the Democratic Socialists of America as “communists”. The officials did not mention episodes of rightwing attacks, such as the 6 January 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Rubio embraced unusually dehumanizing language towards leftwing activists. “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or marxist,” he said. “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, 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 despise the west because the west is great,” he said. He called leftists “an encroaching darkness” and “the enemies of civilization”. “We will dismantle these networks brick by brick,” he added. Rubio implied the US had largely won the effort against terrorism launched after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That threat was “severely diminished”, he said, and the administration was now moving on to this next problem – leftist violence [phase of a counterterrorism fight] – that he maintained had been overlooked. Last year Trump designated “antifa” – the longtime boogeyman of his political efforts – as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which could help his government bring new intelligence, financial and law enforcement tools against the amorphous grouping of antifascist protestors. Rubio also attempted to link disparate groups together. “Iranian proxy networks,” he said, “are increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world.” Ironically, while the Trump administration has pursued a pugnacious foreign policy and trade agenda, ruthlessly crushing leftism was one the few things Rubio said needed to be done with other countries: “W