Article by Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

When Marco Rubio gathered representatives from 66 countries in Washington this month, his aim was clear and aggressive: target the “resurgence of far-left terrorism”. Framing the threat as a global emergency, the US secretary of state called on intelligence agencies and security forces around the world to unite to “crush this evil forever”. 

“We can, and we must, identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio warned attendees. “Just as we have done together before, now we must do it together again.”

Referencing various left-wing guerrilla and political organisations that were active across Latin America in the 20th century, he added: “Every one of our friends here from the nations of the Western Hemisphere remember – remember the decades of kidnappings and bombings and assassinations and executions, the violent terror of the Tupamaros, of the Montoneros, of the FARC, of the ELN.”

Outside the conference room, the State Department was making the same point to the wider American public. It released a document on the same topic, which used extremely vague data to draw parallels between the Latin American guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s and very different situations in Europe and the US to demonstrate that “left-wing terrorism” exists – and has previously been ‘defeated’.

In Latin America, this messaging amounts to an open endorsement of the state terrorism and genocide that 20th-century military dictatorships and regional repressive coordination efforts – such as Plan Condor, an illegal operation by military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to capture and disappear political opponents across borders – deployed to combat the guerrillas.

Rubio’s threat appears clear: Washington is willing to repeat that extreme state violence – and the egregious human rights violations it led to – in order to stop modern-day “left-wing terrorists”. 

Given that no armed movements like those 20th-century guerrillas Rubio mentioned actually exist in our region today, which groups or individuals is the US government referring to? Understanding this will allow us to understand the pattern of political persecution it seeks to export worldwide. 

Among them are “antifa”– decentralised groups that confront the far right, racism, and colonialism through street tactics and digital activism. The current US administration has repeatedly referred to these groups as a kind of highly organised international conspiracy; Donald Trump designated them as a terrorist organisation in September 2025, even though they are clearly not an organisation. 

Trump’s White House has also labelled some of the groups opposing the systematic persecution of migrants by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as “domestic terrorists”. 

Perhaps the most famous case of US authorities criminalising dissidents in recent years combined both “antifa” and “anti-ICE”. In July last year, police violence towards an anti-deportation protest outside the Prairieland detention facility in Texas led to riots in which a police officer was shot and received a non-life-threatening injury. Eleven people were arrested; the US government determined that they were part of the “antifa cell” in North Texas. Last month, six people were handed prison sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years, while the activist who shot the officer received a 100-year sentence.

Clearly, the primary targets of this political persecution are protest and social movements, especially those associated with various forms of direct action. 

In both the US and Europe, there has been a trend in recent years to classify protesters or activists who employ direct-action tactics – which, in some cases, result in property damage – as terrorists or violent extremists. These incidents are framed, prosecuted, and tried as “national security” cases.

Take the situation of Palestine Action in the UK. The government proscribed the direct action group as a terrorist organisation last year, and last month, four of its activists had a ‘terrorist connection’ applied to sentences for criminal damage at a factory owned by the UK branch of Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer. Five more Palestine Action activists now also face being sentenced as terrorists for breaking windows and throwing red paint at a branch of Barclays Bank, which held shares in Elbit Systems. In both cases, jurors were not told that reaching a guilty verdict could lead to the protesters being sentenced as terrorists.

But the content of Rubio’s speech – with its anti-Marxist and anti-left rhetoric – suggests the persecution could extend beyond direct-action groups, impacting all kinds of progressive opposition groups. In fact, Trump administration officials have repeatedly referred to the Democratic Party itself (which is hardly suspected of Marxism) as an “extremist organisation”.

The shift toward the far right and the resulting political weaponisation of the definition of terrorism is a hallmark of the current US administration and several of its allies in the region.

In May of this year, the new US counterterrorism strategy was released, identifying three major sources of terrorist activities: “narco-terrorists and transnational gangs,” “historical Islamist terrorists,” and “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists.” Far-right terrorism is not listed as a concern, even though the most serious acts of violence in the US – aside from the attacks of 11 September 2001 – were carried out by white supremacists or other far-right groups.

The guest list of Rubio’s meeting earlier this month suggests that, for now at least, tackling “far-left terrorism” is a low priority for most governments; the majority opted to dispatch mid-to-low-level diplomatic or law enforcement representatives, rather than cabinet ministers. The two notable exceptions were Israel and Argentina, both of which sent their foreign ministers.

In Argentina’s case, Pablo Quirno was not only one of the highest-profile foreign officials present, but reportedly spoke at the event in a strong show of alignment between right-wing president Javier Milei and the US administration.

The concept of “far-left terrorism” has not been part of Argentina’s security agenda since the 1990s. But last year, this concept found its way into Milei’s National Intelligence Plan, which listed “anarchist terrorism” as one of the risk scenarios that Argentine intelligence agencies must monitor – without any clarification of what it actually refers to.

The Argentine government must now explain what role it played in Rubio’s meeting and what it considers “left-wing terrorism”. It is crucial that the entire political spectrum put a stop to these encroachments, which use counterterrorism policies as an excuse for political persecution, the curtailment of freedoms, and the legitimisation of state violence.

CELS is an Argentine human rights organisation with a broad agenda that includes defending the right to protest.

 Article by Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.