Trump and Rubio convene international summit against “anarchists, antifa and the far-left”
Osservatorio repressione, July 10, 2026
Washington convenes sixty countries to coordinate the fight against alleged far-left terrorism. Amid political trials, blacklists, and new anti-terrorism strategies, the Trump administration attempts to internationalise and criminalise dissent.
The Trump administration takes another step in constructing its internal enemy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited ministers from about sixty countries to an international summit dedicated to the alleged “resurgence of far-left terrorism.” An “anti-Antifa” meeting that, according to the White House, should coordinate a global response against a threat that, outside of Trump propaganda, seems to many observers largely fabricated and politically instrumental.
According to the Washington Post, the initiative provoked “consternation” among American diplomats, independent analysts, and various European allies, who do not share the Maga administration’s narrative and view with concern the attempt to transform antifascism into a category of international terrorism.
The Return of McCarthyism
The convening of the July 16 summit represents the most advanced point in a strategy that the Trump administration has been pursuing for months. In speeches on July 3 and 4, the president revived the rhetoric of the “communist threat,” evoking scenarios that openly recall the McCarthyist psychosis of the 1950s.
Last September, Trump had already signed the NSPM-7 directive, including “Antifa” among “anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-capitalist” groups. A politically significant but legally problematic definition: Antifa is not a structured organisation; it has no leaders, members, or chain of command. It is a set of diffuse anti-fascist practices and networks.
However, this designation has had a concrete effect: transforming anti-fascism into an “internal enemy.”
From dissent to terrorism
The qualitative leap is also evident in the judicial sphere. In Texas, nine anti-ICE activists were sentenced to prison terms ranging from thirty to one hundred years in the case concerning the alleged “Antifa terrorist cell” in Prairieland. In Minneapolis, fifteen anti-deportation activists were brought to trial.
In both cases, protest actions, property damage, and even graffiti were equated with terrorist activities.
According to several civil rights organisations, a new repressive doctrine is taking hold: not only criminal behaviour is being persecuted, but entire political areas considered hostile to the established order.
Added to this is another worrying element: militants and activists have also been targeted for investigative attention based on statements and opinions expressed on social media.
Following the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Justice Department official Aakash Singh reportedly urged federal prosecutors to target protesters and legal observers “with everything you’ve got” and to “publicise convictions as much as possible.”
The Construction of a Global Threat
The Trump administration is now attempting to export this paradigm. In recent months, prosecutions against alleged “Antifa terrorists” have been initiated in Los Angeles and San Diego. Furthermore, the White House has tried to include episodes such as the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and the bombing of the Washington correspondents’ banquet in the so-called “Antifa theorem,” even though there are no evident organisational links between the perpetrators and antifascist networks.
The State Department is now seeking international alignment. In November, Washington had already designated two Greek groups, the so-called Informal Anarchist Federation in Italy, and the Antifa in Dresden, known as Hammerbande, as “foreign terrorist organisations.” Hammerbande is the group to which MEP Ilaria Salis was also associated in Germany.
According to the Washington Post, a telegram sent in June requested information on far-left groups from at least twenty American diplomatic missions, including those in Italy, Mexico, and Albania.
Sebastian Gorka and the new ideological war
Leading the operation is Sebastian Gorka, the Anglo-Hungarian appointed by Trump as the “czar” of counterterrorism. A controversial figure, with past ties to Hungarian ultranationalist organisations such as the Order of Vitéz and Magyar Gárda, Gorka is one of the main ideologues of the new crusade against the “radical left.”
The new U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, published by its department, identifies as a priority objective the “rapid identification and neutralisation of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
The document completely redefines the hierarchy of threats: drug cartels replace jihadist terrorism as the main national emergency, while “left-wing extremism” is equated with organisations like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
This is a choice that many experts consider a dangerous manipulation of the counterterrorism apparatus. “They want to invent Antifa as a global threat,” analyst Tom Joscelyn told the New York Times. “All this indicates the current administration’s desire to divert the counterterrorism apparatus to repress internal political adversaries.”
An International of Repression
The July 16 summit is therefore not a simple diplomatic meeting. It is an attempt to build a new international repressive architecture based on the transnational criminalisation of the radical left, anti-fascist movements, and solidarity networks.
The objective is twofold: to create a global political category—”far-left terrorism”—and to obtain the cooperation of allies to share data, surveillance, lists of suspects, and instruments of repression.
In other words, the aim is to build a kind of international counterinsurgency, capable of targeting movements and activists beyond national borders.
Many European governments seem to view the initiative with scepticism and are unlikely to send ministers or high-ranking officials to the summit. But the simple fact that the world’s leading power is convening an international meeting to discuss the supposed threat of “Antifa” is already a powerful political signal.
Because when antifascism is redefined as terrorism and social protest as a threat to national security, we are not facing a simple shift in priorities on the anti-terrorism agenda.
We are facing an attempt to build a new repressive paradigm, in which political dissent is no longer combated on the terrain of democratic confrontation, but managed as a problem of public order and global security.
Further reading:
Aram Roston, “‘Enemies of civilization’: top Trump officials launch sweeping attack on left”, The Guardian, 16/07/2026
A new hunting season has been declared
Trump and Rubio convene international summit against “anarchists, antifa and the far-left”
Osservatorio repressione, July 10, 2026
Washington convenes sixty countries to coordinate the fight against alleged far-left terrorism. Amid political trials, blacklists, and new anti-terrorism strategies, the Trump administration attempts to internationalise and criminalise dissent.
The Trump administration takes another step in constructing its internal enemy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited ministers from about sixty countries to an international summit dedicated to the alleged “resurgence of far-left terrorism.” An “anti-Antifa” meeting that, according to the White House, should coordinate a global response against a threat that, outside of Trump propaganda, seems to many observers largely fabricated and politically instrumental.
According to the Washington Post, the initiative provoked “consternation” among American diplomats, independent analysts, and various European allies, who do not share the Maga administration’s narrative and view with concern the attempt to transform antifascism into a category of international terrorism.
The Return of McCarthyism
The convening of the July 16 summit represents the most advanced point in a strategy that the Trump administration has been pursuing for months. In speeches on July 3 and 4, the president revived the rhetoric of the “communist threat,” evoking scenarios that openly recall the McCarthyist psychosis of the 1950s.
Last September, Trump had already signed the NSPM-7 directive, including “Antifa” among “anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-capitalist” groups. A politically significant but legally problematic definition: Antifa is not a structured organisation; it has no leaders, members, or chain of command. It is a set of diffuse anti-fascist practices and networks.
However, this designation has had a concrete effect: transforming anti-fascism into an “internal enemy.”
From dissent to terrorism
The qualitative leap is also evident in the judicial sphere. In Texas, nine anti-ICE activists were sentenced to prison terms ranging from thirty to one hundred years in the case concerning the alleged “Antifa terrorist cell” in Prairieland. In Minneapolis, fifteen anti-deportation activists were brought to trial.
In both cases, protest actions, property damage, and even graffiti were equated with terrorist activities.
According to several civil rights organisations, a new repressive doctrine is taking hold: not only criminal behaviour is being persecuted, but entire political areas considered hostile to the established order.
Added to this is another worrying element: militants and activists have also been targeted for investigative attention based on statements and opinions expressed on social media.
Following the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Justice Department official Aakash Singh reportedly urged federal prosecutors to target protesters and legal observers “with everything you’ve got” and to “publicise convictions as much as possible.”
The Construction of a Global Threat
The Trump administration is now attempting to export this paradigm. In recent months, prosecutions against alleged “Antifa terrorists” have been initiated in Los Angeles and San Diego. Furthermore, the White House has tried to include episodes such as the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and the bombing of the Washington correspondents’ banquet in the so-called “Antifa theorem,” even though there are no evident organisational links between the perpetrators and antifascist networks.
The State Department is now seeking international alignment. In November, Washington had already designated two Greek groups, the so-called Informal Anarchist Federation in Italy, and the Antifa in Dresden, known as Hammerbande, as “foreign terrorist organisations.” Hammerbande is the group to which MEP Ilaria Salis was also associated in Germany.
According to the Washington Post, a telegram sent in June requested information on far-left groups from at least twenty American diplomatic missions, including those in Italy, Mexico, and Albania.
Sebastian Gorka and the new ideological war
Leading the operation is Sebastian Gorka, the Anglo-Hungarian appointed by Trump as the “czar” of counterterrorism. A controversial figure, with past ties to Hungarian ultranationalist organisations such as the Order of Vitéz and Magyar Gárda, Gorka is one of the main ideologues of the new crusade against the “radical left.”
The new U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, published by its department, identifies as a priority objective the “rapid identification and neutralisation of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
The document completely redefines the hierarchy of threats: drug cartels replace jihadist terrorism as the main national emergency, while “left-wing extremism” is equated with organisations like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
This is a choice that many experts consider a dangerous manipulation of the counterterrorism apparatus. “They want to invent Antifa as a global threat,” analyst Tom Joscelyn told the New York Times. “All this indicates the current administration’s desire to divert the counterterrorism apparatus to repress internal political adversaries.”
An International of Repression
The July 16 summit is therefore not a simple diplomatic meeting. It is an attempt to build a new international repressive architecture based on the transnational criminalisation of the radical left, anti-fascist movements, and solidarity networks.
The objective is twofold: to create a global political category—”far-left terrorism”—and to obtain the cooperation of allies to share data, surveillance, lists of suspects, and instruments of repression.
In other words, the aim is to build a kind of international counterinsurgency, capable of targeting movements and activists beyond national borders.
Many European governments seem to view the initiative with scepticism and are unlikely to send ministers or high-ranking officials to the summit. But the simple fact that the world’s leading power is convening an international meeting to discuss the supposed threat of “Antifa” is already a powerful political signal.
Because when antifascism is redefined as terrorism and social protest as a threat to national security, we are not facing a simple shift in priorities on the anti-terrorism agenda.
We are facing an attempt to build a new repressive paradigm, in which political dissent is no longer combated on the terrain of democratic confrontation, but managed as a problem of public order and global security.
Further reading:
Aram Roston, “‘Enemies of civilization’: top Trump officials launch sweeping attack on left”, The Guardian, 16/07/2026