IWU-FI,
23 July 2026. On Thursday 16 July, the “Anti-Left Summit” was held at the State Department headquarters in Washington D.C., bringing together representatives from governments and political organisations across 66 countries. According to the organisers, the objective is to establish international intelligence cooperation, coordination between police forces, and targeted actions to cut off funding to left-wing organisations that the US government considers to be involved in terrorist activities.
Leading the call and directing the summit were high-ranking US government officials, starting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, alongside Stephen Miller (Trump’s chief adviser), and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, among others, demonstrating the great importance Trump attached to this meeting.
Among the attendees were representatives from foreign ministries, ambassadors, and high-level operational and technical officials. They represented countries from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Israel was the only Middle Eastern country present. These nations included Spain, Canada, Germany, Argentina, Italy, Chile, and Uruguay, among others.
The Aims Outlined by the US Government
This summit, preceded by the declaration of Antifa (a generic term referencing anti-fascism) as a “terrorist organisation” in September 2025, is part of the repressive Trump’s policy. He recently signed National Security Executive Order Number Seven, an emergency provision targeting the left and the anarchist movement, aimed at authorising the use of US state resources to combat left-wing organisations that he declares to be terrorist.
In recent months, Washington has designated four European groups as foreign terrorist organisations: Antifa Ost, Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defence. Their inclusion on the FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organisation) and SDGT (Specially Designated Global Terrorist) lists activates a global persecution protocol involving asset freezes, bans on material support, and visa denials.
Trump advanced this line within the US when, following the murder of Charlie Kirk, he announced the criminalisation of anti-fascism on his own social network, Truth Social: “I am pleased to inform our many American Patriots that I am designating Antifa, a sick, dangerous, Radical Left mess, as a major Terrorist Organisation.”
The summit’s keynote speaker, Marco Rubio, declared: “They may call themselves anti-capitalists or anti-imperialists, communists, or anarchists, or Marxists, but the fundamental character is always the same.” Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, Trump’s far-right adviser behind the criminal anti-immigrant policy, spoke of the need to fight the “deadly cancer of civilisation” and stated that “the greatest risk we have is that our institutions have become too soft and too cowardly to be able to defend themselves against a deadly threat.”
Additionally, on 20 July, the State Department issued a report entitled “Cuba: The Capital of Communism in the 21st Century”, in which it portrays the Cuban government as a promoter of left-wing “subversion” in the United States. The report compiles lists of Palestine solidarity activists, human rights defenders, and left-wing activists as alleged agents of the Cuban regime, aiming at their criminalisation and seeking to create the political conditions for a military aggression against Cuba, similar to the one launched in January this year against Venezuela.
McCarthyism 2.0 to Criminalise Resistance Against Trump and the Far Right
American imperialism has a historical tradition against Marxism and other trade union and left-wing sectors. The meeting held by the US government is not a new development in US imperialist policy. Many of its institutions, such as the FBI, were created to persecute political and trade union dissent, civil rights movements, Black Power, pacifists, indigenous peoples’ organisations, and socialists through dirty war and infiltration via counterintelligence programmes like Cointelpro. Judicial and media frame-ups, summary executions, and other measures against activism within USA borders have a long history.
The objectives of the Anti-Left Summit recall the policies promoted by former US President Harry Truman who, during his presidency between 1950 and 1954, deployed a fierce persecution of his opponents amidst the Cold War through the House Un-American Activities Committee led by Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. They accused them of being agents of the former USSR and drew up blacklists to prevent communist party sympathisers and those who refused to inform on leftists from working in industries like Hollywood.
Beyond its borders, US imperialism has been the main director and financier of coups d’état, invasions, government destabilisation, the assassination and kidnapping of dissident political leaders, and other crimes perpetrated by the CIA and parties or governments aligned with its interests. Today, Donald Trump’s imperialism criminally bombs Iran, sustains Israel’s genocide in Palestine, oppresses Venezuela, and threatens to invade Cuba. Throughout history, the victims of this anti-left policy and of the actions against those who oppose American imperialist domination number in their millions across diverse political backgrounds.
In the United States, rejection of Trump’s administration is growing. As a result of rising fuel prices linked to his failure in Iran, alongside massive mobilisations against ICE and those directed straight at his government—such as those organised by the No Kings movement—discontent is beginning to show in opinion polls. His approval ratings are falling, both in the polls and on the streets.
The political situation has generated fractures within the MAGA movement, which forms his conservative and far-right political base. Against Trump and the far right, sectors of the youth are showing a new interest in anti-capitalism and even socialist positions. This is expressed electorally in votes for the DSA, the social-democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but it exceeds the limits of that capitalist and imperialist party, revealing an even deeper process of polarisation[3]
The political crisis puts Donald Trump and his MAGA henchmen on high alert ahead of the dangers posed by the elections to be held on 3 November 2026. Congressional elections held during the recent period have meant harsh defeats for Trump and the Republicans in various states. In this regard, Trump is pushing various manoeuvres to limit the rights of bourgeois democracy to avoid defeat. The political crisis, growing mobilisations, and a potential electoral defeat are defensively driving this ultra-reactionary summit.
Internationally, despite the electoral triumphs of the far right led by Trump, there are clear signs of wear and tear on these governments. A special case is Milei in Argentina, alongside Orbán’s electoral defeat in Hungary, and the growing rejection and isolation of Netanyahu and Zionism by the global Palestine solidarity movement, among others. The far right is showing its limits in capitalising on a political crisis that polarises the planet. Trump is seeking to regroup the international far right through direct funding of far-right formations globally, particularly in Europe, and is betting on intervening in other countries’ elections to shore up his allies, as has occurred in Latin America.
Within this framework, Trump is trying to re-articulate his domestic and international political base.
In this context, Trump is trying to reorganise his national and international political base, using an old fascist recipe: creating a fictitious internal enemy to persecute and portray as brutal and dangerous terrorists, making a grandiose call for everyone to defend “family and country,” legitimising violence and authoritarianism as the only means to defeat the mobilisations against him and control the political apparatus of the United States. This time, as was used in the past in Latin American dictatorships, Trump is once again inventing the great enemy—terrorist—of the Marxist and anarchist left.
For a united mobilisation to confront Trump and the global far right
The declaration of leftist groups as terrorists is a continuation of a plan that aims to criminalise and persecute internationally all individuals, activists, and organisations that mobilise against the imperialist, austerity, and authoritarian policies driven by the counteroffensive led by Donald Trump. It is urgent to reject and mobilise against this summit and its proposals, given their blatantly authoritarian and anti-democratic objectives. Its violent rhetoric and the proposed common tasks are not merely a nostalgic evocation of the old capitalist dictatorships, but rather an attempt to revive and legitimise their bloody operations against political dissent in today’s world. These are intentions that, thanks to the struggle and resistance of workers and the people, they cannot implement today.
From the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI), we repudiate the Anti-left Summit led by Trump and the international far right and express our solidarity with the persecuted organizations and activists. We call upon democratic political organisations, trade unions, student organisations, social, feminist, LGBTQ+, environmental, Indigenous, and human rights organisations, and the global movement in support of Palestine to launch a global movement against Trump and his infamous “Anti-Left Summit” to confront in the streets the policies of austerity, plunder, and repression of imperialism in the United States and in every country.
International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
23 July 2026
