CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

From “Enemies of Civilization” to Global Crusade: Rubio, Miller, Sa’ar, and the Internationalization of the 4th Reich

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

On July 16, inside the Loy Henderson Conference Room at the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stood before representatives of more than 60 countries and declared open season on the global left. Billed as a ministerial on the “resurgence of political terrorism,” the gathering was in reality the launch of a coordinated international campaign to criminalize dissent against U.S. imperial power and its most conspicuous contemporary project: the ongoing destruction of Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was not merely present—he took the floor. Speaking directly to the assembled governments, Sa’ar declared that “terror groups have an operational alliance today with radical leftist elements in Western democracies, in Europe, in Latin America, in Africa, and beyond.” He accused activist networks of advancing the agendas of Hamas and Hezbollah under humanitarian and political cover, singled out the Global Sumud Flotilla as a supposed front operation, displayed photographs linking pro-Palestinian activists to Hamas and Hezbollah figures, and called on governments to dismantle organizations that provide “civilian cover” for terrorist objectives. “Israel is on the front line of this fight,” he concluded. “But this fight belongs to all democracies.”

Sa’ar’s intervention made the underlying logic of the summit unmistakable. The United States was internationalizing the repression of those who oppose the arming, funding, and diplomatic protection of Israel’s campaign in Gaza—and Israel’s own foreign minister was there to help write the script.

Rubio and Miller did not obscure their purpose. Rubio described leftists as driven by “poisonous resentment,” an “encroaching darkness,” and “enemies of civilization” who “despise the West because the West is great.” He vowed to “dismantle these networks brick by brick” and declared it “time to crush this evil forever.” Miller matched the rhetoric, portraying “the leftist” as motivated by “envy, by hatred, by jealousy”—a “cancer” that must be rooted out. Civil liberties concerns, he instructed the assembled governments, “must fall on deaf ears.”

This is not the language of sober counterterrorism. It is the language of an imperial order that can no longer tolerate the exposure of its own violence. American exceptionalism has always required the conversion of resistance into existential threat. What is new is the explicit internationalization of that conversion under the banner of “far-left terrorism,” with Palestinian solidarity placed at the center of the net—and with Israel’s foreign minister actively promoting the “operational alliance” thesis that equates solidarity with terrorism.

Targeting Palestinian Solidarity as Imperial Enforcement

Administration materials and related designations have repeatedly highlighted supposed........

© CounterPunch