US Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched a fierce attack on left-wing extremism. On 16 July, Rubio hosted a conference in Washington on left-wing extremist violence. Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not attend, considering the issue irrelevant in the Norwegian context.
In his opening address, Rubio delivered a broad condemnation of tolerance for violence on the political left, describing the radical left as an ideology that is no longer primarily concerned with political reform, but with a fundamental rejection of the society that has been built in the West.
The driving force behind the political left is not a vision of improvement, but a desire to tear down. In his speech at the international conference Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism in Washington, Rubio stressed that revolutionary movements have historically directed their violence against the structures representing the progress of civilisation: the economy, technology, infrastructure and democratic systems.
“A distinct and unique evil”
Rubio described the radical left as a movement characterised by a fundamental hostility towards the institutions and values of Western civilisation. According to him, it is not about idealism or the pursuit of a better society, but about a desire to destroy what previous generations have built.
“This is a distinct and unique evil,” Rubio said, arguing that the movement is driven by hatred of civilisation rather than by political objectives.
“It has always been driven by hatred above all else, a hatred of civilisation itself.”
Rubio argued that the left’s drive to tear down and destroy stems from its inability to create anything itself, and that it therefore hates everything others have achieved.
“It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is carried out by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot accomplish great things, and who take their revenge on the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can.”
“People filled with ugliness”
In his speech, Rubio asserted that this hatred of civilised society also encompasses everything that is beautiful, and that all the beautiful words the left likes to use merely camouflage its desire to destroy and make everything uglier.
“It is a toxic bitterness disguised in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to destroy what is beautiful and what is right in favour of people who are filled only with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world,” Rubio said.
“Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness upon us all.”
Sharp criticism of communism
In his speech, Rubio also criticised communism and rejected the notion that the ideology is attractive in theory but unsuccessful in practice.
“One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory but never works in practice. That is actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory.”
According to Rubio, the problem runs deeper than that and concerns the kind of society communism seeks to create.
“The world it imagines for us all is small, flat, grey, levelled to eliminate all distinction, emptied of everything that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or honour or great purposes to strive for – a world without miracles, without myths, without people who rise above the rest to accomplish incredible and extraordinary things.”
Civilisation – “an unbearable humiliation”
Marco Rubio also argued that communism stands in opposition to religious and spiritual values by promoting a world without God, and that the adherents of communism seek to put themselves in God’s place – yet repeatedly fail in their attempts to create anything of value. It is from this sense of failure that hatred and the will to destroy arise, Rubio argued.
“For these architects of revolutionary violence, the highest achievements of our civilisation are an unbearable humiliation, a reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be. So they choose instead to destroy.”
Marco Rubio: “The West must focus more on left-wing terrorism”