Top Trump officials on Thursday hosted a gathering of 66 nations to discuss the supposed threat of leftwing violence, and launched a series of diatribes, harsh even by the standards of the Trump administration, against leftism.

The conference, convened by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and attended by Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, and Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, was billed as a “ministerial on the resurgence of political violence” but the focus was solely on crushing leftist violence. It came as Donald Trump ramps up his efforts to label his political opponents, and a rising number of politicians identified with the Democratic Socialists of America as “communists”.

The officials did not mention episodes of rightwing attacks, such as the 6 January 2021, riot on Capitol Hill.

Rubio embraced unusually dehumanizing language towards leftwing activists. “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or marxist,” he said. “It’s always the same. it is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation – an overwhelming need to tear down, to wreck., what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world through violence and through terror.

“They despise the west because the west is great,” he said. He called leftists “an encroaching darkness” and “the enemies of civilization”.

“We will dismantle these networks brick by brick,” he added.

Rubio implied the US had largely won the effort against terrorism launched after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That threat was “severely diminished”, he said, and the administration was now moving on to this next problem – leftist violence [phase of a counterterrorism fight] – that he maintained had been overlooked.

Last year Trump designated “antifa” – the longtime boogeyman of his political efforts – as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which could help his government bring new intelligence, financial and law enforcement tools against the amorphous grouping of antifascist protestors.

Rubio also attempted to link disparate groups together. “Iranian proxy networks,” he said, “are increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world.”

Ironically, while the Trump administration has pursued a pugnacious foreign policy and trade agenda, ruthlessly crushing leftism was one the few things Rubio said needed to be done with other countries: “We have no choice but to confront this menace together. We will either cooperate across our borders, or the terrorists will continue to exploit the gaps between them.”

Miller railed: “The leftist is fundamentally motivated by envy, by hatred, by jealousy. The leftist looks at what is beautiful and what is good and what is natural and is filled with envy and hatred. The leftist looks at a perfect family with a perfect life and a perfect job and a perfect kid and goes to church every Sunday.”

Miller also dismissed concerns about civil rights abuses by the administration. “One of the hallmarks of leftwing violence and terrorism is its completely pretextual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence,” he said. “This is the tactic that the left always uses to try to protect itself from facing criminal punishment. It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must fall on deaf ears.

“When the leftist protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has been perpetrated against him. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”

Rubio and Miller both cited a presidential memorandum from last year, called “National Security Presidential Memorandum number 7” as a blueprint that facilitates a war against leftists and leftist violence but it’s unclear how much weight of law it had.

Bessent was the only speaker to pay lip services to concepts of freedom of speech: “To be clear, in the fight against domestic terrorism, we must respect the constitutional rights of freedom of speech, association, and assembly of all Americans.”

Bessent is a former employee of George Soros, who some on the far-right have frequently accused of wrongdoing.

A state department spokesperson said the 66 participating countries included Argentina, Canada, France, Germany and Spain.