In a bid to halt left-wing extremism and terrorism in the U.S., President Donald Trump and his deputies are planning to stop the ideology and its backers from being imported from abroad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week that the State Department will begin denying visas to foreign nationals affiliated with or linked to left-wing extremist-terrorist cells or organizations, including foreign nationals who have financed or funded left-wing terrorism in the U.S.

“Far-left terrorist and aligned groups often use sophisticated, organized networks to perpetrate violence as a political tool — seeking to implement an extreme political vision through intimidation and coordinated campaigns of terror,” Rubio said in a press release, charging that the actions of left-wing actors “undermine the political foundations of free and self-governing societies.”

To halt the spread of such violence and political unrest, Rubio confirmed that the State Department is implementing a new visa restriction policy to keep left-wing terrorist affiliates out of the country. “This policy will safeguard the American homeland by restricting entry of foreign nationals who finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal Far-Left Terrorist networks,” he said, “closing the visa pathways that Far-Left Terrorists and other aligned groups exploit to threaten American lives, undermine economic stability, and coordinate violent action on U.S. soil.”

In a speech last week, Rubio explained that the terrorist threat posed by Islamist actors has been “severely diminished” over the years, with political (predominantly left-wing) terrorism resurgent. “For far too long,” Rubio said, “our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot — a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.”

“In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed, it will be dismissed as a partisan fiction,” Rubio declared. He noted that left-wing violence has, for decades, been ignored, excused, or even defended by those in mainstream media, academia, and even establishment politics. The secretary of State continued, “This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.”

Recounting the numerous instances of left-wing political violence and terrorism, from the brutality of the terrorist campaigns and bombings of the 1960s and 1970s to the more recent assassination attempts against Trump and the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk nearly one year ago, Rubio insisted that all left-wing violence shares a common root. “This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good,” he said. “It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can. This is what radical leftism is,” the Secretary of State emphasized.

“It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, 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,” he continued. “Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. The old dogma was wrong; none of this is driven by idealism. It is not utopian. In fact, it is the opposite.”

Following Kirk’s assassination last year, the Trump administration has made a concerted effort to identify foreign influence in domestic left-wing extremism and terrorism. Recently, for example, the Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation into China-based tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who has been linked to funding and financing left-wing agitation and potentially even terrorism in the U.S. Rubio’s newly announced visa restrictions are simply one more component in the battle to control left-wing extremism domestically.

Simon Hankinson, a veteran consular officer and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told The Washington Stand that while federal law already prohibits U.S. visas from being given to enemies of the state, Rubio’s policy is a shift in priority, emphasizing the threat posed to the U.S. by left-wing ideology, especially the violent kind.

“Well-organized radicals, funded by domestic and foreign dark money, are at the heart of anti-law enforcement violent protests from Boston to Seattle,” Hankinson recounted, further noting that left-wing radicals have been responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump and the assassination of Kirk. “Today, a conservative speaker cannot safely go to many college campuses without fear of being canceled, disrupted, or assaulted. Meanwhile, no ‘progressive’ speaker need fear being on a college campus, even those few where conservatives predominate. Far-left radicals, including convicted terrorists, work safely and freely as U.S. college professors.”

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, called Rubio’s directive “sensible,” stating, “A number of these groups have been identified abroad, and we should not permit their operatives to come here to recruit followers, incite unlawful action, raise money, or frankly even to visit family or Disney World for vacation.” She continued, “If they are part of an extremist group, then they are not welcome here. We are a tolerant nation, but we don’t have to tolerate violent or hateful extremism of any kind.”

While Vaughan cautioned that visa restrictions will not, on their own, halt the rise of left-wing activism and chaos in America, the restrictions “will help to isolate the Americans who want to embrace these views, and deny them a cheering squad from abroad. Americans who support these extremist views will have to figure out for themselves how misguided they are.” 

She continued, “Of course plenty of people hold far-left views around the world, but we don’t have to give a soap box to the ones who are terrorists and who specialize in the intimidation and manipulation of low information voters and who want to instigate chaos here.” Vaughan also observed that denying entry to left-wing radicals “will deny them the opportunity to seek legitimacy and support from any like-minded American political figures, and spare Americans the potential for more politically-motivated violence. It is a lot easier to keep out potential threats than try to remove them once they are here.”

Hankinson further pointed out that the rise in socialism and the alarming advance of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Democratic primary elections is fueled in no small part by mass immigration from the Third World. “The DSA has benefited from mass migration from the Third World, where disfunction and autocracy prevail,” Hankinson explained. “Incredibly, many of those fleeing failed socialist states seem to want to destroy Western civilization and capitalism and rebuild using those provably failed models here,” he continued. “They should talk to the Cubans, Chinese, and Vietnamese who came before them. In addition to making proud and successful Americans, they can attest to what a mistake it would be to try ‘real socialism’ here.”