Coven in Washington: The Conclave of the “Best”

By Raúl Antonio Capote on July 22, 2026

There are moments in history when international politics sheds all pretense and reveals its most disturbing essence; the Ministerial Meeting on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, convened by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 16 in Washington, is one of them.

Under the pompous guise of a civilizing crusade against “far-left terrorism,” what unfolded at the State Department headquarters was a coven of neo-fascist paranoia—a staged spectacle in which the ghosts of McCarthyism paraded with absolute freedom, in the name of a global threat that exists only in the minds of its creators.

Historically, the idea of internal enemies is associated with Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the discredited demagogue of the early Cold War. “Internal Enemies” was the title of his speech 70 years ago in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he displayed a piece of paper on which he claimed to have the names of avowed communists within the State Department.

This time, in the hall attended by delegations from 66 countries, there was no verifiable data, no judicial evidence, and no reliable intelligence; instead, inflammatory rhetoric, textbook fallacies, and an explicit desire to create a public enemy number one prevailed.

What the Secretary of State and his entourage of hawks presented as a counterterrorism alert was nothing more than a dress rehearsal for an authoritarian offensive against political dissent.

The summit’s lineup reveals the nature of the project with crystal clarity. It was not technocrats or counterterrorism experts who occupied the podium; they were, above all, ideologues of Trumpist ultranationalism.

Marco Rubio opened the proceedings by declaring that U.S. counterterrorism policy had developed a “blind spot” regarding left-wing violence. This seemingly technical argument is, in reality, a textbook fallacy: that of selective omission.

“Even today, the mere idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a feverish delusion of the right—or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy,” he complained.

Let’s not forget the recurring rhetoric about “the enemy within,” with which Trump explicitly refers to his Democratic enemies, the “radical left-wing lunatics.”

Now, while Rubio served as the master of ceremonies, Stephen Miller held no back. The White House adviser—architect of Executive Order NSPM-7, which grants the FBI and the Treasury unprecedented tools to investigate nonprofit organizations—raised the tone to a fever pitch.

He spoke of the need to combat the “deadly cancer of civilization” and warned that left-wing terrorism, if “allowed to run its course, always turns into a gulag.”

But it was his view of the protesters that crossed every line. The top U.S. national security adviser described protesting citizens as “deformed” based on their physical appearance, and this is not political rhetoric; it is verbal eugenics, it is the reduction of the adversary to a subhuman, it is the language that precedes concentration camps.

When Miller speaks of “enemies of civilization,” he is not describing a threat—he is creating one. It is the narrative of dehumanization, the very same one fascism uses to construct the “other” as an existential threat that must be eliminated. He was not improvising; he was reciting the catechism.

 

THE GREAT CUBAN LIE: A SMOKE SCREEN

But where the propaganda campaign reaches its highest degree of cynicism is in the accusation against Cuba. The Secretary of State claimed that the Largest of the Antilles “built” the radical left on the continent and that the island is “the world capital of radical left-wing terrorism.”

The assertion is not only historically irrational; it is intellectually dishonest. Rubio lied, mixing ideas as if they were pieces of a single puzzle designed without a single fitting element.

Yes, Cuba has maintained historical ties with various revolutionary movements, but there is no evidence that it finances or trains terrorist networks. Not a single piece of evidence was presented at the forum—not a single financial transfer, not a single intercepted communication, not a single identified training camp—nothing.

The fallacy is so crude that it can only be explained by the anti-Cuban politician’s need to give vent to the demons of ambition that consume him.

It was the U.S. governments—not Cuba—that trained and armed dictators and death squads throughout Latin America for decades. It was the CIA that overthrew democratic governments, financed coups d’état, and sowed terror across the continent.

Neither Rubio, nor Miller, nor anyone else mentioned right-wing political violence even once; there was no reference to the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, the most serious attack on American democracy since the Civil War. There was no mention of white supremacist terrorism, which the CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) itself documents as the most persistent domestic threat.

Not a word was said about neo-Nazi groups, far-right militias, or the racially motivated murders that have bloodied the United States in recent decades.

This omission is no coincidence; it is the litmus test of the entire operation. Terrorism is not combated when terrorists are ignored, a narrative is fabricated, and an enemy is chosen who can be defined and redefined at the whim of the executive branch—it is the Orwellian nightmare turned into foreign policy: the enemy is whoever we point to.

Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, a member of the Political Bureau and Cuba’s foreign minister, summed it up precisely: this summit “seeks only to reinstate persecution and political repression against those who denounce, dissent, and fight against the neoliberal, imperialist, fascist, and far-right measures promoted by the U.S. government.”

The danger is not hypothetical.

When a Secretary of State convenes 66 countries to coordinate an offensive against “political terrorism”—without precisely defining what it is, without presenting evidence, and without distinguishing between criminal violence and political dissent—he is laying the groundwork for an international witch hunt.

It is no coincidence that Rubio’s speech included phrases such as “the rebellion of the worst against the best,” a formulation typical of fascism. Nor is it a coincidence that Miller spoke of “enemies of civilization” and “deformed” people.

The true resurgence of political terrorism is not taking place on the streets of the United States or Europe, much less in Cuba, which has been a victim of terrorism organized and sponsored by Washington for more than 60 years.

It lies in the halls of the State Department, where men in suits and ties devise strategies to turn political differences into crimes, dissent into threats, and freedom into a theater of operations.

Source: Cuba en Resumen