Let’s play a guessing game: I’ll give you two statements, and you tell me who said what.
Example one:
Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They say they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he grudgingly admits that they exist; whereas he enthusiastically points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.
Example two:
[Leftism] 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 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. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist or communist or anarchist or Marxist. But the fundamental character is always the same. It’s always the same. 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.
There are giveaways in the prose: one has a speechwriter, and the other was locked away in the wilds of Montana.
But in case you’re still wondering, the second one comes from the top diplomat of the world’s lone superpower speaking at a Washington conference on leftist violence, and the first one comes from Kaczynski’s anti-industrial manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future.
These two men couldn’t be more different.
The Unabomber’s mail bombings shocked a nation. Yet, the lone wolf’s record of violence wouldn’t even be a speck of the terror overseen by Secretary of State Rubio and other top Trump Administration officials before breakfast.
What does it say that Rubio–along with White House adviser Stephen Miller, who made similar remarks at the same event–is aligning with a paranoid, cabin-dwelling terrorist?
For one thing, it’s a reminder that anti-leftism is part of superiority politics. The left isn’t hated merely because of its threat to the ruling order and the elite’s wealth, but because its adherents are seen as inferior subjects.
The American left is rightfully taking these state threats seriously, especially after anti-ICE organisers received decades-long sentences. One activist received 30 years despite not being at the outbreak of violence in question, but for possessing and distributing progressive literature.
This comes after the Trump Administration issued the seventh National Security Presidential Memorandum last September, putting all leftists on notice:
This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.
Now Rubio and the administration are making noise again, and there are reasons not to dismiss this as bluster.
Just recently, reports emerged that the US government was investigating philanthropist Neville Singham.
“Neville Singham is a traitor to our country,” Indiana Republican Senator Jim Banks told Fox News.
“He has ties to the CCP,” Banks claimed, as though that were a criminal act. Ask US Embassy officials in Beijing whether they’re breaking the same non-existent law.
“He is an American citizen, but all of his loyalties lie with the Chinese Communist Party, Banks continued. “And when you begin to untangle the web of massive fortune and philanthropic activities, the money he sends to left wing groups in America, and not the groups that espouse ideology, but espouse violence.”
Unsurprisingly, Chambers has been detained.
According to Democracy Now, “Pro-Palestinian activist and philanthropist Fergie Chambers has been arrested in Spain after the United States requested his extradition. Chambers is an heir to the multibillion-dollar Cox family fortune. For years, he has used his inheritance to fund leftist and pro-Palestinian groups. According to the indictment, he faces charges including providing funding to Palestinian militant groups.”
The Guardian reported that “As part of the Trump administration’s continuing attack on left-leaning groups, the US state department has listed several activists and organizations as ‘front groups and fellow travelers’ for Cuba, including Hasan Piker and Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls.”
The government report is chilling. Most notably, the administration has its sights on the largest and most successful American socialist organisation in modern memory. The Guardian continues:
Describing the DSA, of which Mamdani is a member, the report says the organization “serves as a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism”. It accuses the DSA of maintaining a “fierce, almost religious commitment to the cause of the Cuban regime – not because the group is controlled by Cuban agents, per se, but because that commitment is now simply the de facto policy orthodoxy on the American far left”.
The report lists many other figures on the US left. The feds have also charged 15 anti-ICE organisers in Minnesota.
Are all anti-ICE and anti-Trump dissidents under threat of phoney prosecutions and show trials? It’s hard to say what level of concern is warranted.
On the one hand, the president talks about DSA-backed politicians as treasonous enemies, but then appears enamoured with the top elected official of them all, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
However, these recent events have shaken the left, as has the national right-wing mood.
The Trump base doesn’t just cheer when ICE kills or brutalises immigrants. It also cheers the killings of two white citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, because they protested state terror.
More alarming, the language Rubio and Miller are using against the left echoes rhetoric from US-backed Cold War regimes that carried out waves of disappearances against leftists and dissidents in Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries.
If anything, a stalwart anti-communist like Marco Rubio is closer to a US-backed regime that tossed leftists out of helicopters on principle than to the current president’s delusions.
The smart option when dealing with a fascist administration is to believe what they say. But alarm and concern about the potency of our enemies shouldn’t be the same as debilitating fear.
Taking this seriously must inspire us to act carefully and build support networks. It shouldn’t mean we all go underground, stay silent, and admit defeat to the Trump kleptocracy.
Americans are going to have to mentally prepare, and perhaps mourn, that comrades will fall to show trials and state violence before this gets better.
Photograph courtesy of Chad Davis. Published under a Creative Commons license.
