Throwback U.S. Policy on Terrorism

A hallmark of U.S. Cold War policy in Latin America was to label virtually any reformer as a Communist and therefore as a terrorist or tool of Moscow. And now we're back.

The United States was as concerned as always about Islamist terrorism, said the official, Monica A. Jacobsen, according to a copy of her prepared remarks reviewed by The New York Times and three officials briefed on the meeting. But, she told her counterparts from Europe, Canada and Australia, the Trump administration also wanted more attention on what it believed was an insidious, underestimated threat: the far left.

Western governments must combat “antifa and far-left terrorism,” Ms. Jacobsen’s prepared remarks asserted, casting the effort as an evolution in counterterrorism following the “global war on terror.” Her prepared speech defined far-left terrorism to include threats from communists, Marxists, anarchists, anticapitalists and those with “eco-extremist” and “other self-identified antifascist ideologies.”

Now, as then, all this means is that you can target your political opponents by labeling them in a particular way. "Antifa," of course, isn't even an organization, and far left terrorism is far rarer today in Latin America and elsewhere than it was during the Cold War. It reflects mindlessly casting around for scapegoats.

In Cold War Latin America, it led to widespread murder, torture, and misery. Those are the only possible outcomes. The good news is that this appears not be getting much traction except from the far right.