US State Department Calls Cuba “The Capital of 21st Century Communism”, Ramps Up Imperialist Aggression

Read our editorial on US imperialist aggression against Cuba here.

The US State Department led by anticommunist gusano Marco Rubio issued a 100-page document titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism” on July 20, aiming to justify increased repression domestically and imperialist aggression internationally.

This piece of imperialist propaganda disguised as a “report” presents unsubstantiated links between US activist networks and Cuba to drum up reactionary support for the military invasion of the island as well as increased persecution and anti-communism domestically.

The statement begins, “through (Cuba’s) cultivation of American activists, its infiltration of American universities, its sprawling influence and espionage networks, and its position as the spiritual hub of the Third World revolution—becoming a pilgrimage destination for generations of New Left activists and intellectuals—Cuba has played an instrumental role in shaping America’s radical left from the 1960s through to today.” In the final section titled “Anti-American Internationale”, it states that Cuba “continues to act as a force multiplier for a much better anti-American coalition, positioning itself as a staging ground for a wide range of foreign adversaries to conduct operations against the United States.”

The day after the document was released, the US House Ways and Means Committee issued subpoenas to three organizations that appeared in the report for their support for Cuba: BreakThrough News, the People’s Forum, and Tricontinental. The organizations have stated that they are being persecuted for their support for Cuba and Palestine. The Ways and Means Committee demanded that the organizations hand over their internal communications, documents, and financial records.

The witch hunt is taking place right after Rubio’s declared war against the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism” during the State Department summit, The Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism that convened the leaders of 60 countries. The goal of the summit was to bribe and coerce other nations into doing its dirty work, disguised as “international cooperation”, as US imperialism intensifies hostilities against oppressed nations, particularly Cuba and Iran today, and continues to support counterrevolutionary offensives against communist-led People’s Wars in Peru, Turkey, India, and the Philippines.

In his introductory remarks to the summit, Rubio trips over his words as he fails to pronounce the Spanish names of the organizations he declares as far-left political terrorists, and slanders the Communist Party of Peru—currently leading the People’s War in Peru—as “Maoist fanatics who massacred the peasant villages of Peru”. During his speech, Rubio said a “terrorist” is someone who “can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist or communist or anarchist or Marxist”.

On July 17, a group of US Congressmen wrote a letter to Rubio and the US Attorney General, urging them to revoke the citizenship of journalist Calla Walsh for sympathetic coverage of the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated by a US-Israeli strike on February 29. Earlier in July, the so-called “pro-Palestine” government of Spain arrested pro-Palestine donor and activist Fergie Chambers on behalf of the US, who requested his extradition.

The recent attacks against activist and journalist organizations represent an escalation of Trump’s executive order and memorandum designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization” in September 2025, itself a development of the persecution of pro-Palestine activists and organizations as hate crime and terrorist activity under the Biden administration.

Image: Marco Rubio at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference. Credit: Gage Skidmore.

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