Sterile as that may sound, it’s a resurrection of an obscure Nixon-era term pointed squarely at the political left and recruiting foreign governments to assist its war on domestic political opponents. As a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked to me puts it, all of this is about combatting “far-left terrorism.”

To the extent that media have noticed the summit at all, they’ve focused on the confusion and wariness among some of the over 60 countries invited; but the significance of the term has been completely overlooked. Put simply, it’s a more powerful attack on protest, free speech and the Democratic Party than Trump’s designation of “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist group or NSPM-7.

The summit is called the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” Unlike familiar organized terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, “political terrorism” refers to domestic opposition, here and abroad.

“First they came for the communists…”

The administration’s obsession with left-wing terrorism was precipitated by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — a personal friend of Trump’s and many in the administration. In my reporting at the time, based on interviews with friends of the alleged gunman, Tyler Robinson, I warned that there wasn’t any evidence that the murder was a partisan act, nor that he was a leftist or even political in general.

That reporting, criticized at the time in an environment where seemingly everything was polarized into Team Red White and Blue, has now been vindicated to an extent that I did not anticipate.

Just last week, Robinson’s lover, Lance Twiggs, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors, testified that Robinson barely ever discussed politics and had never once mentioned Kirk before the shooting.