“Terrorism” is a term that has always been opportunistically used by the US government in a manner that obfuscates the disproportionate violence of the American empire. Upon this realization, the solution is not to expand the term’s use but rather abandon it (and its implications for US policy) altogether.
The past week has seen much of the centrist/liberal//MSNBC imbibing Democrat (and some Republicans) calling for a reconsideration of the word, “terrorist.” The recent conversation about the word has been a demand to use it as a description for the attempted right wing insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. The instinct here is a good one because it calls attention to the fact that the US government’s use of the term is meaningless. That is not to say that “terrorism” does not have a definition; it does. Terrorism is simply the use of violence to advance political goals. The issue is that the use of the word in the United States has always been 100% political and inconsistent. As anti-imperialists, we should push people to see the subjective nature of the term at a global level, wherein the words “terror” and “terrorist” have been exploited by the United States with grave consequences for millions of people. It should also be noted that fascistic organizations, like the CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS, only flourish through the public’s misunderstanding of how the term can be weaponized to expand an already hyper-surveilled national security state.
Inconsistency, Hypocrisy, Myopia, and a Failure to Appreciate the Scale of Terroristic Violence
At the core of the way the US government uses the word “terrorist “ is inconsistency and hypocrisy. This applies to the organizations that are classified as “terrorist organizations,” the nations designated as “state sponsors of terror,” and even the United States’ own shifting policies toward individual groups and nations allegedly engaged in terrorism. The American understanding of terrorism is also myopic as it generally centers around the violent actions of individuals or groups but rarely considers the state of terrorism. This contradiction is key to highlight, as historically, the latter category of terrorism inflicts pain and suffering at a far grander scale than any individuals or groups have. It is with the recognition of state terrorism combined with acknowledgement of the scale of terroristic violence the US has committed against the peoples of the globe, that one will conclude that terrorism is a core feature of US policy.
“Terrorist Organizations”
To highlight the inconsistency, let’s start by focusing on two groups that are both objectively engaged in terrorism, but only one of them receives such a label in the US. How it is that gold standard for terrorist groups in the American mind, Al Qaeda, is a terrorist group but the Central Intelligence Agency is not? It is a fact that Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zwahiri’s followers are responsible for thousands of deaths in the Middle East along with some near 3000 American deaths on 9/11/2001. However, which group has terrorized more populations and killed more people for political purposes? For the people of the formerly colonized world, there would be an unambiguous answer to that question. The CIA’s Phoenix Program alone in Vietnam killed some 20,000 suspected leftists. The agency’s assistance to the military dictator, General Suharto, was integral to that government’s murder of a million Indonesian civilians, whose greatest crimes were being alleged communists. How could we forget Operation Condor; the program coordinated by “intelligence agency” wherein South America’s right wing dictatorships were able to cooperate to murder some tens of thousands of people. Many tens of thousands more were imprisoned, tortured, and disappeared. Another one of the CIA’s greatest hits is the arming and training of the Contra terrorists in their mass murder campaign against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The CIA’s clients killed tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and were well known for atrocities against civilians including targeting schools and health clinics with extreme violence. Indeed, employing death squads has been a regular feature of the agency’s operations, not solely in Nicaragua but also in Afghanistan, Syria, Columbia, and Afghanistan again. CIA terror has also been seen in the mass scale use of torture, kidnapping, extrajudicial murder, and the delivery of lists of problematic (usually leftist) individuals to be executed by client states.
Let’s take another alleged terrorist entity, the Lebanese Shia militia and political entity, Hezbollah. The group along with other Shia militias are said to be engaged in terrorism in the Middle East, destabilizing the regions. Yet, consider the actions of a far more prolific terror organization, the United States military, specifically the US Central Command, which conducts the US wars in the Middle East. While Hezbollah formed as a Lebanese militia in opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of their nation, they have since evolved into far more than a fighting force, providing civil services and enjoying a high degree of popularity within Lebanon. At a much larger level, the US military enjoys insane levels of adulation here in the United States. Simultaneously, given the actions the US military has taken on the people of the Global South, it can accurately be characterized as an institution of violent repression and yes, terrorism. What else can we term the actions of US Central Command? They have reduced cities to rubble, destroyed functioning societies, and otherwise killed millions of people in the Middle East and Central Asia in the past two decades. This has all been in the pursuit of the political goal of creating pliant nations to US hegemony
The recent terrorism of the US military in the Middle East is well known, US violence is hardly limited to that region. It is also seen in Southern Command’s behavior in Latin America, where it has performed extreme acts of violence to accomplish the political goals of the US government. Southcom’s state terror has included invading and toppling the government of Grenada in 1983. This was done to assuage the Reagan administration’s concerns about a Marxist government taking control of the island nation. Another act of terroristic violence was the 1989 invasion of Panama. Former CIA asset Manuel Noriega became politically inconvenient for George H.W. Bush and thus had to be removed. The invasion of a sovereign nation for the purpose of arresting its leader on drug charges, involved the bombing of densely populated sections of Panama City. This course of action (predictably) killed nearly 3000 people (many burned alive). Apparently, in our current lexicon, when 3000 people die in infernos and collapsing buildings, the causal action only qualifies as terrorism if those that perish are Americans. Similarly to how in the US, the victims of terrorism are commemorated annually on September 11th; December 19th has become a national day of mourning in Panama for the thousands of victims of US terrorism that perished on that date.
Who Qualifies as a Terrorist Leader?
The inconsistency of the term is not limited to the organizations that we consider to be terroristic in nature but also individuals. How is it that Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawarhiri (the former and current leaders of Al Qaeda) are considered terrorist leaders yet George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump are not? Bin Laden and Zawahiri were accused of having plotted, financed, and ordered acts of terror and thus qualify as terrorist leaders. If we are to accept this framing, that planning, financing, or otherwise inspiring a violent attack on civilians is akin to being a terrorist leader, then I would point to our current and recent presidents. Starting with Bush, in his capacity as leader of the world’s most prolific terrorist organization (the aforementioned US military), he was responsible for thousands of acts of terror. The most prolific of these were the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Both of these involved ultimatums and threats of extreme violence, violence that was eventually carried out. In the case of Afghanistan, the ultimatum came in the form of a US demand to turn over Osama bin Laden for his role in the attacks on Washington, DC and New York City. This demand was met with the government of Afghanistan requesting evidence for the Saudi dissident’s alleged crime which Bush refused to provide. After the Taliban failed to meet US demands for unconditional extradition, bin Laden to the United States (although they certainly tried to negotiate a face saving solution), Bush unleashed the awesome power of the US military on one of the poorest nations on earth. On October 7, 2001, the US bombing of Central Asia began. This was accompanied by the CIA’s arming and funding of warlords to reaped havoc across the country. Thus began the decades long war of terror on the people of Afghanistan. Some might say that this mass scale violence against the people of Central Asia does not constitute terrorism because prior to the US war on Afghanistan, the US has been attacked by an organization (Al Qaeda) that had found refuge in Afghanistan. Besides ignoring key facts regarding the actual relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda, this assertion also ignores the reality of the very terror attack that brought the US military to Central Asia. The 9/11 attacks were justified by bin Laden by his (true) allegations that the US had been engaged in violent acts of terror against Muslims. These included the mass starvation of Iraqi children through US sanctions in the 1990s, and the US support for Israel in its violent subjugation of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims. That is all to say, that characterization of an act of violence as terrorism is not negated because the perpetrator of terror was avenging past instances of terrorism. The 9/11 attacks were acts of terrorism regardless of the fact that bin Laden had pointed to real instances of US terrorism on Arabs. The US attack on Afghanistan was an act of terror (degrees of magnitude greater) regardless if they had been preceded by the 9/11 attacks.
Bush’s eminent act of terror was of course the invasion and destruction of Iraq. This war crime was planned and carried out for reasons that remain unclear. Whether Bush was trying to realize the dream of neoconservatives to assert American hegemonic power in the Middle East, to bolster his own political career, enrich the oil and defense industries, we do not know for sure, but all of these are unambiguously political aims. While the war that was begun in 2003 is an act of terror itself, the specific operation one that registers as a spectacular act of terrorism was the “Shock and Awe campaign” that initiated the war. This included the heavy bombing of the capital city, Baghdad and initiated the larger onslaught on the Iraqi people. Once again, Bush issued on ultimatum prior to the initiation of terrorism. On March 17, 2003, the 43rd president demanded that Saddam Hussein and his son flee Iraq and give up power (an ultimatum Bush knew would not be adhered to). Three days later, Baghdad became subject to US bombardment.
To further establish the inconsistency of the US use of “terrorism,” notice the similarities of the actions of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden prior to their respective terrorist attacks. Bin Laden also gave an ultimatum prior to his violence against Americans. They were quite simple and about as unlikely to be met as Bush’s insistence that the Husseins flee Iraq. The Al Qaeda leader stipulated that the United States must cease in its support for Israel’s apartheid, end its occupation of holy land in Saudi Arabia, and cease in the support for repressive Arab dictators. So in both cases, we have a situation wherein a man who commands an extremely violent force, makes demands of the nation assuming that the failure to comply with these demands will result in extreme violence on that nation. Yet, when Baghdad came under intense bombing on March 20, 2003, few news outlets covered the events as the terrorist attacks that they were.
Bin Laden and Bush’s acts of mass murder are similar in the regard that they were both acts of terrorism, but the similarities end there. The 9/11 attacks on the US are dwarfed in terms of geographic breadth, along with length of time the target group was subjected to violence when compared to the Shock and Awe campaign. It is important to note that the 9/11 attacks, while horrific and tragic, only targeted two cities in the US, and did not last past the initial day of infamy. The opening salvo of the war, targeted not just the capitol city but simultaneously bombarded many cities in Iraq. Picture that the Al Qaeda attacks had not targeted just two specific buildings in DC and New York, but many other metropolitan centers around the nation. Furthermore, imagine that those attacks were just the beginning of a series of attacks on the US that lasted until late October of 2001. This of course would be followed by years of occupation and protracted violence by forces loyal to bin Laden. This was the case with the Shock and Awe attack on Iraq which assaulted not just Baghdad but many cities around the Arab nation. This one act of terrorism lasted from March 20th of 2003 to May 1st (when Bush proudly declared “mission accomplished”).
Bin laden’s crime also seems minor when compared to Bush’s in terms of the induced carnage and societal destruction caused by the attack. Most Americans are familiar with the fact that the attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers killed just under 3,000 innocent people. They may be less familiar with the fact that Bush’s act of terrorism just 18 months later would murder far more civilians. The documentation by the organization Iraq Body Count illustrates the disparity. Even while acknowledging the likely conservative nature of their accounting, the IBC database counts some 3,438 Iraqi civilians killed in just the last 10 days of March of 2003. In other words, in just the first week and a half of the 5-week attack, a 1000 more Iraqi civilians were killed by US terrorism than Americans killed by Al Qaeda on September 11th. When considering the additional 3,438 murdered Iraqi civilians (per IBC) of the following 4 weeks of Shock and Awe, the comparison to bin Laden’s attacks on two cities in the US becomes an exercise in false equivalency. It is also important to remember that these are conservative estimates with some organizations putting the total of Iraqi civilians killed in the initial stage of the war as high as 37,000. Even if all of Bush’s allegations against Iraq (WMDs, Al Qaeda ties) were true (they were not), the Shock and Awe campaign would have been an act of terror against Iraqis. Even critics of US foreign policy who agree to the truth of bin Laden documentation of US violence against Arabs would still characterize the 9/11 attacks as acts of terror. Similarly, the behavior of the Iraqi government prior to the terror attack of Shock and Awe is irrelevant in the classification of that incident of US violence as terrorism.
The terror of Shock and Awe was just the first 5 weeks of a war on the Iraqi people that has seen many acts of terror. This particular attack, however, serves as an especially powerful example of the use of state terror on Iraqis because it possessed the visually shocking destruction of densely populated urban centers that similarly many Americans remember about the 9/11 attacks. It is also a clear example of the pattern of a terrorist, in this case George W. Bush, making political demands of alleged enemies and then choosing a course violence when inevitably the demands are not met. Bush is hardly unique in his classification as a terrorist leader. The same could be said of every US president since WWII. Bush’s successor Barack Obama, for example, ran a global drone assassination program that regularly killed civilians, in addition to other acts of terror. Under the 44th president, aerial vehicles patrolled the skies of Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, regularly firing hellfire missiles into groups of people in weddings and funerals, killing thousands. This program, wherein the president can execute an individual with no trial or public oversight, has been referred to as worst terrorism campaign by intellectual Noam Chomsky. Affirming that Obama’s use of drones were acts of terrorism, is the real terror experienced by those who have experienced drone warfare on the ground level. Children of heavily targeted regions of Pakistan present severe post traumatic stress and even report being frightened of sunny days because they fear that the clear weather increases the likelihood of drone attacks. Based on the behavior of our presidents, when school children learn about the role of the lead executive, they should be taught that among many other roles, the president is the lead figure in committing terrorist attacks on black and brown people in far away places.
“State Sponsors of Terror”
The United States maintains a list of countries which it accuses of lending material support for terrorist groups. Much like the classification of terrorist groups and leaders, this is laughably inconsistent designation. This hypocrisy is illustrated in the US treatment of Iran. The Islamic Republic is not just labeled “state sponsor of terror” but often invoked as the “leading sponsor of terror” in the world. This is a ludicrous projection for many reasons, not least of which is the terrorism that the United States has perpetrated against Iranians through support for the terrorist groups Jundallah, and Mujahedin-e Khalq. The US has also supported the assassinations of Iranian scientists and continues to commit economic terrorism against Iran through the application of severe sanctions on the Persian people. The absurdity of the US claim that Iran is the lead sponsor of terrorism is further amplified when one considers that while the US has regularly engaged in terrorism against Iran, there has literally never been an act of Iranian terrorism on US civilians.
The very claim that Iran is a “state sponsor of terror” extends from the accusation of its support for Hezbollah, the aforementioned Lebanese militia turned political entity. Iran does support the group, but to act as if Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy ignores the party’s own very indigenous Lebanese roots, political agenda, and opposition to foreign occupation of their country (mainly by Israel). Even so, Hezbollah as a militia (while they have killed civilians in the past), has largely focused on military targets especially in its more recent history. The United States by contrast, continues to support the Israeli Defense forces, which is well known for its mass murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, often women and children. In the 2014 Gaza War alone, the IDF killed some 2104 Palestinians, 1462 of which were civilians. Conversely, 6 Israeli civilians were killed. This disproportionately should lend some skepticism to the US supported operation that the Israelis named “Protective Edge.”
The fact is, the United States is the lead sponsor of terror worldwide. This is seen in both its sponsorship of state terror and non-state terrorists. No other nation even comes close. The support in terms of arming funding, training of “security forces” along with diplomatic cover, has been seen across the planet. It has included dutifully supporting actions such as mass murder, genocide, torture, dissapearances, extrajudicial killings, and the murder of religious figures and human rights activists. Evidence of the US’s terrorism supporting policy has been seen in its historical support for terror regimes in (among other places) Guatemala, El Salvador, Iraq, South Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and (ironically) Iran. It is presently seen in the current support for governments engaged in terrorism against their own people including Columbia, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Philippines.
The more recognized form of terrorism of non-state actors also has, and continues to enjoy, US support. Besides the aforementioned case of the US supporting Jundallah in it’s terror against Iranians, US has supported many other organizations engaged in terrorism. The golden era of this phenomenon was in the 1980’s with the Reagan administration’s (not so secret) support for the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. In the former example, the sponsorship of Contra terrorism in an effort to destablize the leftist government of Nicaragua was was even brought to the International Court of Justice. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua, affirming international recognition of US support for terrorism in Central America. The ruling was (of course) ignored by the US. In the case of Afghanistan, US support for Islamist terrorism was obvious to anyone paying attention to the Afghan-Soviet War. In what the US dubbed “Operation Cyclone,” the superpower poured weapons and money into the hands of Islamic fundamentalist militias that would eventually form, among other groups, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The result of this support was the deaths of tens of thousands Russians and Afghans, along with the eventual blowback terrorism of the 9/11 attacks. Similarly, the United States’ billion dollar a year program that lasted from 2011-2017, armed the “moderate rebels” in the Syrian civil war. As acknowledged by the United States own Defense Intelligence Agency, along with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and a host of other officials, the “moderate rebels” consisted largely of Islamist Salfi extremists highly focused on sectarian murder of Shiites and Alawites. It is likely that we won’t learn the full details of Operation Timber Sycamore for many years (if ever), but at a minimal level we know that the US supported militias killed or injured some 100,000 members of the Syrian army. Additionally, US supported rebels have committed massacres of ethnic and religious minorities throughout the civil war.
Then there is the accusation that the US has leveled against other nations, that nations are supporting terrorism because they have become places of refuge for terrorists. This was the accusation against Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, against Iraq prior to the war of 2003, and recently against Iran. This past summer, Israel, at the behest of the US violated Iran’s sovereignty and executed a member of the Al Qaeda organization on the streets of Tehran. The departed AQ member had apparently been living in Tehran for some time. Conversely, but as in the pattern with other forms of US support for terrorism, the US has historically provided refuge to individuals that would accurately be characterized as terrorists by other nations. Few examples illustrate this point better than the cases of the Cuban exiles, and CIA assets Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada. The two anticommunist zealots conducted terrorist attacks on the people of Cuba including bombings of tourist locations in Havana and the 1976 blowing up of Cuban civilian passenger plane while in mid-flight. The United States provided refuge to both terrorists, despite requests from Venezuela for both their extraditions to be prosecuted for their crimes. In accordance with the “logic” that guided the US invasion of Afghanistan, US refusal to extradite the alleged terrorists would be followed by a Cuban/Venezuelan invasion of the US and subsequent regime change. However, no such imperial mindset is present in Cuba or Venezuela. Instead, Bosch and Posada were permitted to live out their days in the United States until their comfortable deaths in Miami at the ages of 84 and 90, respectively. Survival into old age is apparently only a privilege the US grants to terrorists whose violence kills civilians in leftist nations.
Internal Inconsistencies
The US is not even consistent in its own distinctions and shifts designations of terrorist organizations and state sponsors of terror frequently. These changes have nothing to do with the actual behavior of groups or nations and everything to do with aligning with US elite interests or political expediency. This is seen in the US policy toward the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group of Iranian exiles that have perpetrated violence on Iranians and even killed Americans. The organization was classified by the US government as a terrorist group until 2012, when the State department removed it from the list. This was not because the MEK had suddenly given up the practice of terrorism as in the months preceding the change they had murdered an Iranian scientist. The group now enjoys close relationships with elite political figures in the US, offering huge sums of money to former Democratic presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and former New York City Mayor, Rudy Giuliani. In 2018, professional warmonger John Bolton was recorded promising the overthrow of the Iranian government to the group saying, “Before 2019, we here will celebrate in Tehran!” A similar sudden change of heart was seen in the US removal of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from the terror group designation, despite the group having launched countless attacks on Chinese civilians. This occurs not because of a change in behavior but because the group will be useful in the escalating cold war that the national security state seems to be pushing on China. While its designation as a terror group has not changed, US policy toward the Salafi Jihadist group, Al Qaeda, is also inconsistent. The group who bears responsibility for the 9/11 attacks is subject to treatment by the United States that is largely dependent on the group’s location of operations. This spectrum of policy toward the Salafi group has ranged from targeted killings of its members in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, to the US fighting on the same side as bin Ladenites in the wars Syria and Yemen. The latter cases are explained by the fact that in Syria and Yemen, the US and Al Qaeda’s interests aligned in the goal of weakening Iran and its alleged allies. These examples should all give hope to groups currently designated as terrorist in nature by the US. Just bring terror to the correct enemies (the government the US wants to harm), and you may just find yourself back into Uncle Sam’s good graces.
Unsurprisingly, inconsistency is also evident in the “state sponsors of terror” designation. Here again, we see the pattern state support for violence against governments that are disobedient to the US, likely to be rewarded with friendlier designations from the superpower. This is best illustrated through the example of Iraq. In the last 42 years, Iraq has been added to (1979), removed (1982), added again (1990), and then removed again (2004), from the state sponsor of terror list. Before dismantling this hypocrisy any further, it should be stated that Iraq has never been proven to be the sponsor of any non-state actor’s violence. On the other hand, Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, committed horrifying acts of state terror against Iraqis and Iranians alike. Well, then logically, it makes sense to classify Hussein’s Iraq as a state sponsor of terror, right? That assumption could be logical were the frequent shifts in designation reflective of corresponding increases and reductions in the brutality of the Hussein government. However the exact opposite is true. Between 1982 and 1990, wherein Iraq was off the list, Hussein was at his zenith in terms of carnage inflicted. The Iraqi government was responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iranian deaths in its war on Iran. This was a war that Hussein started (with US encouragement) in 1980 by invading Persia. This was shortly after the Iranians had overthrown a US backed authoritarian government of the Shah. During that same eight year period, Hussein deployed chemical weapons against both the Iranians and Iraqis alike, killing thousands in barbaric fashion. Among the most famous of these incidents was when the Hussein government used sarin gas on the population of the Iraqi city Halabja, wherein Hussein’s army used chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurdish population. The helicopters used in the attack on civilians were made in the USA. To put that in more blunt terms, while Hussein’s Iraqi government was at the height of its state terror, it had the full support of the United States. The US removal of Iraq from that designation in 1982 had everything to do with its desire to hurt Iran, a nation deemed disobedient to US demands. By removing Iraq from the state sponsor of terror list in 1982, the Reagan administration was then permitted to provide Iraq with arms, which it proceeded to use to conduct state terror at levels rarely seen since World War II. When the war against Iran ended in a stalemate in 1989, Iraq was no longer useful to the United States, and thus the US relegated Hussein’s government back to the sponsor of terror list. The people of Iraq were subsequently tortured by the US with 20 years of genocidal sanctions and war. The history of the shifting designation of Iraq as a state sponsor of terror should be enough to come to the realization that the designation means nothing. Combine that with the states engaged in terror that the US has supported (see above) and the designation should be rendered totally obsolete.
Let’s Stop Using the Word
Hopefully the events of January 6th and the various reactions to them indicate that words like “terrorist” are totally political in nature and 100% used to target groups that the US government wishes to weaken. It is absolutely worth highlighting the double standard by which white right wing violence is handled versus the way we categorize alleged violence committed by non-white actors. Simultaneously, it is also important to avoid “terrorists,” the word to describe the insurrectionists. This is not because right wing agitators aren’t violent extremists but because using such language only boosts the credibility of fascistic organizations like the NSA, DHS and FBI. History shows that empowering these entities will only boost their ability to continue and expand on their modus operandi: suppression of left wing movements, labor activism, movements for racial justice, ethnic minorities, and terrorizing marginalized ethnic/religious groups. In the past, the “terrorism” classification has been used by the aforementioned institutions to infiltrate black liberation groups, surveil and entrap Muslims, and even to persecute animal rights groups. The past 20 years illustrates that US policies with regards to dealing with “terrorism” are incredibly destructive both at home and especially abroad. It is hard to imagine that any reasonable person could look at the US conduct in the “War on Terror” abroad and conclude that they would want to further expand it within the United States. It would beg the question: what is so appealing about torture, extrajudicial assassination, indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, military check points, and night time raids? Furthermore, why would anyone want to replicate the utter failure and ineffectiveness of the “Global War on Terror?” When the GWOT began in October of 2001, there were several hundred members of Al Qaeda concentrated in Afghanistan. Now, there are over 40,000 spread across the Middle East and North Africa, in no small part because of US actions. US anti-terror operations in Africa (through Africom) have also had the opposite effect of curbing extremism. In the last decade, which has been the majority of the lifespan of the US Africa Command, militant African Islamist groups have increased five-fold. Concurrently, there has been a 1,105 percent increase in violent events across the continent. This is not rocket science. Military occupations breed resistance and violence. Those who believe that taking an anti-terrorism approach to fighting white supremacist violence should be countered with this alarming data and asked why they desire to see an increase in right wing vigilantism.
Those clamoring (in good faith mostly) for an expansion of the concept of terorrism to include the white right wing violence we saw on January 6th would likely say that their reasoning is that these white supremacists present an extreme danger to people of color. That is undoubtedly true, but that does not mean that an expansion of the national security state (an inherently right wing superstructure) is the remedy to protect marginalized communities. When evaluating the introduction of a new policy, it is instructive to listen to those that such a policy are alleged to benefit or protect. Among the chief targets of right wing, white supremacist enmity is Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar. She represents a right winger’s nightmare; a Somali immigrant, proudly wearing the Hijab that illustrates her devotion to the Islamic faith, all espousing left wing politics. Omar is subject to constant death threats and animosity from Trump supporters and often the president himself. If the mob had caught up with her on January 6th, the result would have likely been tragic. However, Omar recognizes the need to protect the most vulnerable while not empowering institutions that will inevitably have the opposite effect. Regarding the demand to view the rise of neofascism through the counter terrorism lens, she responded,
“Last week’s events were traumatizing… But we must not give in to fear or allow ourselves to be terrorized by those who seek to harm us. The answer is not a broader security structure or a deeper police state.”
She then elaborated,
“We should not lose sight of our disgust at the double standards employed against white protesters and Black ones or against Muslims and non-Muslims… But at the same time, we must resist the very human desire for revenge—to simply see the tools that have oppressed Black and Brown people expanded.”
Omar clearly understands that there is nothing progressive nor protective of the marginalized that will come from further empowering the police state. Using the language of counter terrorism that strengthens fascistic institutions is not the path to justice but rather a road to repression.
The Week That Should Have Discredited Terrorism as a Concept
Thus far, 2021 has been instructive in many ways as to just how subjective and power serving concepts of violence are within the United States. First, there was the double standard evidenced by law enforcement’s reaction (or lack thereof) to the right wing attempted insurrection when contrasted to the heavy handed crack downs on racial justice protests and other left wing movements. Additionally, other events of the last two weeks also highlighted a double standard of the word “terrorism” and should render the word “terrorism” unusable in American discourse once and for all.
First, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the Houthis, a Yemeni group governing much of the nation’s population, a terrorist organization. This has grave implications for the population of Yemen, who have already been brutalized by a US supported Saudi Arabian war on the impoverished nation. This designation will create extreme difficulty for humanitarian aid groups attempting to provide basic services to the already tortured population and will undoubtedly add to the staggering death toll of the 6 year old US supported war. This designation seems even more absurd when considering that the Houthis themselves are the archenemy of the group that was the very basis for the US war on terror, Al Qaeda. With regards to treatment of the Salafi jihadist groups, the contrast between the conduct of the Houthis and United States in Yemen is instructive. While the Houthis have been successfully combating Al Qaeda for years, the US has been fighting quite literally on the same side as the group that committed the September 11th attacks.
As if he was determined to discredit the word “terrorism” forever, following the Houthis’ designation, Pompeo proceeded to designate Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” This was done without any presentation of evidence to support the claim. It also ignores the fact that while Cuba has never sponsored an act of terror on Americans, the US has sponsored many in Cuba, including the violence committed by the aforementioned Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada. Additionally, the US has for decades been committing economic terrorism toward the Caribbean island’s people, strangling the nation with sanctions nearly non-stop since the 1959 revolution.
Seizing on the CORRECT Opportunity
Language matters. It is imperative for anti-imperialists to draw attention to words that are used inconsistently and consequently reinforce power dynamics. This is especially crucial when describing acts of violence. The kind of language used in mainstream narratives describing violent incidents often depends on the identity of both the victims and perpetrators. It almost always reaffirms the innocence of the powerful and the malevolence of the subjugated. Thus, in the discussion about alleged terrorism, it is productive to highlight the hypocrisy and ease by which many Americans will classify acts perpetrated by persons of color as terrorism while declining to use the word to describe white right wing violence in similar terms. However, the opportunity to be seized on here is not to bolster the national security state apparatus by amplifying the term terror. Rather, recognition of that incongruity is a gateway to the realization that the use of the word has always been inconsistent and had never been reflective of the actual true scale of terroristic violence. This is an opportunity for Americans to consider the historic and current terroristic behavior of the United States government through its military and Central Intelligence Agency that dwarfs the violence of groups traditionally labeled as “terrorists.” This is a chance to recognize that the kind of right wing mob violence seen on January 6th is but a small taste of the barbarity and terror that the US has created, supported, and enabled around the world through both its state and non-state clients. In other words, in the aftermath of the chaos in the Capitol, we have the occasion to further debunk the myth of American exceptionalism and to speak honestly about the violence of the US empire. The dismantling of the imperium will grow only out of a foundation of honesty about its unparalleled violence and a commitment above all to global empathy.