On Terrorism

In law, an authoritarian tool with zero material benefit for the working class

Terrorism is the act of inducing terror in a population in order to advance a political, ideological, or religious goal. IOW, it is a political tactic. It is not something that exists all by itself. It requires actors who are aggrieved and who have decided, for whatever reason, that scaring the shit out of the civilian population is in their interests.

The concept of terrorism has only been around since 1795. The French Directory first employed it to describe and denounce the Jacobins, particularly Robespierre, whom they had just overthrown. His time in power is still known to us as his enemies depicted it—the Reign of Terror.

It sounds really bad, doesn’t it? Terrorism, a reign of fear, which quickly turns into “Fear those whom we tell you are terrorists,” and there, dear readers, lies the rub.

When George W. Bush declared a “global War on Terror,” it made no logical sense to me. After all, how can a nation wage war upon a tactic? It was as if, instead of declaring war on the Empire of Japan after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt had instead declared a global war on surprise attacks.

Of course, then it was up to the government, and indeed a specific administration, to determine whom was a terrorist and whom was a freedom fighter. The first group to be so designated—Al Qaeda—has flipped back and forth from terrorists to freedom fighters and back again, often changing its names in the process, so many times I’d have to write a research paper to cover them all.

Don’t worry. I’m far too respectful of your Eighth Amendment rights, not to mention too lazy, to do that.

Now, Al-Qaeda in Syria calls itself HTS, and the Trump Administration tells us they are “moderates” even as they wage an ethnic cleansing campaign against Alawites and Christians on Syria’s east coast.

Come to think of it, compared to the sheer scale of the Israeli genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing Al-Qaeda does seem kind of moderate, but that’s only because the US gives a lot more money and weapons to Israel than it does to them. No level playing field there.

What is important to understand is that when a government has the ability define terrorism, then it will always label its enemies terrorists and its friends freedom fighters. Ordinary citizens then start doing the same thing, and fling the term back and forth depending on their own perspectives.

Just look at what’s being said about Palestine right now. The Zionists label all Palestinians and their supporters terrorists, while Palestine supporters point out the terror inflicted by Israel on a daily basis. The word becomes a fruitless exercise in finger-pointing, which suits those who like the current state of things just fine and doesn’t save a single child’s life.

Like “hate speech,” when a government declares that all terrorists are its enemies, and also defines what a terrorist is, then terrorism becomes just another authoritarian tool to keep the rulers in power.

Like hate speech, terrorism has absolutely no place in the legal codes of any democratic republic. There are plenty of laws against murder, vandalism, arson, assault, and direct incitement of insurrection already on the books. All the crimes terrorists commit are already crimes.

A person murdered for personal reasons is no less dead than one murdered for political ones. The laws against terrorism are both redundant and repressive, and do nothing to protect public safety.

The concept of terrorism is always used by those in power to smear their enemies and to praise their friends of the moment, and never to advance the material interests of their own common people.

Don’t believe me? Exactly how much money has all that screaming about Hamas and Houthi terrorists put in your pocket? How does condemning them or spending your tax dollars to fight them help you to pay rent or to buy a carton of eggs? What good has the War on Terror, announced in September 2001, done for you over the last two dozen years?

I know it hasn’t done jackshit for me or mine, but I do know what can be done to start putting a stop to this madness, and that is to repeal the Patriot Act altogether.

That would, of course, do away with the Department of Homeland Security at one stroke. We’d have the Immigration & Naturalization Service again, the Coast Guard would be back in the Department of Transportation, and we wouldn’t have to go through all of that ineffective Fascist security every time we decided to risk our lives by flying on a Boeing product.

Of course, you won’t hear about Elon Musk’s DOGE auditing the wastefulness of DHS, or Donald Trump pushing for a repeal of the Patriot Act, because they want to continue to have the authority to say who is a terrorist and who isn’t in order to preserve and increase their own power.

Which makes them no better than Biden & Blinken & Sullivan on that score.

FFS, they’ve got half of MAGA calling people who vandalize Musk’s shitty and expensive electric cars terrorists. I thought MAGA was opposed to shitty and expensive electric cars, yet here they are defending them because someone in authority says vandalism is terrorism, not because of the vandalism itself.

Certainly not for what’s actually being vandalized.

Terrorism is a tactic that uses things already classified as violent crimes to advance a political goal. It is dangerous to allow a government to define and criminalize terrorism in any criminal code, for the government will always use that ability to repress dissent at home and to attack enemies abroad.

The next time a government official of any government calls somebody a terrorist, have a tub of salt and get ready for some serious bullshit, for that will be the next thing said.

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

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