On the Meaninglessness of the Word "Terrorism"
How states use the cover of security concerns to crush dissent
I was initially going to write about something else this week, but then I read about the detention and arrest of the French activist and radical publisher Ernest Moret.
Two individuals identifying themselves as counter-terrorism police detained Moret at a train station in London and asked about his participation in protests in France. When he refused to give up the passcodes of his confiscated electronics, they arrested him. He posted bail on April 18.
It is obvious from their statements that the London police detained Moret in collaboration with the French government’s increasingly authoritarian repression of protests against the raising of the retirement age, which mobilized nearly every trade union in the country and paralyzed the country so thoroughly that Charles III canceled his planned trip there.
While I could spend the rest of this post condemning this arrest on no uncertain terms as an attack on freedom of expression and dissent, his allies have already done so far better than I could. What I am interested in here is what the involvement of counter-terrorism police in the investigation reveals about the role the concept of “terrorism” plays in state suppression of dissent.
To begin with, we need to distinguish between two ways the word “terrorism” is used. For most people, it could be defined as something like: “the use or threat of violence in order to intimidate a group of people or government into affecting some political change.”
However, there is always a difference between how a word is explicitly defined and how it is implicitly defined, as revealed by how it is actually deployed. By looking at to whom and by whom the label of terrorist is applied, we can uncover its implicit definition.
For example, the FBI website explicitly defines domestic terrorism as “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.” Even before uncovering the implicit definition, we start to see the ideological underpinnings of the explicit one.
It’s safe to assume that most people believe states are capable of terrorism, if we agree on the definition I offered above. In fact, the FBI states that international (not domestic) terrorism is committed by “individuals and/or groups inspired by or associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations.” By its own definition, there is such a thing as state terrorism, but only if done by Cuba, North Korea, Iran, or Syria. The underpinnings and realpolitik of this definition become even clearer when we consider that state sponsors of terrorism also include Saudi Arabia according to the State Department’s own intelligence, although this information was not public until it was leaked. However, due to its status as an important US ally and source of oil, it is highly unlikely it will ever end up on the list. At least in its front-facing capacity, the list of state sponsors of terrorism is completely indistinguishable from a list of the US’s political rivals, barring China and Russia.
In addition, its definition of domestic (not international) terrorism says that it can only be committed by individuals and/or groups, not states. Ergo, the US government and its allies, even when acting violently and/or criminally for ideological ends, which it has done many times, is definitionally incapable of committing or sponsoring domestic or international terrorism according to itself.
It is also safe to assume that most people believe law enforcement are capable of committing terrorism. If any law enforcement agency used violence to intimidate a group of people or an individual for ideological reasons, which it has done many times, most reasonable people would call it terrorism. However, the definition of domestic terrorism given by the FBI precludes defining any legal action as terrorism. One could argue that in many cases the police do act illegally, but this merely begs the question of the practicality of such a framework in cases when a blind eye was turned to illegal actions. If designated law enforcement only enforce some laws against some people in a certain way, that makes them de facto legal. There can be no distinction according to any practical definition.
Having examined one explicit definition of terrorism, we can now examine the implicit definition as revealed by the actions and rhetoric of individuals and the state.
The implicit definition usually falls into one of two categories:
Political violence I disagree with.
Political activity, especially disruptive, destructive or violent activity, that the state wishes to stop or prevent.
For the first definition, consider the calls to declare antifa a domestic terrorist organization. Putting aside the obvious problem that there is no such organization with membership rolls or a national assembly, one could reasonably argue that the actions of some people that identify as antifascists meet the explicit definition of terrorism: it is political violence intended to intimidate a person or a group, namely fascists.*
*As a brief side note, we would of course be ignoring crucial context if we were didn’t point out that the state does the same on a regular basis, such as when riot police are called in to suppress a strike. We would be equally guilty if we ignored the fact that these actions are provoked by the violent actions of the far right, such as when armed counter-protesters protected a drag brunch from attack in Roanoke, Texas. Considering the string of physical attacks on the hosts and attendees of drag shows, it is clear communities must be on guard to defend themselves with force.
On the other hand, the ideologues and politicians calling to declare antifa a terrorist organization usually do not also call for groups such as the Proud Boys, who both engage in political violence and are an actual organization, to be designated a terrorist organization. The first implicit definition is revealed not only by who the label is applied to, but also by who it is not applied to. For an example of the second definition, the main focus of this essay, we must look to how different violent groups and individuals were dealt with by the state. To see how the US government treats leftists, consider the history of the first Red Scare.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, scores of anarchists inspired by the idea of “propaganda of the deed” targeted politicians, monarchs, industrialists and police in assassinations and bombings across Europe and North America. Following the 1919 bombing of his home, then-Attorney General Mitchell A. Palmer enlisted a young J. Edgar Hoover to round up thousands of suspected “reds” and deport them back to their home countries. The disputable (to put it mildly) constitutionality of the Palmer Raids eventually shifted public opinion against them.
The New York Tribune’s coverage of a string 1919 anarchist bombings. Credit: New York Tribune, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Compare the response to anarchist violence with the violence of the concurrent revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Not only was the Klan mostly free from political repression, many respected figures in the government, business world and police were members. Or consider the Red Summer of 1919, wherein dozens of race massacres– basically, mass lynchings– across dozens of cities went ignored by the Wilson administration in spite of repeated pleas by black leaders to put an end to the violence. Wilson, of course, was a notorious racist even for his time, given that he resegregated the federal government. We see here that political violence, even mass riots, deemed a threat to rather than a reinforcer of the status quo is met with state prosecution, while those in power tend to outsource violence to vigilantes if it serves their interest.
This trend continues today in the practice of bringing terrorism charges against eco-activists for sabotaging pipelines but hurting or killing no one, or even for attending a music festival on land occupied by protesters. In the latter case, prosecutors used the very same domestic terrorism statute created following the attack on a black church by the white supremacist Dylann Roof. In other words, state powers created to prosecute white supremacist violence ended up being used against those who oppose white supremacist violence.
One can most clearly see the difference between how left wing and right wing protesters are treated by comparing the responses to the 2020 George Floyd Uprising and the January 6 Capitol Riots. Throughout the summer of 2020 and beyond, Black Lives Matter protesters were brutalized, tear gassed, blinded by rubber bullets and even grabbed off the street by unmarked vans. People clearly marked as press were arrested and assaulted by riot police. In Washington, DC, police corralled protesters out of the street so then-president Trump could take a photo op. Certain members of the BLM movement were even officially designated as “Black Identity Extremists” by the FBI.
On the flip side, Capitol police were pitifully underprepared for the J6 riot in spite of ample intelligence provided by the FBI. Trump himself stalled deployment of the National Guard to put down the riot.
While one could explain these discrepancies in treatment by simply pointing out that Trump– a far-right authoritarian by any sane definition– was president at the time of both incidents, this does not explain why this pattern tends to hold across history. The simplest explanation is this: right-wing political activity, violent or otherwise, generally reinforces the status quo while the left generally challenges it. A violent, white supremacist system cannot be truly threatened by violent white supremacist activity in itself, except sometimes by the fact that the police are not the ones doing it. Even then, there is always a good chance that they are collaborating. As far as I’m concerned, the late, great, David Graeber gave the only satisfactory explanation as to why there always seems to be a close relationship between the far right and police.
“[There is a] surprising affinity between criminals, criminal gangs, right-wing political movements, and the armed representative state. Ultimately, they speak the same language. They create their own rules on the basis of force. As a result, they typically share the same broad political sensibilities. Mussolini might have wiped out the mafia, but Italian Mafiosi still idolize Mussolini. In Athens, nowadays, there’s active collaboration between the crime bosses in poor immigrant neighborhoods, fascist gangs, and the police. In fact, in this case it was clearly a political strategy: faced with the prospect of popular uprisings against a right-wing government, the police first withdrew protection from neighborhoods near the immigrant gangs, then started giving tacit support to the fascists. For the far-right, then, it is in that space where different violent forces operating outside of the legal order interact that new forms of power, and hence of order, can emerge.”
In other words, the fascist, the cop, and the gangster all primarily interact with the world through the lens of naked force. Our force is the good kind, and the other is done by criminals, foreigners, degenerates, and terrorists.
This is one of the few reasons I avoid using the term “terrorism” and feel annoyed when my ostensible allies on the left do. Its overuse has caused the implicit definition to totally eclipse the explicit one. It is the terminology of state power, created and used to crush dissent, born of inherent double standards on what tactics of political change are legitimate and illegitimate. There is nothing emancipatory in drawing such a distinction.
Instead, the term is used by the state to open up a special state of exception. In this state of exception, penalties for the same crimes are harsher and political activities once considered legitimate protected speech become a pretense for surveillance and arrest. Even when its application would clearly never hold up in any court, such as in the case of Cop City protesters, it is enough to intimidate anyone out of further action.
This is clearly the intention of the London and French police in their detention and arrest of Moret. Since he is clearly not guilty of terrorism under French or UK law, one may be tempted to call it a misapplication. But the true intent of states in passing such laws is always clear from the start.
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