When Should We Label Something 'Terrorism'? (1025 hits)

When Should We Label Something 'Terrorism'?

After the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the word "terrorism" was everywhere. The attacks themselves were immediately labeled terrorism, and the U.S. multiplied its efforts to find and root out terrorist groups, both at home and abroad. Thus, the U.S. War on Terror began.

Certainly the destruction of the Twin Towers constituted an act of terrorism. But in the years since, many have been vocal about the potential risks of using the term too broadly. The danger, some analysts argue, comes when communities, religious and ethnic groups, or even entire countries, get associated with or portrayed as terrorists, and then policed and surveilled as such.

Conversations about when and how to label something or someone a "terrorist" resurfaced at the beginning of 2021, when hundreds stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6. So today, we're revisiting this piece from the beginning of the year about the stakes of the label terrorist.

What do you call the people who violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6? Rioters? Insurrectionists? Terrorists? After the attack, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used all three labels.

Linda Sarsour, a Muslim, Palestinian American activist with a huge social media following, tweeted, "This is domestic terrorism. Period," and Republican Rep. Nancy Mace from South Carolina also used the label "domestic terrorist" in a tweet.

The people who assaulted police officers to break into the Capitol and hold Congress hostage weren't patriots. They were domestic terrorists. We must stop coddling extremists and rebuild our party as the party that respects rule of law, not violence wrapped in the American flag. -- Rep Nancy Mace

There's an ongoing debate about that term. People who think it's the most precise word to describe what happened on Jan. 6 say that pro-Trump mob fits a dictionary definition of a terrorist: a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

Melina Abdullah, a Black Lives Matter organizer and Pan-African studies professor at California State University, Los Angeles, uses "terrorism" to describe what we saw that day. "What they're attempting to do is terrorize," Abdullah says. "What they're attempting to do is elicit a response that comes out of fear." But Abdullah gets even more specific, calling the group "white supremacist terrorists."

"To use the term white supremacist terrorism helps us to unpack what it means to be a threat to the state," she argues. The terrorist label has been used against Black and Muslim-identified Americans as an excuse to surveil and criminalize those communities, she says, while what she calls "white supremacist terrorists" are organizing coup attempts on social media platforms with few repercussions.

READ MORE: When Should We Label Something 'Terrorism'? https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/20...
Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Tuesday, September 28th 2021 at 11:26PM
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