THREAD: I’ve represented people the government views as “terrorists.” Here’s an incomplete set of reasons why calling yesterday “terrorism” is not a good idea:
If the goal is to trigger accountability: the DOJ has *plenty* of tools to investigate, prosecute, or otherwise hold accountable those who conspired to break the laundry list of laws that were broken yesterday. I’ll let those more prosecutorially-minded list them out.
The govt regularly prosecutes activities it labels terrorism without ever actually charging a crime of terrorism. On the flip side, it charges not actually dangerous, but marginalized, ppl with terrorism-related crimes all the time. Here's a @HRW on this:
(h/t @tarekzismail for work on that report). While there, note how when they set their minds to it, FBI/DOJ have manufactured “terrorists,” deploying informants, entrapment, and the like. Not just in Muslim communities, also Black liberation & other mvmts portrayed as "Terrorist"
If the purpose is discursive, ask: what work does the Terrorism word do? What did the “War on Terror” designator do? It just stokes fear and clouds our ability to talk about root causes, understand different forms of violence & protest, and different relationships w the state.