"Terrorism" and the Language of Power
Terrorism is increasingly anything that the permanent state dislikes
I observed recently the appropriation by the left of the language of “insurrection.” A similar observation might be made about the language of “terrorism.” There was a time when the term “terrorism” was used for things like hijacking airplanes, and for organizations like Al-Qaeda. It has been debased by over-use, and is now an active danger to civil liberties.
The documents made available by the Rouleau or Public Order Emergency Commission — the inquiry into the government’s use of the Emergencies Act — illustrate this debasement: the label of “terrorism” is used cynically and for purely instrumental reasons, and not because anyone seriously apprehends terrorist attack. As with my comments on the language of “insurrection,” the Rouleau documents offer a window into official language in unguarded moments, and therefore into how our rulers really think.
In the United States, the estimable Julie Kelly, the journalist covering the ongoing civil rights travesty of the January 6 trials, notes the outrageous sentences given, even to non-violent demonstrators, with the aid of “terrorism enhancements.”1 There is a riot, at which there is violence, and anyone present convicted of anything is then deemed guilty of “terrorism,” and thrown in prison for many years: this is an obvious abuse, and also a symptom of the instrumental debasement of the emotive language of “terrorism.”
In a legal context, the term “terrorism” is used to make sentences more severe, and also to support or create the narrative that the offences in question were not a normal crime resulting from a normal protest. The administration’s legal flunkies, both prosecutors and judges, apply terrorism penalties so that the administration can then claim that its critics are terrorists. This will be at some cost to the reputation of the legal system, but costs are long term, and this administration is not renowned for long term thought. The Biden administration has a supervening desire to label the opposition as terrorist, language that flows easily into an adjacent rhetoric of fascism, authoritarianism, and insurrection. The post-modernists were not wrong to speak of the interdependence and also the circularity of discursive and police power.
Here in Canada, the Emergencies Inquiry documents contain internal cabinet-level discussions intended to remain private. They show a similar misuse of the term “terrorism” to attack the government’s opponents, or more precisely to construct legalistic arguments for the use of extraordinary or extra-legal powers against the government’s opponents among the citizenry.
On 13 February 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and the CEOs of the “big six” chartered banks met concerning the Freedom Convoy protests. The protests had at that point been going on for two weeks, and become embarrassing to the government and the banks alike. One of the bank CEOs suggested:
If you list them as people subject to sanctions (i.e. as if they are terrorists), we could act swiftly.
On the next page, and therefore perhaps 10 minutes later, another CEO referred to his colleague’s suggestion, saying:
“The problem is AML is focused on finding bad money turning to good. This is about good money turning to bad. As [redacted] said, if we listed them as terrorists we could move fast.
“AML” is anti-money laundering policy. Hiding in here is an admission that the money raised by the truckers was legitimately raised, though used for a purpose they considered bad. Sticking to his point, three sentences later, we have again, “if we list them as terrorist[s] we could act more comprehensively.”2
The screen shot below is taken from the handwritten notes of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, apparently from the same meeting, as they are also dated 13 February.3 “You need to designate this group as a terrorist group & seize the assets,” she wrote:
On the next page, we have another CEO saying, “label them as terrorists.”
The notes in the first screen shot are from a page headed “Dave.” At the Inquiry, it was suggested that it might be David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but Freeland claimed not to know. Other pages (the ones not redacted) in these notes contain the names of CEOs of Canada’s major banks. “Darryl/BMO”, is obviously the Bank of Montreal, and “Laurent F,” “Dodig”, and “Bharat” are not common names, though they do match the names of CEOs Laurent Ferreira of the National Bank, Victor Dodig of CIBC, and Bharat Masrani of Toronto Dominion. David I McKay is CEO of the Royal Bank, and is the only David among Canadian big six bank CEOs.
The collegial atmosphere is telling: all are on the same team, working for the same end, and there are no serious disagreements. The left-liberal Deputy Prime Minister Freeland is clearly the leader. Also present was Deputy Minister of Finance Michael Sabia, an illustrative figure. A sometime civil servant turned corporate CEO turned CEO of the autonomous public pension manager Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, now an influential Deputy Minister, and newly appointed the next CEO of Hydro-Quebec. It is difficult, in reviewing the upward trajectory of Sabia’s ecumenical career, to say precisely where the state ends and where capitalism begins. It makes a relevant question to ask whether this is capitalism at all. For present purposes, the significant fact is that these oligarchs all speak the same language and share the same concern to end popular protest against bureaucratic overreach. They are on the same side, and it is not ours.
The casual and purely instrumental use of the word “terrorism” stand out. That talismanic, fear-laden term was first introduced by a banker, seconded by another banker, and carried the obvious assent of the Deputy Prime Minister. No one said, “they did some bad thing, and that is terrorism, therefore we need the anti-terrorist laws.” Instead, the term was introduced in a purely tactical way, heedless of any moral concern: we would like to use certain powers, so let’s, “label them as terrorists.”
The Parliament Hill occupation was noisy, but entirely peaceful and good natured, down to the free hamburgers, the dance floor, and the famous bouncy castle. While obviously embarrassing to the government and to its kept bankers, there was no terrorism here. The crime rate in central Ottawa in fact went down during the Freedom Convoy.4 Whatever one thinks of vaccine mandates or any other issue, the Freedom protest was not by any stretch terrorism. But the T-word has worked its way into public discourse so completely, and we have become so inured to the idea of extraordinary draconian state powers whenever the state deems it necessary, that the idea can be thrown out casually, without even the need for excuses or arguments, however pretextual. The only arguments are utilitarian: it would be faster and more comprehensive to call people terrorists, and it indeed it was.
I remember well the public mood after 9/11, and was then fully supportive of granting police and financial agencies large powers against terrorists. Whatever remarks might pass about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter, we all thought we knew what was meant by that key word, and it did not include Canadian truckers. Had I been told that those sweeping powers would one day be used against peaceful demonstrators embarrassing to a progressive government, I would have scoffed. But I would have been wrong. Whatever the arguments for anti-terrorist powers twenty years ago, they have become today a tool of bureaucratic power and a danger to the citizenry. There is a need for a comprehensive review and repeal of anti-terrorist laws, and also, more fundamentally, a need for a rethink of the entire public discourse of “terrorism.”
The point is emphasized by the fact that on 17 February 2022, as the Emergencies Act was in force, and on exactly the same day that Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich was arrested, there was a real terrorist attack in British Columbia, against the Coastal Gas pipeline work site. About twenty camouflaged attackers used axes, incendiary devices, and booby traps against workers and police, before disappearing into the forest, in what was obviously a well-planned and tactically skillful attack, including an ambush of the police response.5
This image of wrecked vehicles is on the CBC’s website, as is night video of the attack.6 There have been as yet, over a year later, no charges, such is the state of official uninterest in a real terrorist attack.
The language of terrorism has become so debased, and so removed from concrete reality, that real terrorism is not recognized as such, while peaceful political protest is targeted. That native and environmental causes command official support merely reinforces the point: the language “terrorism” has been disconnected from political violence, and is now an opportunistic discourse pointed almost exclusively at opponents of the bureaucratic state.
Freeland refers several times in the above document to threats to “our democracy,” that first person possessive recruiting the auditor into the class of those called upon to feel threatened. It is this language of terrorism that has become a threat to “our democracy,” and with it to our civil liberties.
President Biden, as I wrote last week, uses concocted statistics to describe his opponents as terrorists, and here in Canada we do the same. The U.S. misuse of the language of terrorism was public, and intended to operate in the realm of public discourse, indeed does not function without being public. Here in Canada, we see in Emergencies Inquiry documents that “terrorism” has become a name so habitual and so normal that it is used purely pretextually. The language of terrorism is used simply to invoke a convenient power, and no one even pretends to make an argument that those targeted are terrorists. The word has become a habitual label for opponents, and if it is functional, there are no objections.
The time has come to revisit and probably to repeal the large variety of anti-terrorism powers granted after 9/11, and just as importantly to reject any discourse of terrorism disconnected from real planned and armed political violence. The powers and the enabling discourse created in the aftermath of 9/11 are no longer used against terrorists. They are now pointed at us.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/08/justice-department-threatens-oath-keepers-with-life-in-prison/; and https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1655604015139356673; https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/14/time-for-republicans-to-confront-january-6-lead-prosecutor/
https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/exhibits/SSM.CAN.00008764_REL.0001.pdf, ~p. 10, unpaginated
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https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/less-crime-in-affected-ottawa-district-since-blockade-began-early-data-suggests; and https://twitter.com/mfproudman/status/1586942445622857728
We are in it. We are in it deep. Is there anyway back or out? No. Should we rise up and resist. No. It's clear, to me anyway, that the powers that be, those who develop, massage and deliver the "narrative" have no desire to change the language or the structure of the dominant paradigm. Or its effects on all of us. Or its system of rewards. Or who is on what side of which "current thinking" line. The rewards for the elite are too high. If you were to list all of the instances of this century's cognitive dissonance foisted on us by the elites you would fill up the entire Substack arena. It's not that one should despair. Other than fantasizing about creating and thriving within a network of fiercely independent and remote polis to eke out what would become a 19th century level of agrarian existence - we are in it.
So, now the challenge for each of us is - how do we manage our way through these days such that we and our children survive and thrive?
I suspect that we need to change the field of play in our quest for peace or remediation or justice. The only way forward is to completely alter your consciousness or outlook such that one tempers oneself to stop resisting and accept what is. But I will continue to read your ruminations.