State violence against civilians is never categorized as terrorism

Evidence

The word terrorism is put in quotation marks throughout this text not to deny the existence of groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS or to downplay the devastating attacks they have carried out, but rather to call attention to the kinds of acts of political violence that are seen as terrorism and those that are not. Although terrorism is often defined as violence targeted against civilians to inflict fear so as to advance political agendas, governments often label as terrorist those non-state actors that attempt to thwart their objectives while ignoring the political violence of allies. Further, state violence and state-sponsored violence against civilians is rarely, if ever, categorized as terrorism irrespective of the number of lives lost. Perhaps most important to this discussion is the fact that the threat posed to Americans by the parties of political Islam is minuscule. Marc Sageman, former CIA operations officer and long-time government consultant on terrorism, provides the most comprehensive analysis of the actual threat, arguing that there is a “great inflation of the terrorist threat to the United States” and “a dramatically inflated fear of the actual danger posed by neojihadists.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 401

Categorization

• QUESTION: Sageman’s quantitative work on the inflated threat — worth chasing the actual numbers/studies for a future piece.
• SEED: Angle: the epistemology of ‘terrorism’ as a label — the state vs non-state double standard in casualties, useful for an essay on language and power.
• XREF: connects to: Christian violence is never generalized to all Christians, but Muslim violence is. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 354; State violence against civilians is rarely labeled terrorism; Terrorism is defined by illegality, not by who commits it (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• State violence against civilians is rarely labeled terrorism #corroborates (0.95)
• Terrorism is defined by illegality, not by who commits it #contradicts (0.75)
• Terrorism labeling follows political allegiance, not acts of violence #contradicts (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 413