The terrorist label flexibly expands to smear domestic dissenters and protesters

Evidence

Empire in crisis in the late 1960s and the strategic partnership with Israel gave rise to the global “Arab terrorist” as a threat to democracy. As various threats to empire emerge, the flexible category of “terrorist” incorporates these threats. Thus, methods of control devised to target the racialized terrorist have been used against white anti-war and Occupy Wall Street activists. Moreover, the Black Lives Matter movement has also been smeared as terrorist, and Native Americans protesting the Keystone Pipeline were targeted using counterterrorism tactics. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the domestic-spillover argument seen in Milgrom’s law-merchant chapter and Shapiro’s trust work on how control mechanisms migrate across targets. — connects to: Terrorism labeling expands opportunistically to discredit domestic protest movements; The terrorism label applies fluidly to domestic movements, expanding the war on terror’s targets. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 643; Labeling BLM protesters terrorists is a weapon to strip legitimacy from grievances — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1142 (+6 more)
• QUESTION: The counterterrorism-vs.-Black-Lives-Matter and Keystone Pipeline connections are strong but under-evidenced here; worth chasing the specific documented cases of CT methods used against Native protesters.

Broader Connections

• Terrorism labeling expands opportunistically to discredit domestic protest movements #corroborates (1.00)
• Labeling BLM protesters terrorists is a weapon to strip legitimacy from grievances #exemplifies (1.00) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1142
• The terrorism label applies fluidly to domestic movements, expanding the war on terror’s targets. #corroborates (0.97) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 643
• The terrorism label is a trans-ideological tool for suppressing dissent, not Muslim-specific #expands (0.93) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 643
• Terrorism labeling follows political allegiance, not acts of violence #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 413
• The War on Terror legitimizes expanded police repression at home #expands (0.82)
• Labeling activists terrorists can block their release even under international pressure #exemplifies (0.82)
• Anti-Muslim images were deployed against unrelated domestic targets #exemplifies (0.75) — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 29
• The war on terror brand relied on activists policing academic dissent #expands (0.72)