Opinion – Fhoutine Marie: Why not call attacks in Brasilia terrorism

Since last year, journalists, political analysts, militants and politicians from leftist parties have insisted on classifying acts of depredation by coup leaders dressed in green and yellow that took place on the night of the inauguration of the president-elect as terrorists.

I prefer to call them scammers, as they seem to me to be more accurate terms to describe what they are and what they do. In the United States, people who invaded the Capitol are called insurrectionists, something similar to the term used by Vladimir Safatle, who called the event a fascist insurrection.

They are less problematic alternatives. Although much of what was seen last year and in the attempted coup that took place on Sunday (8) in Brasília falls under Law 13,260 – better known as the Anti-Terrorist Law, sanctioned by Dilma Rousseff already at the end of her government, on March 16, 2016– this is a term that should be used with caution.

Not for anti-punitivist reasons, but to avoid unlocking an instrument that has historically been used against the same people who today call for severe and exemplary punishment “for terrorists”. With the argument that, for much less, other demonstrations were repressed with police brutality, the impression is given that what the authorities tend to call “excesses” has some plausible justification and that it is, moreover, desirable.

With this, there is a risk of continuing a narrative that reinforces the authoritarianism practiced by the left. Lula’s blunder in his speech yesterday in saying Stalinists when he intended to say fascists says a lot about that. The Military Police commanded by governors of leftist parties –or by people who were not in leftist parties, but today make up the current government– in the not so distant past did not hesitate when it came to exercising the legitimate monopoly of force in repossession processes or in protests by teachers and students.

Terrorism is not an adjective

“Terrorism” and “terrorist” are words derived from the period of Terror of the French Revolution, in which not only nobles were executed by the State, but many people of the newborn left considered enemies of the Revolution. The concept of enemy is very important for us to understand what this classification mobilizes: the annihilation of an enemy who does not have the constitutional guarantees reserved for the citizen.

Classical authors such as Hobbes, Machiavelli and Beccaria already spoke about the enemy as someone who does not act within the rules of the game and whose punishment, for this reason, should not be the same as that destined for the common citizen.

It helps to understand how the word “cancer” often appears in terrorism-related rhetoric. It is something that needs to be rooted out, that requires a special treatment regime. The problem that arises when comparing anything to cancer is that the treatment for the disease is often to cut, burn, or poison the patient to kill cancer cells in the hope that the body will survive.

Terrorism is not an adjective, it is a political classification. And it is usually just the beginning, since, as with cancer, we only know the beginning of the treatment, which can be prolonged, add to other protocols as or more destructive than the initial approach, full of sequelae, of healthy parts affected or removed and prolonged effects of toxicity. A permanently monitored body. This body, in this case, is the social body.

The outcry is that in the future it may lead to the criminalization of anyone who demonstrates against government decisions, equating workers, students, indigenous people, people living on the streets or in precarious housing conditions, residents of the periphery —in short, all those whose image of police and military violence is still fresh in our memory.

Historically, every time a war on terror has been declared, a terrorist hunt or whatever, it has been the population that has suffered the consequences. It was social movements and politically engaged citizens –or sometimes not even that– who had their freedoms and bodies violated in the name of fighting a “faceless” enemy. Certain trails have no way back.

This text was originally published here.