The discourses of state terrorism : justifying the Iraq invasion, drone strikes and right-wing extremism

Abstract

During the twentieth century it is estimated that the number of deaths due to state-started mass murders, genocides and forcible starvations is around 170-200 million (Blakeley & Raphael, 2016). Numbers gathered for Alexander George’s “Western State Terrorism” (1991) show quite the difference between state and non-state terrorism, and terrorism perpetrated by a state. According to George, the number of killings by non-state actors (CIA global aggregate between 1969-1980) were 3,368 (ibid.). However big this number seems, the number of people killed by state terrorism alone in Angola and Mozambique between 1980-1989 is over one million (George, 1991). Other numbers of killings as a result of state terrorism are: over half a million people in Indonesia between 1965-1966 and then later on over 200,000 more due to the invasion and pacification in East Timor (1980-1985), and the Pol Pot era in Cambodia where over 300,000 people were killed during the three years from 1975-1978 (Ibid.). These numbers are massive compared to the numbers of killings resulted from non-state actors. However, the general public seldom know about the extent of state terrorism. Some of the reason is that state terrorism has become subjugated knowledge amongst and within scholars, but also how the term terrorism is subjectively framed. This paper examines the discourses of terrorism and how it the term is often defined to fit certain agendas. In doing so, the purpose of the paper is to look into if the United States of America is perpetrating state terrorism towards other states and if the current administration is also perpetrating some form of state terrorism towards the US’s own citizens. Based on this purpose, the research question for the paper is as follows: Is the US perpetrating state terrorism today, and if so, what form of state terrorism and towards whom?