by

Les Levidow (1)

Abstract

How does political protest become terrorism? Answer: whenever governments say that it is. They increasingly do so because capitalism has no alternative to neoliberal globalization and new enclosures. This agenda can be imposed only by terrorizing dissent -- in the name of protecting the public from terrorism, of course. In this way, 'counter-terrorism' is redefining or even replacing politics. As this article argues, effective resistance becomes inseparable from a struggle against new enclosures and for new commons.

How does political protest become terrorism? Following the debacle of the 1999 Seattle summit of the WTO, our rulers feared that the autumn 2001 Doha summit would likewise fail to agree on a New Round of negotiations. If so, then such a setback 'would be acclaimed by all enemies of freer world trade and investment, including those behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon', declared Maria Livanos Cattaui, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Clearly he was linking the anti-globalization, anti-capitalist movement with terrorism.

How should we interpret his statement? -- as opportunistic? as an aberration? In retrospect, we can see that it was preparing a global political strategy. Here I will argue the following:

The agenda of neoliberal globalization has been encountering greater resistance, yet our rulers have no alternative strategy for disciplining and exploiting us. So they have resorted to more desperate measures to enforce that agenda. In addition to physical repression, 'counter-terrorist' measures are intended to terrorize dissent. Just as the 'War on Terrorism' has no limit in time or space, so the criminal law is being extended to broaden the definition of 'terrorism'. This is a war against dissent -- against our capacity to resist injustice and oppression. Basic democratic rights are becoming incompatible with the neoliberal agenda, which therefore becomes even more illegitimate.

The definition of rights has been contested throughout the history of capitalism. The term has had divergent meanings, bound up with class struggle.

On one side, rights have meant a statutory basis for the private appropriation of resources, thus legalizing theft. For example, in the original Enclosures of the commons here in the 17th and 18th centuries, land was reconceptualized as capital whose productivity must be enhanced through exclusive access. Later, private-property rights were extended by criminalizing various customs by which workers had gained access to resources at their workplaces (as described by E.P. Thompson). In general, classical liberalism idealized market relations as individual liberation, yet its marketization project has always depended upon violence in order to 'liberate' resources from collective claims, to liberate employers from their responsibilities to workers, etc. (as described by Karl Polanyi).

On the other side, rights have meant collective access to common resources, as well as protection from state attacks upon those who demand and implement such access. These struggles gave a new importance to the earlier right of habeas corpus, whereby any detention must be justified in a law court. The rights to free speech, public assembly, 'combinations' of workers and so on have been crucial for the class organization of the exploited. By definition, rights are unconditional, yet their practical meaning has always been dependent upon unstable victories against state tyranny.

By analogy to earlier phases of class struggle, neoliberal globalization now extends enclosures. As in the past, this means yet more land privatization, a logical consequence of NAFTA which provoked the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Moreover, it also means enclosing current forms of commons -- public services, utilities, workers' collective skills, employment protection, genetic knowledge, academic curricula, etc. In the name of 'free trade', this agenda further commoditizes and privatizes resources; such unfree trade increases only the capitalists' freedom to appropriate and exploit resources for their profits. In the name of 'labour flexibility', the neoliberal agenda maximizes the extraction of surplus value from living labour.

Key measures are institutionalized through new laws, are implemented by national governments, and are potentially enforced through WTO treaties. Again we see an antagonism between two forms of rights; for example, 'Intellectual Property Rights' are denounced as biopiracy by those who defend the genetic commons, while national governments are pressed to criminalize farmers who infringe private-property rights.

The new enclosures have provoked new resistance. As Structural Adjustment Policies were imposed on Third World countries in the 1980s and 1990s, 'IMF riots' erupted and resistance circulated across countries. Protestors have been savagely repressed, often by shooting them.

The neoliberal project initially disoriented its critics in Northern countries, but recently the 'anti-globalization' movement has generated global solidarity networks. Sometimes protest has blocked neoliberal theft and disrupted our rulers' international meetings. Southern migrants in the North have highlighted the damage to their homelands by Structural Adjustment Policies and the accompanying state terrorism, often backed by governments of the North.

As protests mounted against the neoliberal agenda, some critics expected that it would eventually be moderated. Yet there have been no such moves, because our rulers truly have no alternative agenda for sustaining capitalism. For similar reasons, the EU is moving further down the path of labour flexploitation and privatization. Consequently, neoliberal militants have needed extra weapons to suppress us.

By the late 1990s the Northern Ireland war was in terminal decline, yet the UK 'anti-terrorist' legislation was extended as means to deter dissent. The Terrorism Act 2000 created new crimes of association, suspicion and anticipation. The definition of terrorism was broadened to encompass simply 'the threat' of 'serious damage to property', in ways 'designed to influence the government' for a 'political cause'. These terms could encompass any preparation for mass protest. The law potentially stigmatizes a wide range of legitimate political activity as 'terrorism', which then becomes subject to attacks on civil liberties, such as detention without adequate legal representation; anyone can be held without charge for up to 7 days.

Moreover, the Home Office was authorized to ban any organization which engaged in 'terrorist' activities abroad, as broadly defined by the Act; it also criminalizes any overt links with such organizations in the UK. Thus the Act classified Third World solidarity here as a terrorist crime. Such legislation is politically useful for terrorizing solidarity, because the relevant organizations here could not be easily prosecuted under the ordinary criminal law. When the Home Office eventually issued a list of 21 organizations to be banned, this included the Kurdish Workers' Party, the PKK. In response, thousands of (mainly Kurdish) demonstrators marched through Whitehall wearing T-shirts proclaiming, 'I am PKK' and asked the police why they weren't being arrested. Apparently there were no orders to do so -- perhaps because the protest had successfully ridiculed the law.

After September 11, the Twin Towers attacks were used as a pretext to fabricate a state of emergency in many countries. Beforehand, the anti-globalization movement was mobilizing large numbers of people worldwide against rulers who attempt to impose privatization, trade liberalization, poverty and war. Those rulers moved quickly to exploit the 11th September attacks, in order to fragment and marginalize us. They have sought to polarize the population into 'us' supporting them against 'the terrorists'.

In the UK, the Terrorism Act 2000 was supplemented by even more severe powers in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCSA 2001). It authorizes greater police powers and even imposes duties on us. The Act includes the following measures:

Why were these powers needed? Before this law was enacted, the authorities already had adequate legal powers to protect the public from organized violence. Indeed, they have used 'conspiracy' laws to frame political activists on vague charges, though often the jury has acquitted the defendents because the prosecution had no credible evidence about specific actions. 'Anti-terrorist' laws go further, by circumventing the judicial process. The extra police powers of harassment could deter protest, regardless of how few people are prosecuted in the courts.

Fabricating and maintaining a state of emergency involves a circular logic. For example, the Metropolitan Police set quotas for Westminster street patrols to stop people on the street under their 'anti-terrorist' powers. By submitting the statistics to Parliament, the government could better justify why the powers are needed and therefore must be extended. Police have been stopping buses in Whitehall, under the pretext of 'looking for terrorists'. Is there a non-racist way to identify 'terrorist suspects'? Such police activities encourage us to fear foreigners as mortally dangerous. (For the racist effects, see booklet by Liz Fekete.)

Going beyond police powers, moreover, the Terrorism Acts could lead us to internalize our own handcuffs, muzzles, earplugs and blindfolds. We are meant to fear any involvement in political protest, lest the police later challenge us for not having given them information -- or lest others give the police information on us. We may be pressed to become compulsory grasses, even to inform on activities which haven't happened.

The ATCSA 2001 also included further powers to terrorize solidarity. Any non-UK citizen can be detained for an indefinite period. Under those powers, several Muslims have been interned in Belmarsh prison, with no right of habeas corpus, little publicity about their case, and physical conditions potentially harmful to their health. Their internment threatens entire communities, left wondering who else will be interned. We are meant to respond with fear and fatalism, along the lines of the famous quotation from Pastor Niemöller during the Nazi period. It could be paraphrased: 'First they came for the Muslims, but I wasn't a Muslim...' Rather than be fatalistic, we can respond that the law is illegitimate because it substitutes internment for any judicial process, and that the internees must be released immediately.

The European Union has moved along similar lines as the UK. Before September 11, the main response to mass protests had been systematic physical repression and even murder, e.g. at the Gothenburg and Genoa summits. But this attack backfired, provoking even greater support for the protestors.

Last September, the Twin Towers attacks provided a pretext for more subtle weapons against us. New EU legislation defines terrorism as criminal activity which is undertaken for 'unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act'. So, otherwise trivial crimes readily become redefined as terrorism.

Moreover, an EU Council report posed the problem of protest as follows:

Information exchange among member states and Europol would 'provide a very helpful tool in preventing

and, where appropriate, prosecuting violent urban youthful radicalism', according to the report. Under its 'anti-terrorist roadmap', the EU is planning to set up databases on protestors and foreigners. It will criminalise protest by creating two new `terrorist' categories: 'eco-terrorism' and 'anarchist terrorism'. Following precedents set by the UK and USA, moreover, in May 2002 the EU announced a ban on 23 organizations, including the PKK. In response, the Turkish government immediately intensified its terrorism against Kurdish communities.

These forms of European integration and complicity become even more ominous with plans for an EU arrest warrant. If this proposal is approved, then the police would promptly extradite anyone by request of another EU member state. This procedure would circumvent any judicial process of evaluating evidence, legislation, treatment of prisoners, etc.

Palestine has become central to the overall strategy of 'counter-terrorism'. Just as all colonial occupations have represented their own barbarism as self-defence, Israel claims to defend its own population by removing the 'terrorist infrastructure' in Palestinian communities. All effective resistance to Israeli occupation is portrayed as terrorism; this story-line justifies Zionist terror which destroys the basic infrastructure of daily life as well as numerous Palestinian lives.

The UK and US (among other imperialist governments) have accepted the basic Zionist pretext. This is no surprise, because they have consistently rewarded Zionist terror over the years. Britain has exported military equipment, while pretending that Israel wouldn't use it in the Occupied Territories. The USA has given Israel the largest proportion of its foreign aid budget -- $70bn in over the last thirty years -- despite extension of its illegal settlements.

Indeed, the current attacks recoup the imperialist investment in the 1993 Oslo Accord, which initiated the 'anti-terrorist' strategy in the guise of a 'peace process'. Under its terms, Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation was delegitimized as terrorism, while the racist Zionist state was relegitimized. Accepting these terms, Arafat undertook to end the intifada. The PNA did so with assistance from the CIA and the new Palestinian security force, which terrorized critics of the Oslo Accord and protected the illegal settlements in the Occupied Terroritories. When that colonial strategy collapsed under the weight of the second intifada, the PNA had outlived its usefulness to the Zionist project and could itself be removed.

Further disaster for all the Palestinian people now follows from having been manoeuvred into an imperialist definition of terrorism. Although this is an extreme case, it should make us beware of any attempt to define resistance against injustice as terrorism. Palestine has become an important test case for our capacity to oppose the global 'counter-terrorist' strategy.

As I have argued, the 'War on Terrorism' is also a war against dissent -- against our capacity to resist injustice and oppression. It serves to terrorize dissent and to promote paranoia. It establishes a permanent state of emergency -- in our minds, as well as in law. 'Counter-terrorism' does this in several ways, especially through new laws which:

This 'anti-terrorism' is a political strategy to fragment and infantilize us, so that we distrust other people, while treating the state as a benign protector. Unsurprisingly, the law exempts UK officials for prosecution

regarding chemical and biological weapons. It also exempts the terrorist activities of the UK government, e.g. its complicity in bombing Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as its complicity with state terrorism in places such as Turkey/Kurdistan and Israel's occupation of Palestine.

In these ways, 'counter-terrorism' is redefining or even replacing politics. Basic democratic rights are becoming incompatible with the neoliberal agenda, which thereby becomes even more illegitimate.

Just as colonialists had portrayed any effective resistance as terrorism, now their successors in the most industrialized countries are portraying domestic resistance in similar terms, e.g. through a criminalisation of communities. (For more details see the Statewatch webpage).

'Anti-terrorist' legislation provides the basis for a police state, at least on paper. Its practical meaning will depend upon how well we organize an imaginative, collective resistance which ridicules and subverts the facade of emergency. There are many actions we can take to defend democratic rights -- firstly, by defending those who are harassed or interned. The Campaign Against Criminalising Communities has listed five demands in a petition:

1. We reject the definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000.

2. We demand the repeal of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the ATCSA 2001.

3. Everyone must be treated as innocent until proven guilty. No detention without charge. Restore the right of habeas corpus.

4. We defend the democratic freedom to dissent and to organize ourselves against injustice without being criminalized.

5. We oppose crimes against humanity, regardless of who (or what government) commits them.

Effective resistance becomes inseparable from a struggle against new enclosures and for new commons. A central task is to define collectively what are the commons. The struggle against 'counter-terrorism' is necessarily the struggle to extend the social space of resistance, communication and creation of a different world.

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, http://www.cacc.org.uk, email knklondon@gn.apc.org

EU Council, Working Party on Terrorism, 'Presentation of a Presidency initiative for the introduction of a

standard form for exchanging information on terrorist incidents', December 2001, http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/11793/11793_1.pdf

Cattaui, M.L., 'What business should do to thwart the terrorists', 18 Sept. 2001, http://www.iccwbo.org/home/news_archives/2001/business.asp

Fekete, L., Racism: the Hidden Cost of September 11, London: Institute of Race Relations, www.irr.org.uk

Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1944.

Statewatch, http://www.statewatch.org, http://www.statewatch.org/news/2002/feb/10anarch.htm

Thompson, Edward P., Customs in Common. Penguin, 1993.

(1) This article is based on a talk given on 28th April 2002, hosted by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall. It will be published in the SPES magazine, The Ethical Record. It is already published in Eclipse: the anti-war review, a magazine produced at the University of Sussex.