The 'Terrorists' Must Win

In the UK, you are now officially a terrorist if you resist a genocide.

The proscription of Palestine Action, putting them in the same category as ISIS and Al Qaeda, signals a final loss of morality and the utter perversion of democracy in the UK.

But the truth is that this only codifies and makes clear what has been true for a long time: you are a terrorist if you resist the crimes of empire.

You are a terrorist if you put your body on the gears of the imperial machine.

You are a terrorist if you dare to confront the machinery of genocide.

As a number of journalists have found out, you are a terrorist if you dare to speak up and write about the crimes of empire, about its genocides and campaigns of mass slaughter.

You are a terrorist if you sit in the road and protest against the fossil fuel infrastructure that fuels and finances eco-breakdown, war, and genocide.

You are now arrested on suspicion of terror offences if you wave a flag, hold a sign or wear a t-shirt supporting Palestine.

It doesn’t matter how non-violent you are. It doesn’t matter if you are fully accountable and immediately throw yourself into the arms of the state. Attempts to appeal to the morality of institutional genocidal power are naive, futile and in vain.

The only way to not be a terrorist is to accede to the crimes of empire. The only way to redeem your standing should you ever have been considered a terrorist, the only way to peel off the label, is to comply with empire. Syria’s new president has demonstrated this well. An ex-Al Qaeda leader who cut off heads with his bare hands, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani is now warmly welcomed into the orbit of the western ruling class. You can go from being on America’s most wanted list to shaking hands with and being praised by the president of the United States within weeks if you promise to be a good little boy or girl.

You can make this transition especially quickly if you promise to be kind to Israel.

Israel, a country that can freely kill British citizens and instead of being condemned, ostracised and punished gets rewarded with new laws that turn British citizens into terrorists should they protest this killing. When was the last time the British politicians who’ve created a new category of terrorist to protect a genocidal state mentioned the names James Kirby, John Chapman or James Henderson? When was the last time the patriots, from Starmer to Farage and all the debased shit stains in between, mentioned their own citizens who were murdered by a foreign state while delivering aid to starving people? The British political class are prosecuting their own citizens as terrorists for non-violently protesting Israel while letting Israel literally murder British citizens. It is utterly depraved. It is breathtakingly grotesque.

Western liberalism has come to an end. Whatever fantasies we may have indulged in about freedom and democracy, about our open, liberal societies should have been well and truly slayed by now. The signs were very much there before our governments, before the US, Europe and Canada, armed, financed and provided political cover for genocide. But there’s no denying it now. Signatories to the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court are obligated to intercede if a wanted war criminal enters their territory. Yet on numerous occasions, European countries have ignored those obligations as Netanyahu has crossed their airspace on his way to the US. International law is now just openly ignored by the great bastions and proclaimed defenders of international law.

And liberalism didn’t just die in the killing fields of Gaza, it opened the door to something even worse. Because in their great fury to defend the apartheid state of Israel, many centrist liberal governments, from Starmer to Tusk to Merz to Biden, along with their supporters, have played directly into the hands of the far-right. There is a reason Nigel Farage enthusiastically supported the banning of Palestine Action. There’s a reason the British fascist leader Tommy Robinson has made numerous trips to Israel and been pictured in an IDF t-shirt.

There is a reason Donald Trump just called Netanyahu the greatest man in the world. And it’s obviously not because these men are good progressives standing up against antisemites. It’s because they love that a country can kill Muslims with impunity. It’s entirely about anti-Muslim racism. Liberal centrists love it for the same reason. You only have to refer to Merz’s comment about Israel ‘doing the west’s dirty work’ to understand this. But centrists wrap their racism in the sophistry of geopolitics and dress it in the pride flag and the language of fake progressivism. Centrist liberalism is the gateway to right-wing authoritarianism, and Israel is one of the tools.

So from Trump to the ascent of Farage, right-wing authoritarianism is what we’re getting.

The only hope is that this can be a moment of mass radicalisation and education. The hope is that the scales are falling from the eyes of those who previously understood the liberal centrist parties to be the good guys. The hope is that the system is being exposed for what it truly is. The hope is that the two-party system is over. As the US mass deports military veterans and their families, the hope is that black and brown people who signed up to kill for the white man’s empire understand it was never going to save them in the end. The hope is that in this moment of education and radicalisation, new formations and groupings across the west can emerge to take on the liberals and the far-right equally.

Jeremy Corbyn and a group of left-wing MPs in the UK have teased this prospect in the last week. The hope is that they can get it together and provide a real alternative to a deadening ideology of militarism and austerity that starves people of dignity at home and the means of sustenance itself in Gaza.

The hope is that the left rallies around Mamdani in the US and his campaign becomes the spark that lights a fire.

The hope is that this time, the ‘terrorists’ win.