The 20th century saw vast developments in the capacity of nations to kill, maim and control. But perhaps the single biggest shift in waging war was that from fighting on the ground to taking to the skies. Suddenly, weapons — whether ballistic or chemical — could come from above, tapping into ancient archetypes of fear. Violent death could come at any time, in any place, with minimal warning, fundamentally changing the theater of conflict. Anywhere could be — and was — targeted. Blitzes razed whole cities with no concern for who was there. Eventually, the technology brought nuclear weapons to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which seemed to be the pinnacle of human destruction.
But a hallmark of humans is to continually adapt, finding new ways to live — and to kill. Although the use of nuclear weapons has been constrained by human horror at the effects and by subsequent international treaties, there has been a proliferation of other threats from the skies. Drones also strike without warning, at a fraction of the financial cost of other airborne weapons; they also spy on everyday activity, inspiring paranoia and yet more fear. And, 25 years ago, passenger planes were used to inflict the largest one-day death toll inflicted by an enemy of the United States on American soil, with effects, both physical and psychological, that continue to this day.
The 9/11 attacks soon came to symbolize terrorism, with images of planes penetrating the twin towers in downtown New York used to illustrate and convey the feeling of terror coming from the skies. But news organizations have moved away from using the word “terrorism” to describe the events of that day 25 years ago. From Reuters to the BBC, official guidelines state that best practice is to use descriptions of specific forms of violence (hijackings, bombings, knife attacks) rather than the label “terrorism,” arguing that the term itself is value-laden whereas the actions themselves are not. The ultimate aim of bearing witness through journalism, the guidelines explain, is best served by neutral language that does not include the judgment inherent in the word “terrorist.”
Yet while the world’s media have retreated from the use of such language, governments have applied it ever more broadly, with vast implications for law and society. Terrorism legislation, especially that devised within the framework of the war on terror, uses definitions of terrorism vague enough to be expanded, seemingly indefinitely. From antifa in America to Palestine Action in the U.K., more and more activists are being tried as terrorists, even when their protests are nonviolent, and autocratic leaders from Syria to China have used the label to pursue political and military aims.
How does this simultaneous avoidance and expansion of the use of the word “terrorism” affect how we understand and address the phenomenon of violence committed in the name of an ideal, be that political, religious or environmental? That there is something different about the violence of terrorism, despite common outcomes with other crimes (murder, injury, kidnapping and so on), has long been recognized in academia and in policy; the distinguishing feature is the underlying ideology and aims motivating the actions. There is a clear difference between killing for money and killing for political change, for example, and with different motivations come different judgments from society and different approaches to stopping the violence. A closer look at how the worlds of policy, international development, law and the press have responded to terror gives a stark lesson in how and why we are becoming ever more fearful and divided, between and within many societies.
Researchers and policy advisers have long proposed other terms to avoid the judgment that press guidelines have noted. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” the old saying goes, but it turned out, eventually, that the replacements contained just as much stigma. “Violent extremism” was one new term, containing, it was hoped, the basic meanings but without judgment: The term focused on violence as the tool, wielded in support of an extreme position, at the end of a spectrum of views linked to any cause or belief. One could travel a path to an extreme position on issues from religion to environmentalism, a process labeled radicalization.
A new field emerged to accompany counterterrorism: countering violent extremism, or CVE, an area I worked in for over a decade. The rebrand brought a new approach, signaling a move away from the security and intelligence focuses of traditional counterterrorism, toward addressing the context of radicalization.
There was a scramble to understand just how this should be done in the absence of precedents or a robust model of radicalization. “The escalator model,” quickly abandoned, saw radicalization as an inexorable journey once the first step was taken, requiring intervention that removed the individual entirely from the context that was leading toward violence. The “inoculation model” also saw the first step as critical, and worked to counter the ideologies before exposure to a radicalizing influence could happen, with ideologies seen as viruses that spread between people. Perhaps this was seen as a nonjudgmental formulation, in that you can’t help catching a disease, but it is hardly neutral, with the ideas being seen as something threatening, to be eradicated. (That it didn’t work in the real world, quite apart from the problems with dismissing people’s core beliefs and values as a “virus,” was seen in blowback effects from programs: It was found in evaluations that the Islamic State group’s messaging had been taken into communities, stimulating interest in the group, rather than diminishing it. The evaluations I saw were not shared beyond the small group involved.)
This virus metaphor was based on the fact that recruitment to extremist organizations happens in clusters, or what became known as “hotspots.” In retrospect, it seems inconceivable that this simple observation resulted in an assumption that radicalization was a result of infection, coupled with vulnerability (made up of a range of factors, from poverty to the loss of a loved one), rather than the well-known fact that everyone is influenced by those in their immediate social groups. Trust is particularly important when planning to break the law, and so it is natural that recruitment would only happen within very tight existing networks.
This new analysis suggested that “inoculation” would be best delivered by education, leading former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to announce to the United Nations in 2013 that, “In the 21st century education is a security issue.” This, again, flies in the face of the evidence and human nature. It relies on an assumption that education in the West leads to an understanding that Western systems, resting on Enlightenment ideals, are better than existing alternatives. But to many around the world, or those who closely observe the rest of the world, critical thinking skills reveal only too clearly the very large problems with the West’s attitudes and actions, not least the hypocrisy it displays in its treatment of other countries.
Whatever the metaphor employed in policy documents, whole community action was felt to be key, to ensure that messaging against future violent extremists could be maintained by society at large. There was evidence to show that many programs implemented with CVE funding had positive impacts on local communities — from raising literacy rates to funding community groups in socioeconomically deprived areas — but each case would have been just as effective, if not more so, without the CVE label. People know when they’re falling under suspicion, and trust between governments and communities targeted with CVE funding worsened, making this an entirely self-defeating approach.
The move from “countering” to “preventing” violent extremism only made this perception worse. “You are literally branding an entire community as one who produces terrorists,” one U.N. head of country put it to me. And this whole-community suspicion, within the structure provided by the global war on terror, led to even worse results than resentment toward the funding source. The humanitarian sector, dedicated to relieving suffering according only to need, also came under suspicion, both in law and on the ground.
Over 160 years ago, in Geneva, a group of five people concerned with suffering in war came together to found what would become the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The following year, through its efforts, the first and original Geneva Convention was signed, obliging armies to care for wounded soldiers — whatever side they were on. Gradually, the group became more involved on the ground, “as the need for a neutral intermediary between belligerents became apparent,” its website says.
Neutral is the key term, just as in the press guidelines on terrorism and violence. After over a century of neutrality as a key principle in the humanitarian sector, it is becoming ever more difficult to achieve. The idea that you treat a sick person, irrespective of nationality, creed or affiliation, or you feed a starving population, whoever and wherever they are, has been made impossible by the rules of the war on terror, unless you have a source of income independent from governments or the U.N. The very term was derided in the early years of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq: The Bush administration labeled neutrality “quaint”; the Rand Corporation think tank spoke of it as part of a past to which only the “nostalgic” cling. Instead, humanitarian aid was explicitly absorbed into the mission of the war on terror, causing a confusion between the military and nonmilitary Western presence on the ground that has had lasting consequences on the ability of aid workers to fulfill their basic functions.
Peter Gill wrote about this state of affairs a decade ago, in “Today We Drop Bombs, Tomorrow We Build Bridges.” He documented how the invasion of Afghanistan brought the idea of an “integrated mission” to win hearts and minds: First, you establish a presence through military action, and then you create conditions for the society to flourish through development work. This caused a conflation that was deadly for aid workers. Having a red cross painted on your vehicle used to be a protection in a war zone, but “today the Red Cross is more like the crosshairs,” one worker told Gill. This conflation between military and humanitarian actors helped pave the way for other actors to target aid workers; when Russia bombed a U.N. aid convoy in Syria, it claimed the aid workers could have been “terrorists,” and Israel has frequently deployed this type of excuse for their established practices in Palestine. The language of the war on terror offered ready-made excuses to governments around the world as they claimed that clearly marked aid workers might be legitimate targets, part of a military mission, combatants in disguise.
Further pressure on humanitarian aid workers came from laws concerned with material support for terrorism, with the burden of proof falling on the aid agencies. They had to somehow ensure, and prove, that not a single piece of bread they provided to a population would be eaten by someone in an organization on America’s terrorism list. This undermines the very premise the Red Cross and other charities rest on: that humanitarian aid should be provided according to need, irrespective of affiliation. It is impossible to prove such a thing, and so assistance has turned into something far more partisan and harder for the most vulnerable to access. Even the U.N. could not fully withstand the pressure to operate within the sovereign and international definitions of who does and does not deserve help, as in Syria, where access was controlled by the Assad regime, while the Islamic State and al Qaeda, both proscribed organizations, were operating in large areas that U.N. agencies could not enter. Humanitarian aid is another victim of the war on terror, precisely because the idea of neutrality has been compromised.
Despite increasing agreement from journalists, development workers, extremism researchers and CVE policymakers that the word terrorism should be avoided when crafting analysis and response, it has not gone away. Just a few weeks ago, the Trump administration announced that it was targeting an Italian internet platform with terror sanctions, the latest move in trying to curtail what Trump has called “left-wing terrorism.” The accusation, as with humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, is that the platform is providing support for terrorists by hosting left-wing groups. Antifa, short for “antifascist,” is the ultimate target; Trump claims it is a group despite no evidence of leadership, structure, protocols or any other feature of an organization.
The fact that this argument is being extended to those providing web-hosting services goes beyond the logic of even the Islamic State years, when the tech industry came together to try and combat the group’s messaging, forming the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). According to its website, GIFCT “brings together the technology industry, government, civil society, and academia to foster collaboration and information-sharing to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online.” Smaller hosts like justpaste.it, a site which did not have the resources to find and deplatform those posting extremist material (including, extensively, by the Islamic State), were given support by the bigger tech companies, from Google to Facebook — and never criminalized.
But of course Trump’s use of the terrorism list isn’t about stopping terrorism. He has weaponized the word and the legal tools at his disposal as surely as when the Chinese government labels its Uyghur population, or when members of the Israeli government deem all Palestinians terrorists, or when Russians did the same to Chechens, or when former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad accused those protesting against him.
Antifa was the subject of an executive order signed by Trump almost a year ago, which, despite not being legally binding, has already been used in courtrooms to prosecute people protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics, some of whom, as in the Prairieland case, were given decades-long sentences for nonviolent actions. One was given a 30-year sentence for moving boxes of printed material out of his home, a sentence far longer than any served by those convicted for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Although the latter involved actual violence against the state, its perpetrators were pardoned by Trump on the first day of his second term. The difference in treatment of antifa and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists shows only too clearly that the term terrorist is not neutral, and that it is being wielded as a political weapon, albeit using existing laws devised in the wake of 9/11.
Trump has also threatened sanctions against the British group Palestine Action. This is a direct-action group, dedicated to disrupting the supply of weapons to Israel, and was placed on the U.K. terrorism list in July 2025. Protesters, many of them pensioners, came out to support the group’s work, and were also arrested in their thousands for supporting a terrorist organization. As a result, the typical profile of a terrorist in the U.K. is a woman aged 59, whose crime was silently holding a placard. This symbolizes, more than anything, how meaningless the word has become, making a mockery of the whole attempt to prevent another 9/11 from happening. If we can call protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza or violent immigration enforcement tactics terrorism, how can we hope to devise policy?
The trial of six Palestine Action members, the so-called Filton Six, resulted in four being found guilty of criminal damage; they were subsequently sentenced as terrorists, a fact kept from the jury. Two were acquitted, and one of these two, Joey Hinchcliffe, told me that they were proud of the label, given what it means in this case: saving lives in Gaza. The courts will be clogged for years to come with the thousands who feel the same. But this debacle is not changing the U.K. government’s approach, and now Trump has waded into the controversy with his sanctions on the group. This is clearly not about stopping a 59-year-old woman holding a sign from attacking America; this is a carefully crafted message to those with certain political positions — namely pro-Palestinian and left-wing — that they will be pursued.
At the heart of the matter is the fact that the press guidelines are, in fact, correct. The lack of neutrality in the term “terrorist” has real, significant consequences for people’s lives all around the world, and the best solution would be to move away from such framing entirely. But with the current reliance of governments from China to the U.S. on this language, and the extensive legislation already baked into international systems, this seems unlikely to happen. What this means is not only that the problems for communities suspected of harboring terrorists will persist, but that we will be less able to face the real threats of violence — which is supposed to be the point of anti-terror actions. After 25 years, the war on terror has worsened the conditions for combating such threats, from the erosion of humanitarian ideals to the weaponization of laws by politicians, and even a war on words.
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