Caitlin Johnstone
The US has removed Syria’s Al
Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days
after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list
of banned terrorist groups.
The western empire will surely
find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its “terrorism”
designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will
manage to do so.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the
following:
“Secretary
of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday that the Trump administration is
revoking the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation for Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that took power in Damascus in December
2024.
“HTS
started as the al-Nusra Front, which was the official al-Qaeda affiliate in
Syria until the group’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is now Syria’s de facto
president, rebranded. In 2016, Sharaa, who was known at the time as Abu
Mohammad al-Jolani, announced he was disassociating from al-Qaeda, and thanked
the ‘commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.’
“Sharaa
renamed his group HTS in 2017 and ruled Syria’s northwestern Idlib province
until he led the offensive that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
at the end of last year. The US has embraced the new Syrian leader despite his
al-Qaeda past, which included fighting against US troops in Iraq.”
This move comes as Sharaa holds
friendly meetings with US and UK officials and holds normalization talks with
Israel, showing that all one has to do to cease being a “terrorist” in the eyes
of the empire is to start aligning with the empire’s interests.
So that was on Monday. The
Saturday prior, the group Palestine Action was added to the UK’s list of
proscribed terrorist groups under the Terrorism Act of 2000, making involvement
with the group as aggressively punishable as involvement with ISIS.
The “terrorism” in question?
Spraying red paint on two British war planes in protest against the UK’s
support for the Gaza holocaust. A minor act of vandalism gets placed in the
same category as mass murdering civilians with a car bomb when the vandalism is
directed at the imperial war machine in opposition to the empire’s genocidal
atrocities.
Even expressions of support for
Palestine Action are now illegal under British law, leading to numerous arrests
over the weekend as activists expressed solidarity with the organization. Pink
Floyd’s Roger Waters, who is British, has been formally reported to UK
counterterrorism police by UK Lawyers for Israel following the musician’s
public statement saying “I support Palestine Action. It’s a great organisation.
They are non-violent. They are absolutely not terrorist in any way.”
So let’s recap.
Nonviolent protest against a
genocide that’s being backed by the western empire: Terrorism. Banned. Nobody’s
allowed to support this.
Being actual, literal Al Qaeda
but aligning with the interests of the western empire: Not terrorism. Okie
dokie. This is fine.
These hypocrisies and
contradictions of the empire are worth drawing attention to because they
clearly show that the empire does not stand where it claims to stand. For
decades we’ve been told that western military explosives are falling from the
sky in the middle east and Africa because there are terrorists there who need
to be stopped, but it turns out “terrorism” is just a meaningless label that
means whatever the empire needs it to mean at a given time and place.
Iran’s IRGC is labeled a
terrorist group because the Iranian military is not aligned with the US empire.
Israel’s IDF is not labeled a terrorist group despite its constant use of
violence upon civilian populations in order to advance political goals. Palestine
Action is labeled a terrorist group because it opposes the empire’s genocidal
atrocities. Al Qaeda in Syria is no longer a terrorist group because it’s
making nice with Israel and doing what the empire wants.
“Terrorist” just means “anyone
who inconveniences the empire in any way.” It really is that simple.
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