Brazil’s Dangerous Flirtation with Counterterrorism
New measures to fight terrorism are practically guaranteed to erode democratic and procedural norms. Armed with a remit to eradicate terrorism, states have repeatedly shown that they exacerbate the very cycles of violence they aim to erase.
French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida identified the essence of this dilemma in 2003. In an interview reflecting on the 9/11 attacks on the US, Derrida said that the primary threat of terrorism was not just in the violence itself, but in how societies respond to it.
The US’s disastrous “war on terror”, for example, led to a consequential wave of violence worldwide. It is estimated to have killed over 500,000 civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And western countries that joined the fray have suffered jihadist attacks in return.
Governments also adopted new measures to deal with security issues inside their own countries. Potential terrorists were apprehended through surveillance, with the new goal of counterterrorism being to intervene before violence is able to occur.
States of emergency, which significantly curtail civil liberties, were routinely imposed in the aftermath of high-profile terrorist attacks. This included a state of emergency after the November 2015 attacks in Paris that gave the authorities power to search any premises without judicial oversight.
The implementation of this logic continues today. At the time of writing, denunciations of Israel’s assault on Gaza continue to be spuriously tied to support for “terrorism”.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. But that should not see Palestinian civilians – nor supporters of their rights – labelled as potential terrorists. Yet student protesters in the US have been threatened with deportation, financial ruin and even imprisonment.
The term “terrorism” contains within it a power to dress state repression as a proportionate response to emergency. In El Salvador, we have seen how counterterrorism is being applied as an emergency means to solve the country’s organized crime problem.
Nayib Bukele’s government has sent countless criminals to the Terrorism Confinement Centre mega-prison in Tecoluca. It has also condemned many innocent civilians to a parallel fate, with little-to-no chance of redress or due process.
The tragic consequences of state crackdowns against those spuriously labelled as “terrorists” lingers in the historical memory of Brazil. This new bill moves to the Senate at a time of renewed culturing reckoning with the consequences of Brazil’s repressive campaigns under the military dictatorship of 1964 to 1985.
Brazil should recognize its fortune in never having truly adopted the discourse of the war on terror. Now, it should not adopt an evolved discourse of counterterrorism to address the very serious – but very separate – problem of organized crime.
In the name of order and progress, and with an eye towards civilians who would ultimately pay the price, this bill cannot be allowed to become law.
James Fitzgerald is Associate Professor of Terrorism Studies, Dublin City University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
