Neil Macdonald's 'How The Word Terrorism' Lost Its Meaning

In his article, How the word ‘terrorism’ lost its meaning, Neil MacDonald criticizes the subjective usage of the definition of terrorism by politicians to target their enemies and appeal to their agendas. This subjectivity in attributing terrorism to certain violent acts makes the author claim that the notion of terrorism was manipulated thus lost its true meaning.

The author started with mentioning Trump’s comments on the Paris incident. By using this example, the author shows his first critics of how the notion of terrorism is being manipulated to serve certain agendas. He continues, criticizing Trump and how he subjectively attributes terrorism to certain acts based on ethnicity and religion. By enumerating other examples the author underscores the double standards in the political usage of terrorism. He assumes that terrorism is a tool in the hands of politicians to target what they consider as enemies and avoid using it for other certain acts that they just describe as marginal. This tool supposedly reinforces the security of an

In other words, the definition of terrorism, in theory, is different from what’s being demonstrated in reality. Many crimes would be qualified as terrorist if the definition is fully applied. Some groups are categorized as terrorists while others are not. The author explains this irregularity by what the political objectives are. This irregularity does not mean arbitrariness but it means bias instead. Therefore, the author leads us to another assumption, which is the absence of a clear, definite, and accurate definition of terrorism that we cannot purposely misinterpret or subjectively use. That’s why he implicitly suggests the need of another definition that would limit the power of the political and how it instrumentalizes this existing definition. The political, hence, is portrayed as subjective and