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New York prosecutors have charged Luigi Mangione with “murder as an act of terrorism” in his alleged shooting of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month.

This news comes out at the same time as a Haaretz report titled “‘No Civilians. Everyone’s a Terrorist’: IDF Soldiers Expose Arbitrary Killings and Rampant Lawlessness in Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor.” The report contains testimony from Israeli troops that civilians are being murdered in Gaza and are then being retroactively designated as terrorists to justify their execution.

“We’re killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists,” a recently discharged officer told Haaretz.

These two stories together say so much about the way the label “terrorist” is used under the US-centralized power umbrella.

The guy who shot the health insurance CEO is a terrorist, but the people systematically slaughtering civilians in Gaza are not terrorists. The people fighting against those who are slaughtering the civilians are terrorists, and noncombatants are being categorized as belonging to this terrorist organization in order to justify killing them. The al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria were terrorists, but now they’re a US puppet regime so soon they won’t be terrorists — but they need to be designated terrorists for a little while longer because the claim that Syria is crawling with terrorists is Israel’s justification for its recent land grabs there. The Uyghur militant group ETIM used to be a terrorist group, but now they’re not a terrorist group because they can be used to help carve up Syria and maybe fight China later on. The IRGC is a military wing of a sovereign nation, but it counts as a terrorist group because of vibes or something.

Is that clear enough?

Really the label “terrorist” is nothing more than a tool of imperial narrative control which gets moved around based on whether or not someone’s use of violence is deemed legitimate by the managers of the empire. Because Mangione’s alleged crime has ignited a public interest in class warfare, the label “terrorism” is being used to frame it as an especially heinous act of evil against an innocent member of the public.

The empire’s favorite trick is to begin the historical record at the moment its enemies retaliate against its abuses. Oh no, a health insurance CEO was victimized by an evil act of terrorism. Oh no, Israel was just innocently minding its own business when it was viciously attacked by Hamas. Oh no, Iran attacked Israel completely out of the blue and now Israel must retaliate. Oh no, Russia just launched an entirely unprovoked war on Ukraine.

Everything that led up to the unauthorized act of violence is erased from the record, because all of the violence, provocation and abuse which gave rise to the unauthorized act of violence were authorized by the empire. Authorized aggression doesn’t count as aggression.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. If you control the narrative you can control not only when the historical record of violence begins but what kinds of violence qualify as violence. Killing people by depriving them of healthcare because denying healthcare services is how your company increases its profit margins? That’s not violence. Inflicting tyranny and abuse upon a deliberately marginalized ethnic group in an apartheid state? That’s not violence. Violence is when you respond to those forceful aggressions with forceful aggressions of your own.

If we are to become a healthy society, we’re going to have to stop allowing some forms of violence, aggression and abuse to be redacted from the official records while others are listed and condemned. Those who care about truth and justice account for all forms of violence, aggression and abuse, not only those which inconvenience the rich and powerful.

It is an act of aggression to do things which sicken and impoverish others in order to advance your own wealth.

It is an act of aggression to pollute the biosphere we all depend on for survival in order to increase your profit margins.

It is an act of aggression to use your wealth to manipulate your nation’s politics in ways which exacerbate inequality and injustice.

It is an act of aggression to maintain an apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence.

It is an act of aggression to surround the earth with military bases and encircle nations which disobey your dictates.

It is an act of aggression to try to rule the world using military violence, proxy conflicts, staged coups, threats, starvation sanctions, and financial and economic coercion.

These are all acts of aggression, and any retaliation against them will never be an unprovoked attack. As we move into the future while these abuses exacerbate, it’s going to become very important to maintain an acute awareness of this.

Original article: Caitlin Johnstone