As the definition of “terrorist” expands, so does state violence

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

The Trump administration has called more and more groups “terrorists,” from “narco-terrorists” in Ecuador to people who protest ICE to the entire Democratic party. But it’s also nothing new. We talk to Saher Selod, expert on the racialized surveillance of Muslims about the effects of the war on terrorism after 9/11, and historian Alex Lubin about how even since colonial settlers were fighting Indigenous people to establish frontier towns, the word “terrorist” has been used by the state to enact violence and surveillance against whoever they want.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone. You're listening to Code Switch. I'm B.A. Parker.
0:04.2	And I'm Gene Demby.
0:06.7	Gene, have you been reading about how the Trump administration has deemed a lot of left-leaning activism as terrorism?
0:15.2	Yeah, the Trump administration designated Antifa, a terrorist group. And of course, Antifa is not even a formal organization.
0:22.5	It's a decentralized movement.
0:24.1	But now Trump has lumped the protest against ICE and the No Kings protests and campus
0:29.2	protests we saw around Israel and Gaza into this big mass with Antifa.
0:33.7	He just said they were all terrorists.
0:37.1	I mean, the Trump administration called
0:38.2	Alex Pretti and Renee Good terrorists. Of course, those are the people who were shot and killed by
0:42.8	ICE officers in Minneapolis earlier this year. Yeah, and I mean, a lot of groups are being labeled
0:49.0	terrorists under the current administration, whether it's narco-terrorists in Ecuador, or even recently, more broadly, the entire Democratic Party.
0:59.6	Wait, I missed the Democratic Party part of this, but I guess that was maybe inevitable.
1:04.6	But it's been wild to watch how this label terrorist has expanded over the last couple decades since the birth of the Department of Homeland Security after 9-11.
1:13.4	Right. And in the two decades since the DHS was created, people suspected of being terrorists were often assumed to be Muslim in some way.
1:22.7	So maybe ironically, the Trump administration wants us to have a more inclusive, expansive concept of terrorism, or at least enough, so that any liberal or left-leaning political actors that he doesn't like can get that label.
1:36.1	So, Gene, all of this made me wonder how the term terrorism has evolved over the past 25 years.
1:43.4	The word terrorist and terrorism is very prominent, but it's very ambiguous, not narrowly defined.
1:50.0	That's Sahir Salad. See, the Director of Research at the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding.
1:56.0	And as we see this real-time expansion of what is being deemed terrorism or who's being
2:02.6	deemed a terrorist, we wanted to break down those words and what they mean right now,
2:08.5	what they've historically meant, and what the risks are of having those terms be so ambiguous.
	...

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