Racism by Designation: Making Sense of Western States’ Nondesignation of White Supremacists as Terrorists

Abstract

How can we make sense of Western states’ nondesignation of white supremacists as terrorists compared to other actors engaged in similar political violence? This article offers three arguments and supports them with rich case studies of designation in the United States and the United Kingdom. First, the racially disparate impact of designations can be understood as a form of institutional racism. Second, within the Western racial order, Arabs/Muslims are stereotypically seen as terrorists, whereas whites benefit from the presumption of not being terrorists. The result is a racial double standard at the core of the norm against terrorism, such that white supremacists are disproportionately less likely to be designated as terrorists than other groups. Third, we caution against viewing the few recent white supremacist designations as transformative and overestimating their ability to deracialize counterterrorism.

Acknowledgments

We thank Austin Carson, Andrew Leber, Rich Maass, Bob Pape, Rochelle Terman, Diana Wueger, all the participants of the University of Chicago workshop, the Security Studies editorial team (especially Ron R. Krebs and Jennifer L. Erickson), and the anonymous reviewers.

Data Availability Statement

The data and materials that support the findings of this study are available in the Security Studies Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FEAZTU.

Notes

1 Nathan A. Sales, “Designation of the Russian Imperial Movement,” press release, US State Department, 6 April 2020, https://2017-2021.state.gov/designation-of-the-russian-imperial-movement/index.html.

2 US State Department, “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” https://bit.ly/3mgeB9G; US State Department, “Individuals and Entities Designated by the State Department under E.O. 13224,” https://bit.ly/39fGWJq; US State Department, “Terrorist Exclusion List,” https://bit.ly/3fB1nBP.

3 Home Office of the United Kingdom, “Proscribed Terrorist Groups or Organisations,” last updated 26 November 2021, https://bit.ly/36b7DP; Australian National Security, “Listed Terrorist Organisations,” https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/what-australia-is-doing/terrorist-organisations/listed-terrorist-organisations.

4 Vito D’Orazio and Idean Salehyan, “Who Is a Terrorist? Ethnicity, Group Affiliation, and Understandings of Political Violence,” International Interactions 44, no. 6 (2018): 1017–39; Connor Huff and Joshua D. Kertzer, “How the Public Defines Terrorism,” American Journal of Political Science 62, no. 1 (January 2018): 56; Lee Jarvis and Tim Legrand, “The Proscription or Listing of Terrorist Organisations: Understanding, Assessment, and International Comparisons,” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 2 (2018): 199–215.

5 Sandra Fredman, Discrimination Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 177–80; Mark Bell, Racism and Equality in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), chap. 2.

6 Christopher Hemmer and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective Identity, Regionalism, and the Origins of Multilateralism,” International Organization 56, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 575–607; Zoltán I. Búzás, “The Color of Threat: Race, Threat Perception, and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–1923),” Security Studies 22, no. 4 (October–December 2013): 573–606; Gerald Horne, Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2004).

7 See, for example, Louise Cainkar and Saher Selod, “Review of Race Scholarship and the War on Terror,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 4, no. 2 (April 2018): 165–77.

8 On the lack of work on white supremacist terrorism, see Pete Simi, “Why Study White Supremacist Terror? A Research Note,” Deviant Behavior 31, no. 3 (2010): 251–73. On racism and counterterrorism, see Amal Abu-Bakare, “Counterterrorism and Race,” International Politics Reviews 8, no. 1 (June 2020): 79–99.

9 Atiya Husain, “Deracialization, Dissent, and Terrorism in the FBI’s Most Wanted Program,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 7, no. 2 (April 2021): 208–25; Cainkar and Selod, “Review of Race Scholarship”; Aaron Winter, “The Klan Is History: A Historical Perspective on the Revival of the Far-Right in ‘Post-Racial’ America,” in Historical Perspectives on Organized Crime and Terrorism, ed. James Windle et al. (New York: Routledge, 2018), 109–32; Tarek Younis and Sushrut Jadhav, “Islamophobia in the National Health Service: An Ethnography of Institutional Racism in PREVENT’s Counter-Radicalisation Policy,” Sociology of Health & Illness 42, no. 3 (March 2020): 610–26.

10 Seth Loertscher et al., The Terrorist Lists: An Examination of the U.S. Government’s Counterterrorism Designation Efforts (West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point 2020), https://bit.ly/33yNyie.

11 Lee Jarvis and Tim Legrand, Banning Them, Securing Us? Terrorism, Parliament and the Ritual of Proscription (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020); Sophie Haspeslagh, Proscribing Peace: How Listing Armed Groups as Terrorists Hurts Negotiations (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2021).

12 Hyeran Jo, Brian J. Phillips, and Joshua Alley, “Can Blacklisting Reduce Terrorist Attacks? The Case of the US Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) List” in The Power of Global Performance Indicators, ed. Judith G. Kelley and Beth A. Simmons (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 271–99; Brian J. Phillips, “Foreign Terrorist Organization Designation, International Cooperation, and Terrorism,” International Interactions 45, no. 2 (2019): 316–43.

13 For exceptions, see Colin J. Beck and Emily Miner, “Who Gets Designated a Terrorist and Why?” Social Forces 91, no. 3 (March 2013): 837–72; Lee Jarvis and Tim Legrand, “Legislating for Otherness: Proscription Powers and Parliamentary Discourse,” Review of International Studies 42, no. 3 (July 2016): 558–74; Chia-yi Lee and Yasutaka Tominaga, “The Determinants of Terrorist Listing,” Journal of Conflict Resolution (27 March 2023), https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027231164924.

14 Anna A. Meier, “The Idea of Terror: Institutional Reproduction in Government Responses to Political Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 64, no. 3 (September 2020): 500.

15 On using the terms “far-right” and “white supremacist” interchangeably, see Kathleen M. Blee and Kimberly A. Creasap, “Conservative and Right-Wing Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 269–86.

16 Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

17 US designations include those of organizations under the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list and Executive Order 13244, in order to encompass the United States’ one white supremacist designation and offer the most generous interpretation possible of US designations. We do not include media arms of the Islamic State listed as separate entities. Other countries in the table do not have multiple designation mechanisms. For data sources, see the online appendix at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FEAZTU.

18 Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, “Rechtsextremismus: Symbole, Zeichen und verbotene Organisationen” [Right-Wing Extremism: Symbols, Signs, and Banned Organizations] (February 2022); Michael Zeller and Michael Vaughan, “Proscribed Right-Wing Extremist Organisations,” Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (2021).

19 Mirna El Masri and Brian J. Phillips, “Threat Perception, Policy Diffusion, and the Logic of Terrorist Group Designation,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (13 December 2021): 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2021.2011711.

20 Winston Chou, “Seen Like a State: How Illegitimacy Shapes Terrorism Designation,” Social Forces 94, no. 3 (March 2016): 1129–52.

21 Jarvis and Legrand, Banning Them, Securing Us.

22 Bart Schuurman et al., “End of the Lone Wolf: The Typology That Should Not Have Been,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 42, no. 8 (August 2019): 771–78.

23 Sarah G. Phillips, “Making al-Qa’ida Legible: Counter-Terrorism and the Reproduction of Terrorism,” European Journal of International Relations 25, no. 4 (December 2019): 1132–56; Jarvis and Legrand, Banning Them, Securing Us.

24 Atomwaffen Division reconstituted itself under the name “National Socialist Order” in July 2020.

25 Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver, and Traci R. Burch, Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

26 Although there are references to a “norm against terrorism” among policymakers and academics, we are not aware of sustained analyses of it in mainstream security studies. See references to such a norm in Peter J. Katzenstein, Rethinking Japanese Security: Internal and External Dimensions (London: Routledge, 2008), chap. 7; Virginia Page Fortna, Nicholas J. Lotito, and Michael A. Rubin, “Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds: Rebel Funding Sources and the Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars,” International Studies Quarterly 62, no. 4 (December 2018): 782–94.

27 Lisa Stampnitzky, “Can Terrorism Be Defined?” in Constructions of Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy, ed. Michael Stohl, Richard Burchill, and Scott Englund (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 11–20.

28 For reviews of the definitional debate, see Brian J. Phillips, “What Is a Terrorist Group? Conceptual Issues and Empirical Implications,” Terrorism and Political Violence 27, no. 2 (2015): 225–42; Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), chap. 1.

29 Possible racialization of terrorists outside the West is beyond the scope of this article.

30 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 111; see also Karim Murji and John Solomos, eds., Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

31 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley, “Public Perceptions of Race and Crime: The Role of Racial Stereotypes,” American Journal of Political Science 41, no. 2 (April 1997): 375–401.

32 Steve Garner and Saher Selod, “The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia,” Critical Sociology 14, no. 1 (January 2015): 9–19.

33 John Sides and Kimberly Gross, “Stereotypes of Muslims and Support for the War on Terror,” Journal of Politics 75, no. 3 (July 2013): 583–98.

34 Sanjay Sharma and Jasbinder Nijjar, “The Racialized Surveillant Assemblage: Islam and the Fear of Terrorism,” Popular Communication 16, no. 1 (2018): 72–85.

35 Clark Kent Ervin, “Stereotyping Terrorists: The Usual Suspects,” International Herald Tribune, 27 June 2006, 1.

36 D’Orazio and Salehyan, “Who Is a Terrorist?,” 1021.

37 On the racialized understanding of terrorists generally, see Sharma and Nijjar, “Racialized Surveillant Assemblage”; Ervin, “Stereotyping Terrorists”; Abu-Bakare, “Counterterrorism and Race”; Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror (New York: Verso, 2014); Erin M. Kearns, Allison E. Betus, and Anthony F. Lemieux, “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention than Others?” Justice Quarterly 36, no. 6 (October 2019): 985–1022; Nikhil Pal Singh, Race and America’s Long War (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019).

38 Minoritized groups can also internalize the stereotypes of white majorities, biasing their perceptions in similar ways.

39 Cainkar and Selod, “Review of Race Scholarship.”

40 D’Orazio and Salehyan, “Who Is a Terrorist?”; Sides and Gross, “Stereotypes of Muslims and Support for the War on Terror.”

41 Richard Price, “A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo,” International Organization 49, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 96; Tanisha M. Fazal and Brooke C. Greene, “A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting,” British Journal of Political Science 45, no. 4 (October 2015): 829–51.

42 Beck and Miner, “Who Gets Designated a Terrorist and Why?,” 842.

43 Nina Tannenwald, “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-use,” International Organization 53, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 435.

44 Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

45 Zoltán I. Búzás, “Racial Ideologies in World Politics,” in Jonathan Leader Maynard and Mark L. Haas, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2023), 233–48.

46 Ashley Jardina, White Identity Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

47 Michael Newell, “Comparing American Perceptions of Post–Civil War Ku Klux Klan and Transnational Violence,” Security Dialogue 51, no. 4 (August 2020): 287–304.

48 Jarvis and Legrand, “Proscription or Listing of Terrorist Organisations.”

49 The norm against racism can be aimed both against the racial exception in the norm against terrorism and more generally against white supremacist ideology in national security institutions, but our immediate focus is on the former. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this distinction.

50 The United States has designated 72 organizations as FTOs, over 100 organizations (and numerous individuals) under Executive Order 13224 as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” 56 under Section 411 of the Patriot Act’s “Terrorist Exclusion List,” and an unknown number via individual rulings in immigration courts as “Tier III terrorist organizations.” These numbers are imperfect estimates because an organization may be designated under multiple mechanisms, and some of these designations involve the same organization using different names.

51 Accurate as of February 2022. For data sources and coding decisions, see the online appendix.

52 Confronting White Supremacy (Part 1): The Consequences of Inaction, Before the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, 116th Cong. (15 May 2019), https://bit.ly/36MbyPS.

53 “4 First Steps for Congress to Address White Supremacist Terrorism,” Center for American Progress, 30 October 2020, https://ampr.gs/332ZlVR; “Confronting the Rise in Anti-Semitic Domestic Terrorism,” House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism, 15 January 2020, https://www.congress.gov/event/116th-congress/house-event/LC65383/text?s=1&r=6; Jon Lewis et al., White Supremacist Terror: Modernizing Our Approach to Today’s Threat, joint report (Washington, DC, and New York: GW Program on Extremism and the Anti-Defamation League, April 2020), https://bit.ly/3nGv3Qy.

54 A copy of the letter is available at http://dearcolleague.us/2019/10/last-call-combat-white-supremacy/.

55 The Program on Extremism’s report mentioned the RIM, but as it was released in the same month that RIM was designated and designation takes at least a year, it is implausible that it had any effect on the State Department’s work.

56 Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who chairs the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in April 2021 urging the designation of over a dozen overseas white supremacist organizations. A copy of the letter is available at https://bit.ly/3BBAIPg.

57 Tim Legrand, “‘More Symbolic—More Political—Than Substantive’: An Interview with James R. Clapper on the U.S. Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, no. 2 (2018): 356–72.

58 Cong. Rec. S6364–6365 (13 June 2005); New York Times Editorial Board, “Lynching as Racial Terrorism,” New York Times, 11 February 2015; Marouf A. Hasian Jr. and Nicholas S. Paliewicz, Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2021).

59 David Scott FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

60 Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1424 § 313 (1965). Since amended, the INA continues to deny immigration to anyone who has been an active member of a communist party in the past ten years.

61 Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Richard Seymour, “The Cold War, American Anticommunism and the Global ‘Colour Line,’” in Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line, ed. Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda, and Robbie Shilliam (New York: Routledge, 2015), 157–74.

62 Cited in Matthew Jones, After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 292.

63 Cheris Brewer Current, “Normalizing Cuban Refugees: Representations of Whiteness and Anti-communism in the USA during the Cold War,” Ethnicities 8, no. 1 (March 2008): 42–66; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).

64 Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

65 For a general discussion of insurgency and terrorism focused on apartheid South Africa, see Paul Rich, “Insurgency, Terrorism and the Apartheid System in South Africa,” Political Studies 32, no. 1 (March 1984): 68–85.

66 Olivia B. Waxman, “The U.S. Government Had Nelson Mandela on Terrorist Watch List until 2008. Here’s Why,” Time, 18 July 2018.

67 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, FY 1992 and 1993, P. L. No. 102-138, §212(a)(b)(i).

68 Indeed, the identification of “terrorist” with “racialized Muslim” had already occurred by this point. As multiple former intelligence officials stated in interviews with one of us in 2019, “terrorism” in the 1990s meant al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Palestinian liberation groups, along with “maybe one person” at the National Counterterrorism Center working on the Irish Republican Army.

69 Terrorism in America: A Comprehensive Review of the Threat, Policy, and Law, Hearings Before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 103rd Cong. (21–22 April 1993).

70 The Oklahoma Commission on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre estimated as many as 300 killed, which, if true, would surpass Oklahoma City’s death toll of 168. See Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, “Final Report” (28 February 2001).

71 US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Government Information, “Counterterrorism Legislation,” 4 May 1995.

72 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, P. L. 104-132 (1996), Titles III and IV.

73 Nathan A. Sales, “Briefing on the United States Designation of the Russian Imperial Movement and Its Leaders as Global Terrorists,” 6 April 2020, https://2017-2021.state.gov/briefing-with-coordinator-for-counterterrorism-ambassador-nathan-a-sales-on-the-united-states-designation-of-the-russian-imperial-movement-and-its-leaders-as-global-terrorists/index.html.

74 Accurate as of February 2022. For data sources and coding decisions, see the online appendix.

75 Natasha Bertrand, Nahal Toosi, and Daniel Lippman, “State Pushes to List White Supremacist Group as Terrorist Org,” Politico, 9 March 2020, https://politi.co/397KxJx.

76 Individuals who attended a RIM paramilitary training camp were later charged with planning to bomb housing for asylum-seekers in Sweden. There is no evidence that these individuals were either members of or directed by RIM in their plans. See Josephine Huetlin, “Russian Extremists Are Training Right-Wing Terrorists from Western Europe,” Daily Beast, 2 August 2017, https://bit.ly/33cWDgz.

77 Accurate as of February 2022. For data sources and coding decisions, see the online appendix.

78 Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, 8 U.S.C. § 1189.

79 Interview with former official, July 2020.

80 Not including splinter groups or affiliates of already-designated organizations.

81 Geoffrey Bennett, “Legislative Responses to Terrorism: A View from Britain,” Penn State Law Review 109, no. 4 (2005): 947–66.

82 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 § 33, repealed by the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.

83 Tahir Abbas, “British South Asian Muslims: Before and after September 11,” in Muslim Britain: Communities under Pressure, ed. Abbas (London: Zed Books, 2005), 3–17.

84 Frederick Cooper, “Mau Mau and the Discourses of Decolonization,” Journal of African History 29, no. 2 (July 1988): 313–20.

85 Joseph McQuade, A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 18.

86 Laleh Khalili, Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).

87 McQuade, Genealogy of Terrorism.

88 R. M. Douglas, “Anglo-Saxons and Attacotti: The Racialization of Irishness in Britain between the World Wars,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 25, no. 1 (January 2002): 40–63; Mary J. Hickman and Louise Ryan, “The ‘Irish Question’: Marginalizations at the Nexus of Sociology of Migration and Ethnic and Racial Studies in Britain,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 43, no. 16 (December 2020): 96–114.

89 Jarvis and Legrand, “Legislating for Otherness.”

90 Alan Simpson, Parl. Deb. 437 H.C. (13 October 2005) col. 476, quoted in Jarvis and Legrand, “Legislating for Otherness.”

91 Tina G. Patel, “It’s Not about Security, It’s about Racism: Counter-Terror Strategies, Civilizing Processes and the Post-Race Fiction,” Palgrave Communications 3 (2 May 2017): article no. 17031; Leda Blackwood, Nick Hopkins, and Stephen Reicher, “From Theorizing Radicalization to Surveillance Practices: Muslims in the Cross Hairs of Scrutiny,” Political Psychology 37, no. 5 (October 2016): 597–612.

92 Younis and Jadhav, “Islamophobia in the National Health Service.”

93 “UK’s Labour Questions Motive behind Hezbollah Ban,” Times of Israel, 26 February 2019, https://bit.ly/3l9ioEb.

94 Graham Macklin, “‘Only Bullets Will Stop Us!’: The Banning of National Action in Britain,” Perspectives on Terrorism 12, no. 6 (December 2018): 104–22.

95 “National Action Becomes First Extreme Right-Wing Group to Be Banned in UK,” press release, Home Office of the United Kingdom, 16 December 2016, https://bit.ly/2KIiLZZ.

96 Ian Cobain, Nazia Parveen, and Matthew Taylor, “The Slow-Burning Hatred That Led Thomas Mair to Murder Jo Cox,” Guardian, 23 November 2016, https://bit.ly/2JaIycD.

97 Lizzie Dearden, “What Is a Terror Attack? Question Raised as People Compare Leytonstone Stabbing and Tesco ‘White Power’ Attack,” Independent, 7 December 2015, https://bit.ly/3646APo.

98 Recent press coverage and public interest in terrorist proscriptions in white-majority countries are historical anomalies: traditionally, proscriptions receive little if any media attention and proceed as a routine bureaucratic process.

99 Helen Pidd and Frances Perraudin, “Female MP Received Death Threats for Calling for Ban on Britain First,” Guardian, 15 December 2016, https://bit.ly/3l4kLrP.

100 David Lidington, Parl. Deb. 617 H.C. (24 November 2016) col. 1308.

101 Public legislator opposition to terrorist designations is rare, if not unheard of, in the UK.

102 Baroness Hamwee, Parl. Deb. 777 H.L. (15 December 2016) col. 1446.

103 The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation is an official position appointed by the Home Secretary and Treasury to review the operation of UK counterterrorism law. For a prototypical example of prior concern about time-delimited proscription orders, see the exchange between Keith Vaz and James Brokenshire during the debate on the proscription of Boko Haram and Ansar al-Sharia UK, Parl. Deb. 566 H.C. (10 July 2013) col. 458. For support of time limits in the case of NA, see Keith Vaz, Parl. Deb. 618 H.C. (14 December 2016) col. 916.

104 Jamie Grierson, “UK to Ban Neo-Nazi Sonnenkrieg Division as a Terrorist Group,” Guardian, 24 February 2020, https://bit.ly/3q3FAaw.

105 Daniel De Simone, “Neo-Nazi Group Led by 13-Year-Old Boy to Be Banned,” BBC News, 13 July 2020, https://bbc.in/3fxwQVs; Lizzie Dearden, “Atomwaffen Division: UK Government Accused of ‘Dithering’ over Ban of Neo-Nazi Terrorist Group,” Independent, 21 April 2021, https://bit.ly/3xjS3dK.

106 Lizzie Dearden, “Far-Right Group Britain First Allowed to Register as Political Party by Electoral Commission,” Independent, 28 September 2021, https://bit.ly/3wq47dJ. Britain First was automatically deregistered in 2017 for failing to renew its registration by the deadline.

107 Spencer Ackerman, “The Last Thing We Need Is Another War on Terror,” Daily Beast, 13 January 2021, https://bit.ly/3wnY49i; Meier, “Idea of Terror,” 506.

108 Joe Soss and Vesla Weaver, “Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race–Class Subjugated Communities,” Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017): 565–91.

109 Anna A. Meier, “Terror as Justice, Justice as Terror: Counterterrorism and Anti-Black Racism in the United States,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 15, no. 1 (March 2022): 83–101.

110 Husain, “Deracialization, Dissent, and Terrorism.”

111 Louise Seamster and Victor Ray, “Against Teleology in the Study of Race: Toward the Abolition of the Progress Paradigm,” Sociological Theory 36, no. 4 (December 2018): 315–42.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zoltán I. Búzás

Zoltán I. Búzás is an associate professor at the Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame.

Anna A. Meier

Anna A. Meier is an assistant professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham.