Decolonialisation and the Terrorism Industry

Abstract

Decolonising academia has gained much traction in some global north and global south countries over the last few years, resulting in initiatives such as decolonising the curricula. However, the terrorism industry as a whole has so far escaped such calls. The industry has a long and deep relationship with global north countries, such as the US. The industry produces a range of surveillance and military technologies and knowledge on political violence. The knowledge is often used to develop counter-terrorism strategies that are used as part of global north democratising projects to ensure that global north neo-liberal, political and cultural ideals are the future for global south countries, making them manageable. Therefore, an important question needs to be posed, which is, can terrorism studies be decolonised? I believe that terrorism studies can be decolonised but only by developing decolonial terrorism studies. However, I am aware that some governments and terrorism scholars, institutions, NGOs and the military and tech industrial complex may be against this idea for prejudicial, political, economic and epistemic reasons. Others may favour “friendly” decolonization, as a way to maintain existing power structures, control and epistemic direction of terrorism studies.