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Decolonizing Terrorism: The Culture-Centered Approach and the Mechanics of Settler Colonial Silencing


The Zionist Free Speech Union Board Member Dane Giraud appearing on the far-right media space The Platform

In an era where the language of "terrorism" is weaponized to maintain power imbalances, the CCA offers a powerful lens for understanding how settler colonial structures perpetuate violence.
It illuminates the ways in which settler colonial terror operates—not just through physical acts of dispossession and genocide, but through communicative strategies that label critical voices as "terror" itself. This communicative inversion lies at the heart of the global propaganda networks of Zionism.
This blog post explores this dynamic, drawing on the theoretical framework to show how such naming is integral to reproducing and perpetuating settler colonial terrorism.
Ultimately, it calls for culture-centered scholarship that decolonizes terrorism studies by centering the voices of the marginalized and naming the role of settler colonial terror in sustaining genocide, rape, violence, and erasure.The Culture-Centered Approach: Centering the Margins in ResistanceAt the heart of my scholarship with the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA), a meta-theoretical framework that prioritizes the voices and agency of communities at the "margins of the margins." Developed over decades of engaged research, CCA reorients communication studies toward justice by co-creating knowledge with colonized, Indigenous, and subaltern groups. It emphasizes building "voice infrastructures"—communicative spaces where silenced communities can articulate their experiences, challenge hegemonic narratives, and envision transformative futures.
Unlike dominant paradigms that extract knowledge from the margins to serve elite interests, CCA insists on embodied solidarity: academics must walk alongside communities, risking their privileges in acts of resistance against colonial-imperial-capitalist violence.
This approach is inherently decolonial, drawing from thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith to dismantle the epistemic violence of colonialism.
In the context of terrorism, CCA shifts the focus from individualized acts of "extremism" to structural roots, critiquing how terms like "terror" are deployed to erase the humanity of the colonized while justifying ongoing oppression.Settler Colonial Terror: A Structural Framework of Violence and ErasureSettler colonial terror is not an aberration but the foundational logic of systems like Zionism in Palestine, where land dispossession, occupation, and apartheid sustain inequality and suffering.
The CCA offers a conceptual register for describing this as a form of "state terror" that manifests in bombings of civilian populations, blockades causing famine and lack of medical aid, the demolition of homes and olive groves, and the imprisonment of children without trial.
In Gaza, for instance, this terror has resulted in the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians, the destruction of health infrastructures, and ecosystem devastation—all sponsored by imperial powers under the guise of a "war on terror."
Crucially, settler colonial terror extends beyond physical violence to epistemic and communicative realms.
It operates through racial hierarchies that dehumanize the colonized—portraying Palestinians as "primitive savages" or inherent "terror threats"—to legitimize genocide, rape, forced displacement, and cultural erasure. This ties into broader patterns of white supremacy and racial capitalism, where settler states like Israel align with global networks to accelerate extraction and control over Indigenous lands.Naming Critical Voices as Terror: The Communicative Inversion of PowerOne of the most insidious mechanisms of settler colonial terror is "communicative inversion"—the appropriation of anti-oppression language to defend and perpetuate domination.
My work unpacks how this inversion works by labeling critics of settler violence as "terror sympathizers" or "extremists," effectively silencing dissent and reproducing the very terror it claims to combat. For example, when I have expressed solidarity with Palestinian decolonizing resistance—framed as a structural response to occupation under international law—I am smeared as justifying "pogroms" or "celebrating rape and slaughter."
This tactic collapses anti-colonial critique into hatred, stripping historical and political context to criminalize inquiry.
Such naming is integral to perpetuating settler colonial terrorism.
By equating terms like "intifada" (a popular uprising, often nonviolent) with suicide bombings or mass murder, dominant narratives invert roles: the colonizer becomes the victim, and the colonized's resistance is pathologized as inherent extremism. This enables ongoing violence—genocide in Gaza, sexual violence as a weapon of war, and the erasure of Palestinian narratives—while mobilizing institutional pressures like doxxing, employer complaints, and threats to livelihoods.
The campaigns by Zionist networks I have witnessed, where my interrogation of Israeli state terror is recast as "antisemitic" or "terror-justifying," demonstrate how such attempts at silencing mobilize rape and murder threats, targeting my employer, and attempts at professional ruin.
This process is not accidental but systemic, aligning with Islamophobic discourses that fund and propagate racism to shield settler power. It forecloses solidarity across struggles, rendering alliances between Palestinian liberation, Māori sovereignty, and anti-caste movements as "illegal speech," while platforming white supremacist voices under the banner of "free speech." A Call for Culture-Centered Scholarship: Decolonizing Terrorism StudiesTo counter this, we must embrace culture-centered scholarship that fundamentally decolonizes terrorism studies.
This means naming settler colonial terror for what it is: the root cause of cycles of violence, genocide, rape, and erasure.
The CCA contributes by reorganizing knowledge production—rejecting U.S.-centric "war on terror" narratives and centering Global South theories of resistance. It builds voice infrastructures that amplify erased stories, such as those of Palestinian farmers resisting checkpoints or Indigenous communities reclaiming land, to dismantle epistemicide and foster relational care.
By examining settler colonial terror's role in perpetuating harm, the CCA transforms critical extremism studies. It exposes how labels of "terror" serve white supremacy and imperialism, advocating a politics of suspicion toward co-optive frameworks like DEI that mask hierarchies.
This decolonization fosters solidarities across borders, preparing communities to sustain radical organizing against attacks. In doing so, CCA not only critiques but enacts liberation, redefining terrorism studies as a tool for justice rather than domination.
As the work of the CCA in communities resisting colonial extraction reminds us, true academic freedom lies in standing with the silenced, interrogating power without fear. Let us commit to this culture-centered path, where decolonizing terrorism begins with naming the colonizer's terror—and ending it through collective voice.

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