Letters of Blood and Fire: “Terrorism”, Dispossession, and the Distorted Mirrorings of Domination
Letters of Blood and Fire: “Terrorism”, Dispossession, and the Distorted Mirrorings of Domination Posted on 28th December, 2025 (GMT 09:36 hrs) DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡ AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡ ABSTRACT This article critically dissects “terrorism” as a politically contested and asymmetrically applied category, wielded to delegitimize subaltern and non-state violence while normalizing far greater state and corporate terror through legal, discursive, and institutional mechanisms. Drawing on an anarchist methodological lens amid India’s contemporary Islamophobic conjuncture, it provisionally defines terrorism as deliberate civilian-targeted violence intended to induce widespread fear for political, ideological, or social ends, exposing how state practices—from aerial bombings to militarized dispossession—evade the label via sovereign privilege. Integrating Marx’s primitive accumulation, Harvey’s views on accumulation by dispossession, and Toussaint’s analysis of debt...