Trump’s execution of drug dealers in the caribbean is being being justified under the term “narco terrorism”. The terrorist designation previously captured the idea of violance driven by political ideology. Drug dealers are not pushing a political idiology. And not all of them are even necessarily violent. They are filling a market demand for profit – and that earns them the term terrorism, equating them to those who fly planes full of people into buildings full of people? Yikes.
Consumers tolerate extreme nannying and unwarranted surveillance by banks as they abuse the anti-privacy KYC movement amid the perception that there is an “anti-terror” need for it.
In countless conflicts each side now calls their opposition “terrorists” because the buzz term has been so successful right after 9/11.
Pushback needed. When the term is used as a cover for action or justification for policy, we need to see it for what it is: propaganda.
It’s like the word “piracy”. The copyright lobby has managed to play a game with words to equate those who share data with those who rape, pillage, take hostages, and demand ransom. Is there a term that describes words that are perverted to exploit an agenda? Marketing and propaganda seems close but exactly spot-on because it’s more about manipulating shoppers.

I heard Glenn Greenwald point out that “terrorism” had lost all meaning in a speech back during the Bush administration. It’s true. Any attempted definition of the word can be met with an example that doesn’t fit.