Description
The paper will analyze the dispute over the legal concept of terrorism in the Brazilian National Congress, and will be organized into two parts: the first will provide theoretical context, and the second will present an empirical research. The first part contextualizes the discussion on the concept of terrorism: while in the global north the issue is strongly related to Islamic jihad (Rapoport, 2002), the discussion takes a different turn in Latin America, mainly due to its history of repression of political opposition by violent dictatorships throughout the 20th century. Furthermore, in the last decade alone, in Brazil, the term “terrorism” has been used to refer to groups that adopt black bloc tactics (as in the protests of June 2013); to the invaders of the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasilia on January 8, 2023; to structured criminal organizations such as the PCC and Comando Vermelho, and the wave of fires that ravaged the country in 2024.
In the second part, the empirical study, I start from the methodology of discourse analysis (Orlandi, 2012), understanding legal discourse as essentially imbued with symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1989), and considering the legislation as the result of political disputes within the legislative sphere. To this end, the analysis will focus on draft legislation, pending or archived, before the Brazilian National Congress, seeking to identify: (i) which are the main congressmen involved in the debate, and what is their ideological affiliation; (ii) who are the main recipients of the legal drafts, that is, which subjects or organisations expressly mentioned in the bills would be classified as terrorists.
