Description
This paper explores the politics of the 2025 proscription of Palestine Action as ‘terrorist’ by the UK government, positing the process and motivation as an example of ‘terror work’.
The paper builds on the author’s previous conceptual work on ‘’terror work’, understood as the deployment of the term terrorism to enable actors to capitalize on privileges, practices and norms associated with counterterrorism in arenas outside of standard counterterrorism.
By analyzing the discourses around the proscription process and the pushback from civil society actors, the paper suggests that the proscription served a second political purpose beyond the banning of the group itself. It argues that the proscription was an attempt to facilitate the curtailment of protest rights in the UK more broadly by co-opting the language of (counter)terrorism.
In larger context, the paper aims to advance the emerging discussion on ‘terror work’ by analyzing a recent case study of the banning of Palestine Action.
