Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures

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A landmark sociological examination of terrorism prosecution in United States courts

Rather than functioning as a final arbiter of justice, U.S. domestic courts are increasingly seen as counterterrorism tools that can incapacitate terrorists, maintain national security operations domestically, and produce certain narratives of conflict. Terrorism on Trial examines the contemporary role that these courts play in the global war on terror and their use as a weapon of war: hunting, criminalizing, and punishing entire communities in the name of national security.

Nicole Nguyen advocates for a rethinking of popular understandings of political violence and its root causes, encouraging readers to consider anti-imperial abolitionist alternatives to the criminalization, prosecution, and incarceration of individuals marked as real or perceived terrorists. She exposes how dominant academic discourses, geographical imaginations, and social processes have shaped terrorism prosecutions, as well as how our fundamental misunderstanding of terrorism has led to punitive responses that do little to address the true sources of violence, such as military interventions, colonial occupations, and tyrannical regimes. Nguyen also explores how these criminal proceedings bear on the lives of defendants and families, seeking to understand how legal processes unevenly criminalize and disempower communities of color.

A retheorization of terrorism as political violence, Terrorism on Trial invites readers to carefully consider the role of power and politics in the making of armed resistance, addressing the root causes of political violence, with a goal of building toward a less violent and more liberatory world.

Reviews

"Through its expansive analysis of anti-Muslim racism and the global war on terror, Terrorism on Trial reveals startling connections across some of the most urgent issues of our timesfrom U.S. settler colonialism and militarism to policing and global punishment. This books contextual approach to resistance and its coalitional approach to race, empire, and abolition provide an urgent foundation for anyone committed to life-affirming futures rooted in transnational BIPOC coalitions and solidarities."Nadine Naber, University of Illinois Chicago

"Nicole Nguyens commanding study exposes how U.S. geopolitics play out in the criminal justice system in cases against people accused of terrorism. She shows how their prosecutionand prosecutabilityoften relies on allegations constructed from sting operations, Islamophobic impulses, and unfounded or propagandistic claims of the governments favorite terrorologists."Lisa Hajjar, author of The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture

Author Bio

Nicole Nguyen is associate professor of criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is author of A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in U.S. Public Schools (Minnesota, 2016) and Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (Minnesota, 2019).