Brief operational term of art 🧵 to help better define what we're experiencing. What we're experiencing is state terror. I've seen a lot of terms thrown around for what the Trump admin is doing w/ICE, CBP, & other federal law enforcement (LE). The now largely out of use term is state terror. 1/ Back when I started my graduate studies, there was a clear distinction in the literature of what was then a small group of scholars studying terrorism b/ween what states and non-state actors did & why what the former did/could do was distinct from what non-state actors did/could do. 2/ The distinction was in the differences in terms of a state's capabilities & resources versus a non-state actor's, not in the outcome. The outcome was to coerce the population through the threat & actual use of violence against victims who were not necessarily the target audience. 3/ The terminology for both come from the same place, the Reign of Terror during the French revolution. The differences in a state's capabilities/resources from a non-state actors, as well as the differences in motivations between the two, meant that two different terms were needed. 4/ The result, in the historical sections of the older literature led to state terror when states use threats of &/or actual violence to coerce their populations and terrorism when non-state actors do so. 5/ What the Trump administration is doing, what Stephen Miller has schemed his whole sad, miserable, pathetic life for & Noem is gleefully implementing because she thinks it'll get her elected president in 2028, is state terror. 6/ The power of the nation-state is being directed at the citizenry through threats & acts of violence, all done under the color of law, including extrajudicial executions, in order to coerce the citizenry into compliance through fear & intimidation. This includes using legal power/lawfare. 7/ There's a discussion regarding Just Revolution theory - yes we have one of those that's related to, but separate from Just War theory - but that's for another time. 8/ State terror in the US is not a new thing that Miller concocted, it was the modus operandi of the Confederate in all but name Jim Crow states. And it often works hand in hand with actual terrorists that are working from the bottom up to achieve the effects the state is seeking from the top down. 9/ It's why in the Jim Crow states you have a variety of non-state actors from the genteel & seemingly legit white citizen councils all the way to a number of different white Christian supremacist terrorist groups like the Klu Klux Klan. 10/ For the Trump admin it's the national level groups like Heritage, Miller's think tank, Vought's think tank, state level think tanks & orgs including the modern version of the white citizens councils, as well as the modern Klan, the Groypers, Kirk's TP USA, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, etc. 11/ To tie this all together, the correct term for what we're seeing the Trump admin do via federal law enforcement plus DOJ action plus attempts to use the National Guard is state terror. Which makes sense as, like Robespierre's movement, the Trump/MAGA movement is a revolutionary movement. 12 & end/