Imperial Hypocrisy About “Terrorism” Hits Its Most Absurd Point Yet
The US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups.
The western empire will surely find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its “terrorism” designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will manage to do so.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday that the Trump administration is revoking the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that took power in Damascus in December 2024.
“HTS started as the al-Nusra Front, which was the official al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria until the group’s leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is now Syria’s de facto president, rebranded. In 2016, Sharaa, who was known at the time as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, announced he was disassociating from al-Qaeda, and thanked the ‘commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.’
“Sharaa renamed his group HTS in 2017 and ruled Syria’s northwestern Idlib province until he led the offensive that ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of last year. The US has embraced the new Syrian leader despite his al-Qaeda past, which included fighting against US troops in Iraq.”
US Revokes Terror Designation for HTS, the Al-Qaeda Offshoot That Took Over Syria
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Syria #HTS #AlQaeda https://t.co/1uNEYYWAD0— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) July 7, 2025
This move comes as Sharaa holds friendly meetings with US and UK officials and holds normalization talks with Israel, showing that all one has to do to cease being a “terrorist” in the eyes of the empire is to start aligning with the empire’s interests.
So that was on Monday. The Saturday prior, the group Palestine Action was added to the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist groups under the Terrorism Act of 2000, making inv
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