I usually write threads about early second millennium Buddhism, but my MA (my first step into Sri Lanka Studies) was about contemporary Buddhist nationalists co-opting US “war on terror” rhetoric. Something similar has recently targeted #GotaGoGama and the අරගලය.
[this page originated as a Twitter thread, hence the shorter paragraphs and choppier style]
In my MA, I argued that groups like Bodu Bala Sēnā don’t just invoke LTTE-era narratives about the Mahavamsa, Dutugemunu or the need to protect Buddhism. In their English-language media they also draw on more global tropes of “Muslim extremism” and “the war on terror.” They have claimed that Muslim communities in Sri Lanka might provide an “environment for al-Qaeda and jihad to thrive,” and that “while the majority of Muslims are innocent… once they come under the influence of Muslim extremists, they can easily fall into smuggling, illegal weapon handling and even terrorist activities.”
They’re not alone in this! China has similarly cast Uyghur separatist movements as “terrorists,” drawing directly on post-9/11 rhetoric as early as 2002. Why might both the Chinese state and the BBS position themselves as part of a war on terror? Because in the post-9/11 world, this has become an easy way of painting one party as righteous and the other – almost always Muslim – as a threat which cannot be dealt with within normal politics.
This is what Buzan, Waever and de Wilde call “securitization”: a rhetorical claims that certain threats are beyond the capacity of ordinary politics, justifying extraordinary measures.
We all know that “terrorists” are bad guys, after all. And it’s very difficult to actually *define* terrorism in concrete terms. But it’s something that justifies and requires a “war” to defeat.
So what’s the link to Sri Lanka today? “Looting.”
We all saw how effectively this word was deployed against Black Lives Matter protests in the US. In the twisted calculus of neoliberalism, damage to or theft of property outweighs the legitimacy of any grievances. So any hint of property damage “justified” police violence towards the people protesting police violence.
To be clear on my own politics: I care a lot more about human dignity, about the right to protest, and about outrage against corruption than I care about any damage to property. After all, economic mismanagement has caused infinitely more damage to property than any (righteously angry) protest could ever achieve.
Juliet Hooker, building on Angela Davis, beautifully inverts this “looting” rhetoric against the State:
And, once again, similar rhetoric is being deployed here in Sri Lanka. Note that the linked headline warns of “violent incidents,” when the actual charges are “curfew violations” (not violent), “looting” (“violent” only towards things), “assaults” (the only true violence on this list), “public and private property damages” (surely just “looting” again?).
The State seeks control of the narrative by painting protestors as “looting”; this looting can only be prevented by the extraordinary, extrapolitical means of deploying the army on every street corner with orders to shoot.
property > life; propriety > dignity.
These are deeply entangled webs. My gesturing towards them does little to sweep them aside. But fewer and fewer people seem to be on the side of the spiders, and the අරගලය continues.
Importantly, the ends of these webs extend beyond Sri Lanka: into American, into Europe, into my own Aotearoa, with all our rhetorics of terrorists and looters. We are accountable for them, and we must cut them off.
If you’ve reached the end of this thread, and you’re outside Sri Lanka, you can help! Vajra Chandrasekera maintains a list of the most immediate needs here:
And, more importantly: talk to your governments, talk to your MPs and Congresspeople, let them know that that we overseas are part of these webs, and we have an obligation to help stamp out the spiders.
