ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a coherent theory of the War on Terror requires an analysis of the US power structure, the imperial agency of its power elite, and the calculated use of political victimage ritual (VR) to legitimate and motivate wars against their geopolitical opponents. It provides another thread to a larger project to produce a genealogy of the discourses and practices of political terrorism and ties this genealogy to the substantial literature on settler-colonialism and genocide. VRs against terrorists have a specific genealogy in relation to the dynamic of US-led Empire. British imperialists generalized the practice of categorizing as terrorist any organized resistance to British rule. "Terrorism" was the label most frequently applied to the activities of leaders and groups involved in resistance. The global war on terror is only the latest manifestation of the mode of Empire and subjection by means of victimage ritual.
