domestic terrorism/terrorist
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22 January 2026
US law (18 USC § 2331) defines domestic terrorism as:
Activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
It contrasts with acts of international terrorism that “occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries.” While international terrorism is a federal criminal offense in the United States, there is no corresponding crime of domestic terrorism. Instead, those acts are charged under the appropriate, specific laws against acts of violence (e.g., murder).
This sense of domestic terrorism and the existence of the phrase as a lexicalized open compound, as opposed to it being just a collocation of words, is relatively recent, with widespread use dating only to the 1960s. Prior to this, the phrase domestic terrorism could mean something quite different.
The earliest use of the phrase domestic terrorism that I have found is from a travelogue written by a Scot visiting the United States that appeared in Massachusetts’s New-Bedford Mercury on 11 December 1857. In it, the writer uses the phrase, somewhat jocularly, to refer to the acts of domineering household servants:
The Hotel is quite a “peculiar institution,” of this country. Various causes contribute to this. The first and chief is probably the difficulty of procuring good servants, and the great expense connected with them. An Irish cook or housekeeper is not only an expensive luxury, but she will only engage by the week, and during the week she stays she insists on being mistress of the house. Native-born Americans are a degree more expensive and more domineering. Under these trying circumstances, it is natural that the American matron of seventeen or eighteen should seek refuge from this domestic terrorism in the gilded saloons of the St. Nicholas or St. Charles, or whatever other Saint may offer his protection for two and a half dollars a day. The saving of money is considerable, even in these money making, money spending regions; and the saving of temper and nerves is infinite. Here, then, is one great efficient cause of hotel-boarding. It is a refuge from ruinous and vexatious housekeeping.
Another use of the phrase to mean a household that is terrorized, this time by a gang of burglars, appears in Philadelphia’s Sunday Dispatch of 2 October 1874, reporting on such a gang in New York City:
The celebrated gang of burglars which used to wear masks in its depredatory performances, and made itself so great a terror, for a time, to the wealthier portion of our suburban population—as the Forty Thieves did to the opulent merchants of Bagdad [sic]—is almost used up at last. […] On Thursday, the fifth of the burglarions corps was convicted, and sent into retiracy for a score of years. Only two of the scoundrels remain to punish—for, like many another of the mysteries of life, seven was the number that constituted this body of domestic terrorists.
And there is this use from the other side of the Atlantic, again jocular, to refer to domineering mothers-in-law from London’s The Graphic of 20 April 1878:
For those awful domestic terrorists, of gigantic stature, and hoarse raven voice, who exercise a grinding and revolting tyranny in the family mansion, and even resort, as it is whispered, to the pressure of personal violence to ensure compliance with their desires—who daily and hourly are in the habit of “driving” the wretched white slave, who is called by courtesy the master of the house,—for such, I say, is no indulgence asked. But there are mothers-in-law who are not wholly mothers-in-law, at least after the traditional picture. The trappings and functions of the office fit on them uneasily. They are gentle of temperament, not grasping at sovereignty, and of no cannibal tendencies. And yet such unfairly lie under the ban; the innocent suffer for the guilty, the very title is insufficient to damn them.
Actual intrafamilial violence is associated with the phrase in this report in Scotland’s Dundee Courier and Argus of 20 March 1883
A DOMESTIC TERRORIST
James Gerrard, from Carnoustie, was charged with assaulting his sister, Ann Gerrard, factory worker, in an indecent manner in his mother’s house in Gallowlain, Carnoustie, on Saturday, 26th November, 1882. He pleaded not guilty. After hearing the evidence, the jury by a majority of 14 to 1 found the prisoner guilty of assault without the aggravation. The Sheriff said that from the evidence it would seem the prisoner had been a terror in the house, and he would advise him after he came out of prison to live apart, and not molest them in future.
But by the mid nineteenth century we also see domestic terrorism being used in a political context by the New-York Daily Tribune of 1 April 1858, but in here it is being used to refer to acts of the government of Napoleon III of France against its own citizens:
Meanwhile, Bonaparte’s disappointments in the field of foreign policy vastly contribute to urge him on in his system of domestic terrorism. Every check he sustains from without, by betraying the weakness of his position, and giving new life to the aspirations of his antagonists, is necessarily followed up by new displays of what is called “governmental vigor."
Moving into the twentieth century, Rudyard Kipling, writing on 2 April 1908, refers to the tactics of reporters in many countries—but not Canada, whose press is professional and polite—as committing acts of domestic terrorism when they hound and harass those they are reporting on:
There are countries where a man is indecently pawed over by chattering heralds who bob their foul torches in his face until he is singed and smoked at once. In Canada the necessary “Stand and deliver your sentiments” goes through with the large decency that stamps all the Dominion. A stranger’s words are passed on to the tribe quite accurately; no dirt is put into his mouth, and where the heralds judge that it would be better not to translate certain remarks they courteously explain why.
[…]
One felt at every turn of the quick sentences to be dealing with made and trained players of the game—balanced mend who believed in decencies not to be violated, and honor not to be mocked. (This may explain what men and women have told me—that there is very little of the brutal domestic terrorism of the Press in Canada, and not much blackmailing.)
George Bernard Shaw, in the opening months of the First World War, uses domestic Terrorism again to refer to a government’s acts against its people, in this case Tsarist Russia and the European colonial powers against the people they have subjugated. The capitalization of Terrorism, but not domestic, indicates that Shaw and the New York Times, in which the piece appeared, did not consider the phrase to be a set, lexicalized term:
By “making examples” of towns, and seizing irresponsible citizens as hostages and shooting them for the acts of armed civilians over whom they could exert no impossible control, the Germans have certainly pushed these usages to a point of Terrorism which is hardly distinguishable from the deliberate murder of non-combatants; but as the Allies have not renounced such usages nor ceased to employ them ruthlessly in their dealings with the hill tribes and fellaheen and Arabs with whom they themselves have to deal (to say nothing of the notorious domestic Terrorism of the Russian Government), they cannot claim superior humanity.
Wisconsin’s Appleton Post-Crescent of 7 June 1930 uses the phrase in reference to Mussolini’s Blackshirts:
France has the largest and best equipped army in the world today, besides which that of Italy would make no appreciable showing. Mussolini has concentrated himself on the black shirts, but they do not constitute an army. They have been trained to domestic terrorism and jingoism rather than to military ways.
Stalinist Russia is accused of domestic terrorism by the Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J. in a 15 June 1937 graduation speech reported on by Massachusetts’s Springfield Republican. The quotation marks indicate, yet again, that the term has not yet been fully adopted as a lexical item:
He pointed to the “ominous tidings” of conflict overseas, to the imcreasing dictators and decline of popular government, to an “impotent” League of Nations, to Russia’s “domestic terrorism” as asked the question “can we assure ourselves continued exemption from the dread contagion of universal discontent?”
The United States government, in this case the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, was not above being accused of this form of domestic terrorism for political gain, albeit using the threat of war to inspire fear in the American populace. From 24 September 1940 editorial in the Seattle Daily Times:
The plain purpose of the present national administration is to protract American apprehensiveness of war beyond the November election. There can be no doubt about sticking to this line of political strategy, no matter what turn war may take elsewhere. If at any time during the next six weeks there is perceptible tendency in this country to feel at all comfortable and secure, there will be more sinister omens, more reasons for public anxiety, wherewith to reinspire sense of Mr. Roosevelt’s indispensability.
New moves of this kind seem to be pending. It is announced that Britain is ready to grant the United States use of the great naval base at Singapore. Here is strong hint of very serious business in Asia, with only Mr. Roosevelt competent to handle it. As a preliminary measure of domestic “terrorism” a New Deal senator gravely proposes plans for construction of air-raid shelters in all American cities. The third-term campaign will not be allowed a lag for lack of rumors and gestures.
Similar to the use by Shaw above, here we see terrorism placed in quotation marks while domestic is not, indicating that the paper did not consider this to be set phrase.
I have found only one use of domestic terrorism in the sense we generally use it today prior to the 1960s. That is in the Baltimore Sun of 4 May 1919 in an article about US Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer’s efforts to suppress left-leaning political groups and labor unions, particularly those whose membership was largely composed of immigrants:
The widespread disturbances which are taking place throughout the country is the direct result, according to the opinion of Government officials, of the reaction following the suspension of hostilities. They say that while the war was on the more savage of the agitators were restrained from making a noise, much less from action, by the knowledge that the Government would handle them with the utmost ruthlessness under its general war powers. And even for a time after the signing of the armistice the domestic terrorists held back, not knowing to what extent the Government would carry its prosecutions.
While here the phrase itself is being used to refer to alleged violent acts of political groups, the infamous Palmer Raids which were to follow more aptly fall into the category of terrorism conducted by a government against its own people.
We finally see the definition promulgated in US law come into widespread use in the 1960s. Here is an example referring to political violence within Algeria in the 19 October 1962 issue of the Denver Post:
We pointed out that it might be wise to watch and listen during the period when Ben Bella is going through the anxious exercise of seeking friends among nations not only of East and West but also of neither Cold War camp. The brand new country of Algeria, exhausted after a long war with France and a year of domestic terrorism, obviously needs friends.
And there is this from the trade journal Railway Age of 9 March 1964:
If government cannot prevent domestic terrorism, who can have any confidence in its ability to defend the country against foreign enemies? If we have no effective system of internal security, our foreign enemies will not have to go to war to strike us down. All they need to do is to infiltrate the country with saboteurs.
So domestic terrorism in its current definition and as a lexicalized phrase has only been in use for some sixty years. Over the long history of the collocation, however, the definition has more often been that of violence or threats of violence by a government against its own people. With that in mind, it seems that in our current political context, it is not those who are protesting the actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who are the domestic terrorists. Rather it is ICE who are more rightly labeled as such.
Sources:
18 U.S. Code § 2331. Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute.
“Ben Bella Moves South—and Left.” Denver Post (Colorado), 19 October 1962, 26/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Bonaparte’s Present Position.” New-York Daily Tribune, 1 April 1858, 6/4. ProQuest Newspapers.
“Dundee Sheriff Criminal Court.” Dundee Courier and Argus (Scotland), 20 March 1883, 8/1. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
Fitzgerald, Percy. “A Plea for Mothers-in-Law.” The Graphic (London), 20 April 1878, 398/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.
“France Isn’t Alarmed.” Appleton Post-Crescent (Wisconsin), 7 June 1930, 6/1. ProQuest Newspapers.
“Graduating, M. S. C. Seniors Warned They Face Life in Nation’s Third Great Crisis.” Springfield Republican (Massachusetts), 15 June 1937. 1/7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Kipling, Rudyard. “Letters to the Family.” Daily Province (Vancouver, British Columbia), 2 April 1908, 11/2. ProQuest Newspapers.
Knickerbocker. “Our New York Gossip” (2 October 1874). Sunday Dispatch (Philadelphia), 4 October 1874, 1/9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2022, s.v. domestic terrorism, n., domestic terrorist, n.
“Palmer Takes Charge of War on Radicals.” Baltimore Sun (Maryland), 4 May 1919, 3/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Shaw, George Bernard. “Common Sense About the War.” New York Times, 29 November 1914. SM2/5. ProQuest Newspapers.
“That FEC Dynamiting.” Railway Age, 9 March 1964, 46/1. ProQuest: Trade Journal.
“A Travelling Scotchman on the United States.” New-Bedford Mercury (Massachusetts), 11 December 1857, 4/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Wood, James. A. “Speaking for the Times.” Seattle Daily Times (Washington), 24 September 1940, 6/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.