Chapter 5: Everyday Counter-Radicalisation: The Promotion of ‘CT Citizens’ and Illiberalism

This chapter analyses contemporary counter-terrorism strategies as technologies of social regulation that impact everyday subjectivities and actions. Calls for citizen responsibilisation, empowerment, and action are examined as some of the main techniques of governance through which counter-terrorism operates. The first part introduces governmentality as the power that seeks to subtly direct individuals by creating particular subjectivities through discourses of freedom, responsibility, care, blame, and risk. The section analyses key narratives and rationalities promoted by (counter)radicalisation assemblages, with special attention given to discourses of empowerment that encourage the population to undertake specific counter-terrorism tasks. The chapter explores some of the effects that these strategies have on the understanding of political violence and other consequences, such as the elimination of dissent, depoliticisation of conflict, (in)visibilisation of particular acts of violence, naturalisation of discriminatory practices, and normalisation of pre-emptive strategies. The final part of the chapter focuses on the concept of illiberal governmentality and examines (counter)radicalisation’s relation with sovereign power.