Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are identified in the book as a designated foreign terrorist organization. Their appearance is brief but significant to the surrounding argument: the author contrasts the formal authority of such lists with the political disputes over how terrorism is defined and whose actions receive that label.

Appearance on the 2001 list

The FARC are named in an appendix reproducing the U.S. Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, established on October 5, 2001. The entry gives the group’s name and the parenthetical abbreviation FARC; it offers no further account of the organization, its membership, or its conduct.

Designation and official criteria

The appendix states three requirements for designation: an organization must be foreign, engage in terrorist activity as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, and pose a threat to the security of U.S. nationals or to U.S. national security, including defense, foreign affairs, or economic interests. In this context, the FARC’s listing is evidence of an official classification under those criteria, not a detailed explanation of the case for applying them.

The label in the book’s argument

The list sits alongside the author’s broader criticism of political uses of the term terrorism. He distinguishes the literal definition in official U.S. documents—calculated violence or its threat for political, religious, or ideological aims—from a propagandistic usage that tends to reserve the label for enemies. He also argues that the same actors can be renamed as political circumstances change. The appendix supplies an example of the state’s formal designation system, while the book’s discussion cautions that a label alone does not settle the wider question of how terrorism is applied or understood.