United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, listed in the October 5, 2001 U.S. Department of State Report on Foreign Terrorist Organizations as the Autodéfenses unies de Colombie (AUC), are presented in Noam Chomsky’s discussion as an organization subject to formal U.S. designation. Their appearance in the list illustrates the institutional power of the label “terrorist,” a category whose application the book argues can reflect political choices as well as stated definitions.

Identification and designation

In the report’s numbered list, the organization appears as entry 28, under the name Autodéfenses unies de Colombie and the abbreviation AUC. The surrounding text identifies the list as the U.S. foreign terrorist organization designations established on October 5, 2001. The entry establishes the group’s inclusion in that administrative record; it does not describe its membership, leadership, origins, or operations.

The report’s stated legal criteria require that an organization be foreign, engage in terrorist activity as defined by 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 relations, or economic interests. The passage supplies these criteria as the framework governing designation, but gives no group-specific explanation of how the AUC met them.

Political labels and the book’s argument

Chomsky distinguishes the literal definition of terrorism in official U.S. documents—calculated violence or its threat for political, religious, or ideological ends—from a propagandistic use of the term that chiefly identifies violence by enemies or adversaries. He argues that this selective usage can make the same actors appear under changing labels as political alignments shift. The AUC’s appearance in the official list supplies a concrete instance of the designation system he is examining, but the cited discussion does not trace any change in the U.S. government’s classification of this organization.

The book also criticizes the broader tendency to treat state violence as categorically different from violence by non-state organizations. It notes that official definitions of terrorism resemble descriptions of low-intensity warfare and argues that coercion directed at civilian populations for political purposes cannot be assessed consistently by looking only at the identity of the actor. In that argument, the AUC is one named organization within a wider inquiry into how governments define and apply the category, not a case study of the group’s conduct.

Limits of the account

The evidence establishes the organization’s listed name, abbreviation, place in the October 2001 roster, and the general criteria described for designation. It does not document particular attacks, political aims, relationships, internal organization, or consequences of the designation for the group. Accordingly, the AUC’s significance in this account is primarily classificatory: its entry shows how an official roster makes a political organization legible to U.S. law and policy, while the surrounding discussion questions whether such categories are applied according to a stable standard.