…in that colonizers use the term to justify their continued brutalization of people fighting back against oppression. It was probably on 
where I first heard the argument that it’s a fairly useless term mainly used to describe any militant enemies of the west, but it occurs to me now and seems so obvious that the term “terrorist” is just a direct replacement for “savage”.
Similarly, the west uses “democratic” like they used to use “civilized”, although they never really stopped doing that one either