In his essay La Haine de la démocratie (Hatred of Democracy, 2005/2007), Jacques Rancière observes that modern democratic transformation necessarily entails a challenge to proponents of the so-called “Republican thesis,” those in favor of a new “pastoralism” who find in modern European democracy an end of transcendentalism and the triumph of limitless consumerism underscored by a kind of chaotic and entrenched inclination towards crime. Targeting a text by Jean-Claude Milner: Les penchants criminels de l’Europe démocratique (2003), Rancière, quoting Plato, argues that criminality becomes the fatalistic last defense of the democratic experiment. Specifically, he suggests, “revolutionary terror” does not undermine the transformation to democracy, rather, it is “consubstantial with its project,” it is a “necessity inherent to the very essence of the democratic revolution.” In the following I examine the discourse on terrorism in Tunisia as integral to the country’s post-revolutionary process of reform. With Rancière’s thesis in mind, I concentrate on the unique rhetorical campaign construed around Tunisia’s public enemy number one: Sayf Allah Ben Hassine, or “Abu ‘Ayadh.” Arrested in Libya in January 2014, following a nearly year-long stint on the run, Abu ‘Ayadh, I suggest, became a rhetorical point of dissension par excellence: his significance revolutionary and counterrevolutionary at once. More importantly, the narrative saga surrounding his dissent into infamy served to destabilize an otherwise entrenched dichotomy between political Islam and the secular left. Drawing on research conducted, in part, with the Center for Strategic Communication at Arizona State University and with funding provided by the Office of Naval Research and MITRE, I argue in this paper that discourse generated by and about radical criminal actors in the public sphere like Abu ‘Ayadh provided a vital narrative framework for thinking through the limits and limitations of freedom in the post-Ben Ali era. ‘Ayadh’s own narrative, which I examine here as well, assumed a trajectory of almost tragic-comedic proportions: his final dispatch being an hour-long recording of himself, alone on a bed inside an unnamed hotel room, ranting on injustice and the malignancy of Tunisian leadership.