I am of the ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) and FTP (Fuck The Police) ideological lineages: even though, as a blameless bastard child, I resent the comparison. However, many who engage in this critique of state-backed mercenaries fall into rhetorical traps at the simplest rebuttal.

The subject of police — by far one of the biggest issues related to gun violence — is not tackled by modern gun control legislation. We can attempt to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals all we want. But until the state stops providing some of these criminals with special uniforms and weaponry to use against us with little to no consequence, and then puts them in charge of enforcing the state’s (or even their own) will, we will be no closer to solving the problem.

Last Friday, The Oregonian published a staff editorial that responded to the police brutality unleashed on May Day protesters by labeling all anarchists as “punk fascists.” This editorial — published by the conservative newspaper that used to be a daily powerhouse in the Northwest — has been roundly denounced in many circles for its political ignorance.

This is the first part in a series. Be sure to check out parts 2, 3, 4 and 5. Gun control is a big issue to many leftists. The Democratic Party has campaigned for years on a platform of gun control. Such measures, they claim, are the only ways to reduce gun violence and save lives. They claim they…

[Di Logan Glitterbomb. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 23 settembre 2016 con il titolo Police Discrimination? Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] In quello che si spera sia una tendenza, cinque agenti di polizia si sono visti negare il servizio presso un ristorante Taco Bell di Louisville, Kentucky. Il proprietario ha chiesto scusa…

[Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society l’otto ottobre 2016 con il titolo The Authoritarian Right is Naive About Human Nature. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] Avete mai notato l’ironia insita nel fatto che quegli stessi che dichiarano la propria sfiducia verso uno stato forte (“Amo il mio paese ma temo il…

Anti-police sentiment is on the rise in America and around the world. In the wake of the death’s of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless others (Rest In Power), even the DoJ admits that at least some police departments are highly racist in practice and the Black Lives Matter movement has sprung up in response….

[Di Kaile Hultner. Originale pubblicato su Center for a Stateless Society il 24 settembre 2016 con il titolo Dismantle the Police. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.] La settimana scorsa, l’agente Betty Shelby della polizia di Tulsa, Oklahoma, ha sparato alle spalle, uccidendolo, Terence Crutcher, autista quarantenne, a terra dopo essere stato colpito con il taser da…

Have you ever considered the level of irony involved in the fact that so many of the same people who claim to distrust big government (“I love my country but fear my government”) also adamantly support the police against Black Lives Matter? These people, by and large, actually worship the culture of police lawlessness as…

In the wake of a tragedy, there is almost always an onslaught of public opinion articles, media coverage, and public commentary. In many cases, the media and the public respond to tragedy in a way that either supports state institutions or minimizes their negative functions and actions. This support for the state, its projects, and…

Last week, Tulsa, Oklahoma police officer Betty Shelby fatally shot 40-year-old stranded motorist Terence Crutcher in the back after another officer tased him to the ground. The database killedbypolice.net lists Crutcher as the 825th individual to have been shot and killed by a cop in 2016. At this point, it’s clear that nothing short of a complete…

In part of a hopefully rising trend, five police officers were denied service at a Taco Bell in Louisville, Kentucky recently. The owner has since apologized and promised that the employees will be retrained to be more respectful to all customers, including law enforcement. But this is just one domino in an entire series of…

If there’s one common theme that unites the economic Right — conservatives, right-libertarians and disciples of Ayn Rand — it’s that looting is bad and extremely prevalent. And they’re all pretty much agreed on who the looters are, besides. The framing has been pretty much the same going back at least to that (possibly Snopesbait)…

If the Democrats’ approach under Clinton is doubling down on Obama’s technocratic neoliberal caesarism, with the constant, quiet upward ratcheting of automated drone warfare and electronic surveillance, the alternative from Trump’s GOP is out-and-out fascism. And when I say “fascism,” I mean the kind with smashed windows, lynchings and brownshirt thuggery in the streets. Nowhere…

There are a lot of tropes in our political culture for obscuring the real nature of what happens in cases like Baton Rouge, and before it in a long string of cases going back to Ferguson, the Rodney King beating, and on into the mists of the past. What they all obscure is the structural…

If you ask an economist to suggest areas where the state should be involved, one answer you’re likely to hear is that states should provide “public goods.” A public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rival. By non-excludable, economists mean that once the good is produced individuals cannot be excluded from consuming…

The rally against Trump in Fountain Hills, Arizona, on the 19th of March, 2016, was met with great resistance and critique from both the Left and the Right largely using arguments about “freedom” and “violence.” As these are important and seemingly misunderstood themes, I’ve chosen to weave analyses of them through this report-back. Freedom is…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Jason Lee Byas‘s “Who is the Government?” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 1 of THE NEW LEVELLER read by Stephen Ledger and edited by Nick Ford. On this month 29 years ago, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a row house in order to attack…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Darian Worden’s “Gun Control: Who Gets Control?” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. While we make society more compassionate — which cannot be done without cultivating respect for liberty and autonomy — we should respect the gun rights of all responsible individuals. It is amazing that an 18-year-old can…

Recensione di: Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press, 2003. È arrivato il momento di eliminare il sistema carcerario in America e nel resto del mondo? L’attivista, studiosa, icona dei diritti civili Angela Davis nel suo libro del 2003 risponde chiaramente Sì. La Davis è meglio conosciuta per il suo impegno a favore dei…