Blog

Key titles from across Verso's many series and imprints.

A report on the history and present day reality of police violence in India.

Key titles on activism and global resistance, from movements for Black liberation and climate justice to labor organizing and anti-colonial struggles.

'From colonialism to apartheid and through to contemporary South Africa, it is the threat presented by the masses which means they need to be permanently contained, and this remains the enduring imperative of policing practices.' 

'In France, it is possible to be supremely racist, all the while affirming, hand on heart, that race does not exist.' Hassina Mechaï on the sleight of hand that obscures the structures of French racism, evident in the language and tactics of the police. 

Police brutality is endemic in modern Kenya, and a legacy of British colonial rule, write community organisers Gacheke Gachihi and Esther Waigumo Njoki. 

'The question of public security, policing and racism can no longer be separated from the overall question of Brazilian democracy itself – if it ever could.' Alex Hochuli reports on the lethal police tactics flourishing under the Bolsonaro regime. 

This week on the Verso Blog, we bring you reports on the past and present roles of the police in five different countries. 

Shigraf Zahbi reports on misogyny in Modi's India.

The year 2020 has provided a practically laboratorial clarity. For political theory, or really political practice, it has been something like a natural experiment measuring two politics against the world and against each other. How to name these two politics, if not the election and the riot? 

The debates that arise from discussions of “cancel culture” recall the classical arguments in political thought over freedom of expression, despite the fact that the substance of these arguments is almost never examined. We should look at them more closely, however, because they raise fundamental questions about how we should act politically and what constitutes a good society.

Jessica Thorne on the lessons of historical moments of international solidarity in the face of rising nationalism.