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Riot Prime | Reading List

Key reading for understanding the present as a time of riots.

16 July 2025

Riot Prime | Reading List

In Riot. Strike. Riot, Joshua Clover describes the modern form of upheaval as riot prime –where the economy is out of reach but the state is near, with its progressively militarized police forces deputized against us. "Riot prime cannot help but heave itself against the state; there is no way not to."

We've collected a selection of titles that work to contextualize these movements and provide perspectives on strategy that draw from similar struggles throughout history.

Key reading on the Verso Blog: The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis by Connor Woodman

[book-strip index="2"]

Book strip #1

Book strip #2

  • The New Faces of Fascism
    What does Fascism mean at the beginning of the twenty-first century? When we pronounce this word, our memory goes back to the years between the two world wars and envisions a dark landscape of viol...
    Hardback
  • Set the Night on Fire
    Histories of the US sixties invariably focus on New York City, but Los Angeles was an epicenter of that decade’s political and social earthquake. L.A. was a launchpad for Black Power—where Malcolm ...
    Hardback
  • Empire of Borders
    The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid hardening of international borders. Security, surveillance, and militarization are widening the chasm between those who travel where they please and...
    Hardback
  • The Rebirth of History
    In the uprisings of the Arab world, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the European revolutions of 1848. In both cases, the object was to overthrow despotic regimes maintained by the great powers—regi...
    Hardback
  • All-American Nativism
    It is often said that with the election of Donald Trump nativism was raised from the dead. After all, here was a president who organized his campaign around a rhetoric of unvarnished racism and xen...
    Paperback