I have a chapter in the new collection Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self Defense. The book, edited by scott crow, features both first-person reflections and historical accounts concerning the use of firearms in a variety of liberation movements, in the U.S. and around the world. My chapter, “Gun Rights are Civil Rights,” is a collaboration with Peter Little, addressing the racist history of gun control legislation.
Mike King’s book, When Riot Cops Are Not Enough, offers an insightful analysis of the state’s approach to controlling Occupy Oakland. I reviewed the book for Toward Freedom.
Also, there is a short interview with me about policing in Brian Whitney’s new book Subversive: Interviews with Radicals. The book seems, not so much specifically political, as concerned with a whole range of people who fall outside of the mainstream.
Two excerpts from my collection on Orwell, Between the Bullet and the Lie, were posted online this week.
Toward Freedom ran the introduction, “Between the Bullet and the Lie: George Orwell in His Time, and Ours.” In it, I discuss what I see as Orwell’s enduring relevance and explain my approach to understanding his work.
Lithub ran a half-chapter titled “What George Orwell Wrote About the Dangers of Nationalism: On Facts, Fallacies, and Power.” In the excerpt, I sum up the argument from Orwell’s essay “Notes on Nationalism,” in which he describes the bad thinking that arises from “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” In the book, I go on to apply his analysis to our present political movements, left as well as right.
I am pleased to announce Between the Bullet and the Lie: Essays on Orwell.
Approximately the first half of the book forwards an interpretation of Orwell’s thought, especially as it relates to the intersection of ethics and politics; the second half applies his thought to our present moment, with particular attention to issues of intellectual clarity, personal integrity, pessimism in politics, and the failures of the left.
If you would like a copy, send me $18 and I’ll put it in the mail to you.
Or better still, if you are in San Francisco on Sunday, November 19th, you can find me at the Howard Zinn Bookfair. I’ll be speaking at 2:45 in Room 315, and tabling all day.
And as always, drop me a line if you’d like to bring me to speak at your school, church, union hall, bookstore, or pub.
