Kristian Williams – författare

What happens when the techniques of counterinsurgency, developed to squash small skirmishes and guerrilla wars on the border of Empire, blend into the state''s apparatus for domestic policing? In Life During Wartime, fifteen authors and activists reflect on the American domestic security apparatus, detailing the increasing militarization of the police force and the re-emergence of infiltration and counter-intelligence as surveillance strategies, highlighting the ways that the techniques and the technologies of counterinsurgency have been applied on the home front, and offering strategies for resistance.

Includes contributions Kristian Williams, Will Munger, Walidah Imarisha, George Ciccariello-Maher, Beriah Empie, Elaine Brown, Geoffrey Boyce, Conor Cash, Vicente L. Rafael, Alexander Reid Ross, Evan Tucker, Layne Mullett, Sarah Small, and Luce Guillen-Givins.

Let''s begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.

Using media reports alone, the Cato Institute''s last annual study listed nearly seven thousand victims of police "misconduct" in the United States. But such stories of police brutality only scratch the surface of a national epidemic. Every year, tens of thousands are framed, blackmailed, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed by cops. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on civil judgments and settlements annually. Individual lives, families, and communities are destroyed.

In this extensively revised and updated edition of his seminal study of policing in the United States, Kristian Williams shows that police brutality isn''t an anomaly, but is built into the very meaning of law enforcement in the United States. From antebellum slave patrols to today''s unarmed youth being gunned down in the streets, "peace keepers" have always used force to shape behavior, repress dissent, and defend the powerful. Our Enemies in Blue is a well-researched page-turner that both makes historical sense of this legalized social pathology and maps out possible alternatives.

Kristian Williams is the author of several books, including American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination. He co-edited Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, and lives in Portland, Oregon.

"Rather than provide literary criticism or biography, Kristian Williams is most concerned in this felicitous collection to derive George Orwell''s method—the process he used to translate personal experiences and worldly explorations into democratic anti-capitalist principles, and convey them to broad audiences in an irresistible fashion." —Andrew Cornell, author of Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century

Old debates about democracy vs. socialism vs. fascism are back. Missing from today''s versions are the voices of moral clarity, those that challenge us to be our best selves in difficult times. Kristian Williams has mined the intellect of a man who, sixty-seven years after his death, still has much to offer readers. Between the Bullet and the Lie highlights the relationship George Orwell sees between aesthetics, ethics, and politics; the difference between honesty and integrity; the corruption of language; the importance of observation and evidence; and the many failures of the Left. The result is not a study of sacred decrees from Orwell, but an application of his thought to political and literary questions that trouble us today.

Kristian Williams is the author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination, and co-editor of Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency.

Oscar Wilde is remembered as a wit and a dandy, as a gay martyr, and as a brilliant writer, but his philosophical depth and political radicalism are often forgotten. Resist Everything Except Temptation locates Wilde in the tradition of left-wing anarchism, and argues that only when we take his politics seriously can we begin to understand the man, his life, and his work. Drawing from literary, historical, and biographical evidence, including archival research, the book outlines the philosophical influences and political implications of Wilde''s ideas on art, sex, morality, violence, and above all, individualism. Williams raises questions about the relationships between culture and politics, between utopian aspirations and practical programs, and between individualism, group identity, and class struggle. The resulting volume represents, not merely a historical curiosity, but a contribution to current debates within political theory and a salvo in the broader culture wars.

In three taut essays, Kristian Williams examines our society’s understanding of social and political violence, what gets romanticized, misunderstood, or muddled. He explores the complex intersections between “gangs” of all sorts—cops and criminals, Proud Boys and antifa, Panthers and skinheads—arguing that government and criminality are intimately related, often sharing critical features. As society becomes more polarized and the conviction that things are only going to get worse, and more violent, grows, William’s analysis is a crucial corrective to our simple, unquestioned ideas about the role violence might or should play in our social struggles.