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Everything Is Police
How institutional and interpersonal policing have been central to worldmaking
Policing is constitutive of colonial normalizing, internalizing, and legalizing anti-Black violence as the ongoing condition for white life and freedom. The result, James Trafford argues here, is a situation where we cannot practically experience or even imagine worlds free from policing. From the plantation to the prison, global apartheid, and pandemic control, this book examines why and how policing has become the most ingrained, commonsense—and insidious—way of managing our world.
Policing is constitutive of colonial normalizing, internalizing, and legalizing anti-Black violence as the ongoing condition for white life and freedom. The result, James Trafford argues here, is a situation where we cannot practically experience or even imagine worlds free from policing. From the plantation to the prison, global apartheid, and pandemic control, this book examines why and how policing has become the most ingrained, commonsense—and insidious—way of managing our world.
112 pages, Paperback
Published February 6, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 8, 2025
Straight bangers for the end of my reading challenge.
First and foremost, the Forerunners series is an up and down series of books - tons of topics, some perfectly adequate, some absolutely brilliant, some underdogs, some meh. This, however, is an immensely well-crafted book in the vein of Afro-pessimism and abolitionist politics and stands as one of the best (that I've read in its entirety, at least).
This is a great standalone book in of itself. The world-making links between spatiality, temporality, violence, (post)colonialism, and incarceration that Trafford draws on are illuminating. Again, I love a good take down of some of the political theory. Trafford rips apart Hegel and Kant for their naked racism and reveals the enlightenment's love for ordering and re/de/composing blackness as simultaneously a thing to destroy / a thing to maintain, which is an incredibly illuminating take on Afro-pessimist thought. Thus, I do highly recommend reading this if you've read some stalwart Afro-pessimist books and articles from authors like Fred Moten, Frantz Fanon, Frank B. Wilderson III, Achille Mbembe, and Denise Ferreira Da Silva. Trafford's discussion of anti-Blackness in the context of Britain and British colonies is also a fresh take on what tends to be a predominantly American-centric field of study (and for good reason - the US still struggles with the necropolitics of anti-Blackness).
This is a succinct and powerful read. Cheap ($13.99 from my local!) too. Get to it!
First and foremost, the Forerunners series is an up and down series of books - tons of topics, some perfectly adequate, some absolutely brilliant, some underdogs, some meh. This, however, is an immensely well-crafted book in the vein of Afro-pessimism and abolitionist politics and stands as one of the best (that I've read in its entirety, at least).
This is a great standalone book in of itself. The world-making links between spatiality, temporality, violence, (post)colonialism, and incarceration that Trafford draws on are illuminating. Again, I love a good take down of some of the political theory. Trafford rips apart Hegel and Kant for their naked racism and reveals the enlightenment's love for ordering and re/de/composing blackness as simultaneously a thing to destroy / a thing to maintain, which is an incredibly illuminating take on Afro-pessimist thought. Thus, I do highly recommend reading this if you've read some stalwart Afro-pessimist books and articles from authors like Fred Moten, Frantz Fanon, Frank B. Wilderson III, Achille Mbembe, and Denise Ferreira Da Silva. Trafford's discussion of anti-Blackness in the context of Britain and British colonies is also a fresh take on what tends to be a predominantly American-centric field of study (and for good reason - the US still struggles with the necropolitics of anti-Blackness).
This is a succinct and powerful read. Cheap ($13.99 from my local!) too. Get to it!
March 3, 2025
“If Black became black insofar as they were subject to gratuitous violence, then white people became white through the knotted tension to be police, to be beyond the police, and to be policed.”
I just can’t. There are so many white ethnicities that don’t structure or premise themselves on hyperfixation on the police. Heaping all white people together sloppily shows a complete ignorance of European history, in the same way saying all blacks are the African black shows a complete ignorance of the class issues of black on black anarchocapitalism that riddle and destroy Africa, often with little or no white people at any point influencing the situation. I will say Kant is sloppy and what they are saying is true of the sloppy logician, the incompetent court that doesn’t understand its own laws and mets out injustice such as the Israeli courts in the Israeli-Palestine conflict that even struggle with right to live, or the white exterminationist that spews hate on that which is threateningly close to but shows the same psychopathy as the psychopathic black. However, that does not mean all reason itself is the problem. Corruption in communist and Israeli courts, sloppy white exterminationists too threateningly close in poor logic that result in hate of what they hate about themselves in pure form; these are no way real products of reason. The author clearly has had only experience primarily with these sloppy or deeply threatened corrupt courts or white exterminationists; the white psychopath, incapable of real justice. In reality, a just court does not have such a divorce from the matter of its text and its identity. It doesn’t suffer such corruption in arbitrary predecision as beleagures the incompetent court run by psychopaths who may also be white incapable of justice giving a bad name to white people everywhere. But it is a sloppy conflation to conflate that with whiteness, and the ignorance of Irish, Puritan vs. Catholic or other white tribal conflicts is the same as their sloppiness of equating all blacks to the american black. The rich African black tends to an anarchocapitalism that even the worst white slaveholders didn’t tend to. Child soliders, trafficking each other, death by kuru. There’s no whiteness involved in that policing. Sloppy and conflating. If you see reason as the police, you are probably a psychopath. In the same way an organized room will lead to less distress and more health, better more functioning reasoning leads to the same; less violence, less distress, less corruption. This reads like someone only has encountered white courts run by incompetent white psychopaths such as the white exterminationist (a psychopath) or the Israeli courts (infamous for their complete inability to create real justice despite skin color). Though they are growing increasingly extinct, some courts do not struggle to recognize textually in the law the situation in front of them and to rule accordingly with justice. It seems this author hasn’t experienced these courts and conflated them, which isn’t their fault as more and more the white corrupt psychopath endangers those with the prefrontal cortex to not struggle so profoundly with a deep link between what is in front of them and comprehension of the text. More and more corruption and predicision of the white psychopath is the norm and the prefrontral cortex in literally anyone that is the antithesis becomes more and more extinct. They tend to accumulate more of themselves; Covid-19 was a de-intelligencing event put into play mainly by psychopaths, especially the Chinese communist psychopath who didn’t listen to doctor whistleblowers or tried to kill them only to do so later and overblow it and then to learn nothing again. If Covid-19 was a deintelligencing event put into play but the Chinese communist psychopath, in the lack of intelligence, it gave any psychopath of any race a little more power to grab on and cause more answering de-intelligencing events. That is exactly what we saw; more fraud, more greed, a bunch of new billionaires intent on being the richest in the world even if they did so in a way that de-intelligenced the whole species. This paved the way for another de-intelligencing event; psychopaths such as Gates were keen to predict it (he is a famous white exterminationist that struggles with the psychopathy he hates in himself that he projectively identifies on other people; there is much academic literature that he is an actual psychopath. His murder, mafia, and violation rhetoric confirm this, especially in his use of stranglation and choking to describe business as usual. That langauge ceased to be okay ages ago and delineates real struggles with psychopathy and hate.)
This book is more about beef with the prefrontal cortex; it is sloppy and conflationary of those corners of reality where policing is going just fine without anybody white at the helm, such as the selling of organs by the Chinese communist psychopath or the brutual torture of the anarchocapitalist African warlord. Both have no greater conscience saying, “Did you know this is really wrong and disgusting?” and the fact that that rings hollow to them speaks more to their psychopathy. Psychopathy is a race free issue. This happens all across races. It isn’t about whiteness, and the sloppy conflationary thinking of the author suggests that they struggled with much of the philosophical literature and through sloppy laze pinned it down to whiteness.
The cop-crying has just become insane. It's become truly insane. To the point a blond-haired blue eyed white male with a German last name is calling Kamala Harris a cop. Pure projective identification. It's become too insane.
At this point it just means the prefrontal cortex and the person is a psychopath who associates any prefrontal cortex with the "stop" of the police. They'll literally say that being told to "stop" is a trigger for them. That's a psychopath, hands down. That's all the prefrontal cortex does; has a stopping action WHEN INTELLIGENT to do so, not all the time.
Edit: They give a brief nod to the Catholic and Irish issues in the counterinsurgency but they still don't put it together that that is more than enough to mature their argument away from simply anti-white rhetoric. Despite making this nod at the tail end, they still continue to make it about whiteness and blackness, and completely ignore the whole dynamic in Africa that turns that whole narrative completely on its head. So one more star for mentioning that, but even when they had good evidence that this was a conflation, clearly mentioning the Catholic and Irish bit, they didn't go in and mature the argument into an issue with psychopathy and non-psychopathy and kept it anti-white. That is unforgivable sloppiness especially when they see issues where it's about ethnicity and nationality, and not just white versus black. Again almost all of Africa turns this "it's all white versus black" on its head.
Another pretty good point is their criticism of Locke. Slavery annihilates the idea that labor mixing with the land will give the products to the person who worked the labor. It makes a great point that the American black was seen as a more "advanced" kind of land that didn't have the ability to enforce the law in the same way. So as long as "advanced land" works the "less advanced land" the person who organizes what the "advanced land" does (slaves) is still in the Lockean bit as it is their labor by proxy. The "by proxy" resembles narcissistic extension as this is not in any way the person's direct labor, which would give that product directly to the slave. So this is a great critique of Lockean labor theory and the "More advanced land" of the black body as not able to enforce the law or comprehend it and therefore equivalent to land is a very good critique of Locke, and throws all of law out with it in its inability to answer this question. For that I also give it another star.
Otherwise it was sloppy conflation and for their level of intelligence they could do better. Stop drawing equivalences that in reality can't and won't compete. So competitiveness is poorly placed in several cases, especially when it's performative and just about a sloppy attempt to slop all responsibility on "white people" when they can see where that is inaccurate and about a much deeper neuronal/cognitive maze and nightmare, and they still make the decision to continue to "slop it" after they have mentioned the Catholic/Irish counterinsurgency issues that turn their narrative into something deeper. They could have done better, they had no excuse for not doing better, and they kept it sloppy and literally black and white. Two stars. One extra star for the Lockean bit, that was a very good point.
I just can’t. There are so many white ethnicities that don’t structure or premise themselves on hyperfixation on the police. Heaping all white people together sloppily shows a complete ignorance of European history, in the same way saying all blacks are the African black shows a complete ignorance of the class issues of black on black anarchocapitalism that riddle and destroy Africa, often with little or no white people at any point influencing the situation. I will say Kant is sloppy and what they are saying is true of the sloppy logician, the incompetent court that doesn’t understand its own laws and mets out injustice such as the Israeli courts in the Israeli-Palestine conflict that even struggle with right to live, or the white exterminationist that spews hate on that which is threateningly close to but shows the same psychopathy as the psychopathic black. However, that does not mean all reason itself is the problem. Corruption in communist and Israeli courts, sloppy white exterminationists too threateningly close in poor logic that result in hate of what they hate about themselves in pure form; these are no way real products of reason. The author clearly has had only experience primarily with these sloppy or deeply threatened corrupt courts or white exterminationists; the white psychopath, incapable of real justice. In reality, a just court does not have such a divorce from the matter of its text and its identity. It doesn’t suffer such corruption in arbitrary predecision as beleagures the incompetent court run by psychopaths who may also be white incapable of justice giving a bad name to white people everywhere. But it is a sloppy conflation to conflate that with whiteness, and the ignorance of Irish, Puritan vs. Catholic or other white tribal conflicts is the same as their sloppiness of equating all blacks to the american black. The rich African black tends to an anarchocapitalism that even the worst white slaveholders didn’t tend to. Child soliders, trafficking each other, death by kuru. There’s no whiteness involved in that policing. Sloppy and conflating. If you see reason as the police, you are probably a psychopath. In the same way an organized room will lead to less distress and more health, better more functioning reasoning leads to the same; less violence, less distress, less corruption. This reads like someone only has encountered white courts run by incompetent white psychopaths such as the white exterminationist (a psychopath) or the Israeli courts (infamous for their complete inability to create real justice despite skin color). Though they are growing increasingly extinct, some courts do not struggle to recognize textually in the law the situation in front of them and to rule accordingly with justice. It seems this author hasn’t experienced these courts and conflated them, which isn’t their fault as more and more the white corrupt psychopath endangers those with the prefrontal cortex to not struggle so profoundly with a deep link between what is in front of them and comprehension of the text. More and more corruption and predicision of the white psychopath is the norm and the prefrontral cortex in literally anyone that is the antithesis becomes more and more extinct. They tend to accumulate more of themselves; Covid-19 was a de-intelligencing event put into play mainly by psychopaths, especially the Chinese communist psychopath who didn’t listen to doctor whistleblowers or tried to kill them only to do so later and overblow it and then to learn nothing again. If Covid-19 was a deintelligencing event put into play but the Chinese communist psychopath, in the lack of intelligence, it gave any psychopath of any race a little more power to grab on and cause more answering de-intelligencing events. That is exactly what we saw; more fraud, more greed, a bunch of new billionaires intent on being the richest in the world even if they did so in a way that de-intelligenced the whole species. This paved the way for another de-intelligencing event; psychopaths such as Gates were keen to predict it (he is a famous white exterminationist that struggles with the psychopathy he hates in himself that he projectively identifies on other people; there is much academic literature that he is an actual psychopath. His murder, mafia, and violation rhetoric confirm this, especially in his use of stranglation and choking to describe business as usual. That langauge ceased to be okay ages ago and delineates real struggles with psychopathy and hate.)
This book is more about beef with the prefrontal cortex; it is sloppy and conflationary of those corners of reality where policing is going just fine without anybody white at the helm, such as the selling of organs by the Chinese communist psychopath or the brutual torture of the anarchocapitalist African warlord. Both have no greater conscience saying, “Did you know this is really wrong and disgusting?” and the fact that that rings hollow to them speaks more to their psychopathy. Psychopathy is a race free issue. This happens all across races. It isn’t about whiteness, and the sloppy conflationary thinking of the author suggests that they struggled with much of the philosophical literature and through sloppy laze pinned it down to whiteness.
The cop-crying has just become insane. It's become truly insane. To the point a blond-haired blue eyed white male with a German last name is calling Kamala Harris a cop. Pure projective identification. It's become too insane.
At this point it just means the prefrontal cortex and the person is a psychopath who associates any prefrontal cortex with the "stop" of the police. They'll literally say that being told to "stop" is a trigger for them. That's a psychopath, hands down. That's all the prefrontal cortex does; has a stopping action WHEN INTELLIGENT to do so, not all the time.
Edit: They give a brief nod to the Catholic and Irish issues in the counterinsurgency but they still don't put it together that that is more than enough to mature their argument away from simply anti-white rhetoric. Despite making this nod at the tail end, they still continue to make it about whiteness and blackness, and completely ignore the whole dynamic in Africa that turns that whole narrative completely on its head. So one more star for mentioning that, but even when they had good evidence that this was a conflation, clearly mentioning the Catholic and Irish bit, they didn't go in and mature the argument into an issue with psychopathy and non-psychopathy and kept it anti-white. That is unforgivable sloppiness especially when they see issues where it's about ethnicity and nationality, and not just white versus black. Again almost all of Africa turns this "it's all white versus black" on its head.
Another pretty good point is their criticism of Locke. Slavery annihilates the idea that labor mixing with the land will give the products to the person who worked the labor. It makes a great point that the American black was seen as a more "advanced" kind of land that didn't have the ability to enforce the law in the same way. So as long as "advanced land" works the "less advanced land" the person who organizes what the "advanced land" does (slaves) is still in the Lockean bit as it is their labor by proxy. The "by proxy" resembles narcissistic extension as this is not in any way the person's direct labor, which would give that product directly to the slave. So this is a great critique of Lockean labor theory and the "More advanced land" of the black body as not able to enforce the law or comprehend it and therefore equivalent to land is a very good critique of Locke, and throws all of law out with it in its inability to answer this question. For that I also give it another star.
Otherwise it was sloppy conflation and for their level of intelligence they could do better. Stop drawing equivalences that in reality can't and won't compete. So competitiveness is poorly placed in several cases, especially when it's performative and just about a sloppy attempt to slop all responsibility on "white people" when they can see where that is inaccurate and about a much deeper neuronal/cognitive maze and nightmare, and they still make the decision to continue to "slop it" after they have mentioned the Catholic/Irish counterinsurgency issues that turn their narrative into something deeper. They could have done better, they had no excuse for not doing better, and they kept it sloppy and literally black and white. Two stars. One extra star for the Lockean bit, that was a very good point.
December 6, 2025
Caveat to the rating: this book is clearly not made for non-experts. Written like a dissertation and with prose so dense the 97 pages felt like a real slog. However, my history PhD friend assured me that the field just tends to write like this.
The larger issue, however, is with the substance. The title is suggestive, but the support for the central thesis is minimal. There are a few nice anecdotes and interesting threads drawing on past literature, but a convincing, coherent argument supported by deep research is not apparent in the text.
The larger issue, however, is with the substance. The title is suggestive, but the support for the central thesis is minimal. There are a few nice anecdotes and interesting threads drawing on past literature, but a convincing, coherent argument supported by deep research is not apparent in the text.
May 9, 2024
Well written, really interesting historical approach and forms a persuasive connection between policing and colonialism.
February 11, 2025
A literary staple
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews