Urgent and timely, Alec Karakatsanis has offered up in Copaganda a clear look at how our police state has come to be, narrowing in on the systems that have convinced us police should exist as they do and are a net positive for the communities they operate in. This is a great follow-up to The End of Policing, Locking Up Our Own, and Defund, focusing on how we got here, which I think is a great contribution.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in April. As someone who does anti propaganda work as part of their activism, I cannot express how important this book is. It lays out all elements carefully. Through out the book the sarcasm increases and I just liked how it makes it more personal.

This Book Has So Very Many Problems. Read It Anyway. First, let's dispense with the fact that this is a fairly well documented book, clocking in at about 26% documentation... even if Karakatsanis' sources are pretty clearly slanted one direction... which we'll get into momentarily. No matter what else is said here, everyone considering reading this text should at least appreciate that Karakatsanis clearly shows his work. :)

Because of my own work and experiences within the anti-police-brutality spaces and indeed even the projects I was working with before giving them up in favor of book blogging, I bring a lot to this particular book that not everyone will have... which gives me a fairly unique perspective on it overall.

I can tell you that even as a former Libertarian Party official and activist, and thus someone who knew a lot of people of a *very* wide range of political persuasions... I've known *few* over the years who would be to the left of Karakatsanis. Indeed, your opinion of terms like "pregnant person" and "wage theft" is likely a good barometer of how often you're going to want to defenestrate this particular text. "Wage theft" seemingly a phrase Karakatsanis is particularly fond of.

This noted, *from his perspective*, the narrative here is at least largely coherent, and even from such a far leftist perspective, he brings up a fair amount of solid points that every American *should* read and understand... even if you have to squeeze your nose so hard you'll be afraid it will turn into a diamond as you do.

The problem, and the star deduction, comes from the simple fact that very nearly every single logical problem Karakatsanis decries in others... he also largely *employs* in building his "arguments" against them.

Hell, he even manages to fall into former Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington's "perception of crime" problem - claiming over and over (and over and over and over and over...) that "statistics say" crime is down (which, as he points out, is *always true*... when you're selective with your time ranges ;) ) even as people report seeing ever more crime. As Richard Pryor famously said - "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?".

Indeed, part of the star deduction also comes from the pervasive "no true Scotsman" problem that runs rampant through this text. No matter how far left the politician, no matter how hard the most progressive activists pushed for a particular policy - especially in California and particularly the Bay Area - Karakatsanis *insists* that the policies were never actually progressive, that it was instead the bureaucrats and the media ("controlled" by the usual leftist scapegoats) - those he deems the "punishment bureaucracy" and that the *actual* leftist policy had never been implemented.

Still, despite the rampant problems and extremist politics, there really is quite a bit here about understanding how police and media collude and conspire to hide essential information from the rest of us, so you really do need to read this book.

Ultimately, I think there is a point Karakatsanis tries to make but utterly fails to, in his attempt to appear authoritative here:

Question. Everything.

Including this book.

And I'll go so far as to say even this very review.

Read the book yourself. Write your own review of it - cuss me up one wall and down the other if you think I deserve it, if you think Karakatsanis is perfectly correct in all things and should never possibly be even looked askance at, much less questioned. Or maybe you'll agree with me to some extent or another. *My* entire point here is to get you to read the book yourself and make up your own mind about it. I guarantee you you're going to learn *something* you didn't previously know along the way.

Recommended.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eArc in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis is a powerful, thought-provoking examination of how the American public is manipulated and mislead into believing and supporting mass incarceration and an increasingly militarized police force. I learn so much from this book. Karakatsanis's prose is very easy to understand and straight to the point. The research is impeccable. Even as someone who is generally aware of the presence of copaganda, I was shocked at how widespread the propaganda is.

This book should be required reading for everyone. 10/10