I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted our Future.

[Tjm86]

Well this arrived today and despite only planning on reading the introduction I found myself drawn in far further than intended. 

Molcher seems to be managing to walk a fine tightrope.  A lot of what the first chapter or so contains is probably incredibly familiar to long time readers, especially those who have read much of the material already published on the early days of Tooth.  So Molcher's focus on placing it within the wider narrative of the time relating to morality, policing and politics makes for an interesting slant.

It is also interesting how he manages to weave in what is potentially a far longer history of inappropriate policing than we tend to give credit.  We see events such as the Everard vigil as an aberration when they actually fit a decades old (or even older) record of such activity. 

Molcher reminds us of police actions during strikes back in the 70's or events such as the Notting Hill riots.  In his potted history of British policing he skims over many of the skeletons in the closet of the "Boys In Blue" such as the handling of the Suffragettes or the miners strikes of the early 20th Century (it is mildly ironic that the troops called in to support the police during the "Tonypandy Riots" displayed uncanny common sense in refusing to ride down the miners at the behest of the police.  Churchill may still be held in disdain for sending in the cavalry but it actually turned out to be a blessing for the miners).

All this is by way of placing Dredd in the context of the 'zeitgeist' of the times.  Granted it is something that has been touched on many times but not so much in relation to the reality of policing in this country. 

It has the added advantage of being written by someone who does actually 'get' Dredd and has a thorough knowledge of his history.  Quite a contrast to the Sequart book on Dredd that often reads like a set of failed GCSE essays.

It is going to be interesting to see how it evolves and whether he does succeed in delivering a convincing argument as to how accurately Dredd has foreshadowed developments.

[Tjm86]

Chapter 3: Return of Rico.

This is where I feel Molcher fails to make his argument succinctly.  Possibly because events have overtaken him.  After all, he focuses to a lesser extent on corruption in the Met back in the '70's in addition to the Everard vigil.  Since then at least a dozen officers have faced conviction, Carrick being the most prominent. 

Then we have the case of Nicola Bulley and the decision of Lancashire police to reveal quite personal details about the missing person that might not have been revealed in different circumstances. (I wonder if I would have faced revelations of alcohol and medication misuse, or the fact that I've spent the last decade being treated for trauma, but then I'm a 'bloke').

Molcher tries to foreground the need for a police service to have a body dedicated to the "policing of police" but seems to miss the simple fact that British policing lacks such a body.  What seems evident is that failings are left alone, systemic issues continue irrespective of recognition and it is hard to see what benefit there is to "modern British policing."

Maybe that is the point Molcher is driving towards: policing by "consent" has not only failed but leaves the most vulnerable in society open to dangers that the likes of Peel could not even begin to conceive. 

Certainly this chapter fails to drive this home.  Even leaving the police's record on partner aggression and abuse, it's utterly dismal record on child sexual exploitation (Rochdale amongst others ...) and domestic violence is beyond categorisation.  Molcher focuses on the most high profile issues whilst glossing over more regular failings.  Then again he also challenges the notion of "a few bad 'runs'" (to quote Cressida Dick) with a view to questioning the moral status of the police.

Is this where Molcher has failed to keep pace with the narrative.  How would this chapter have evolved if he had included Judge Pin in his analysis.  What about the role of Judge Gerhardt?  There is a place in later chapters for a reflection on Judge Cal.  Will the SJS receive similar consideration ...

[Bad City Blue]

I dragged myself through the first 100 pages and was skipping far too much in yawnful boredom. That was enough for me, it was just a history lecture.

[Dandontdare]

Quite a contrast to the Sequart book on Dredd that often reads like a set of failed GCSE essays.

Hadn't heard of this and it sounds awful, but I just ordered myself a copy 'cos I have to read it. Cheers for bringing it to my attention.

On the other hand, while the premise is ripe for analysis, I can't seem to work up much time or enthusiasm to read Molch-R's take on it. Let us know how it pans out - #takingonefortheteam

[GoGilesGo]

There is a pretty good podcast interview with some of the authors of Judging Dredd here

https://2000ad.com/news/the-2000-ad-thrill-cast-lockdown-tapes-judging-dredd/

[JohnW]

It is going to be interesting to see how it evolves

Anything further to report on this, Tjm86?

I've been looking at the comments on Amazon: not the positives but the one-star stinkers.
One reviewer uses the word 'wokerati' as an adjective. If I were Michael Molcher I might just wear that one as a badge of pride.
I'm still not inclined to grab myself a copy because I prefer my fascist dystopias to stay 122 years in the future, but I'm most curious to know what the people on this board think.

[Tjm86]

I really should have kept up with this.  I'm in two minds at times.  It's pretty well written all things considered and Molcher clearly knows his stuff.  The links he draws between developments in criminal justice practice here and in the states with the world of Dredd are actually quite compelling.

I would agree with Bad City Blue that sometimes the historical dimension is perhaps overplayed.  After all, it is supposed to be about how Dredd predicted the future.  Some of the later chapters are better at drilling into contemporary issues and looking at the extent to which these ideas were explored in-depth in earlier Dredd stories.  Discussions around the surveillance state are a good example here.

There's an interesting chapter about the Runner by Wagner and Fegredo, the story in which Dredd chases down a long distance runner who ends up dead by the end of the tale.  He uses it to explore race in mega city one (something that has been a topic of discussion in these parts of late in light of the recent Magazine tale involving One-Eyed Jack).  Given how perennial the issue of racism is, prediction might be stretching things here but it does provide ground for an interesting discussion.

Overall it works out far better than the tome produced by Seq-art.  It benefits from someone who at the very least does actually understand Dredd and can link it coherently with social and criminological theory as well as history and current affairs.

Certainly it is a far cry from woke.  Although that does seem to be an insult for anyone who holds opinions slightly to the left of Atilla the Hun ...

[IndigoPrime]

I've not read my copy yet, but those reviews are quite something. The first one-star review stood out:

If the author was being burgled or mugged he's welcome to shout 'Don't call the fascist pigs', but I'm guessing not.

Presumably without irony, that is almost lifted from Dredd, with his line during the democracy referendum about whether you'd rather you want him riding up or your elected representative. I mean, come on.

He also seems to wilfully misunderstand Dredd's character.

Right. The man who wrote dozens of in-depth essays for the Dredd Hachette series and who runs PR for Rebellion wilfully misunderstands Dredd's character. OK.

Yes, there is the police state aspect to it

Ah, so we're in agreement?

but

Oh.

Dredd is fundamentally a good human being who does not hesitate to put his life at risk for citizens, has saved the city countless times and also at times recognises the failings of the system but crucially understands it is all there is between order and the complete collapse of society.

Dredd has committed genocide on more than one occasion. He is not fundamentally a good person. He has glimmers of humanity, primarily because John Wagner decided to give Dredd some nuance and evolution. But he's also long been the figurehead of a fascist state and has used his powers to commit atrocities. That he sometimes morally does the right/human thing doesn't counter all the other stuff. And that is kind of the point of Dredd – that he does exist in this state of sometimes hero/mostly oppressive and heavily armed judge/jury/executioner.

It's that grey area that people critical of anyone who points out the bad things about Dredd   don't seem to get. But Molcher clearly does – and I'm sure any folks who were at his Cartoon Museum talk (and, I imagine, any of his other tour dates) would agree.

[JohnW]

He is not fundamentally a good person.

It depends on what you mean by good.
Dredd's first and foremost a hard bastard and I always felt that he was good or bad depending on how John Wagner happened to be feeling that day. Thing always was though, that good or bad, Dredd's right.
As for the system he serves? I think the guiding principle is, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The judges say they're about justice, but after so long in power they're really about the law, and the law is self-serving.

But then there's the other guiding principle: We get the government we deserve.
If you had to police a few hundred million mega-cits in all their criminal idiocy, you'd be a pretty merciless and unforgiving sonuvabitch yourself.

[Funt Solo]

Judge Dredd has always been highly entertaining - but he's not a hero. He sometimes does heroic things, as has been pointed out.

He's like real police - sometimes they can do heroic things. Other times, they confiscate rape alarms. Sometimes they solve complex crimes. Sometimes they hire someone to be the press liaison who doesn't understand what "institutionally racist" actually means.

Heroic and brutalist. Smart and dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers.

Young Ones policemen

[nxylas]

A bit off=topic, but Hugo Rifkind compared Suella Braverman to Judge Dredd in a column in today's Times. It was not meant as a compliment.

[Jim_Campbell]

Thing always was though, that good or bad, Dredd's right.

Within his own value system. The point is to get us to question that value system.

The thing about Dredd, as a strip (as I'm sure I've banged on about before), is that whole "the city is the real character" take misses the crucial element. The city isn't the main character, but it is essential to the strip and explains the fundamental point that eludes so many writers who manage to get Dredd wrong...

The writers who get Dredd wrong go into their story wondering why his character doesn't have an arc, wondering how they can find something new or interesting to do with the character... which is the exact opposite of the entire point of the strip. Mega City 1 is a stand-in for the seething chaos of any modern society — change is continual and often comes at us at a bewildering pace. The entire point of the strip is that, in the midst of that maelstrom of change, Dredd is unchanging, unbending, constant, and, for all his obvious faults, reliable.

There's something undeniably appealing and reassuring in that, which, in turn, tells us something about the appeal of fascism. As MOLCH-R is fond of saying: "Warning, not instruction manual."

[Hawkmumbler]

My very first prog at the seminal (for my own experiences, of course) Mike Carroll Dredd on-off 'Caterpillars' front and centre* and it's whole cloth self contained perspective on the value system Jim so eloquently explored there was a massive selling point on getting my invested in the world of Mega-City 1 in the first instance.

*Should be noted, this was before I realised Dredd was a product of the 2000AD machine to begin with, I picked up the prog because it had a T-Rex with 666 tattooed on its noggin eating a cowboy on the cover.
Something never change.

[sheridan]

After extensive searching I've managed to find the Times article (without paying for a Times subscription).  I've put the interesting bit in bold.

HUGO RIFKIND
Sorry, Rishi, you're to blame for Braverman
Prime minister vowed to restore seriousness and stability but retaining the home secretary fatally undermines that
Hugo Rifkind
Monday May 22 2023, 9.00pm BST, The Times
Let's start by floating two possibilities for the rest of this parliament. Ready? They are: a) that Suella Braverman eventually says or does something that means she can't stay in government; or b) that she doesn't. Now, ask yourself which seems more likely.
While you're pondering that, let's jump over to Rishi Sunak at the G7 summit in Hiroshima on Sunday. There he was, having just spent three days being one of the seven most important people in the free world, talking wars and jets and all that other big geopolitical stuff. Only, what's the first question he gets asked? Step forward the BBC's Chris Mason, asking about the Sunday Times story that Braverman sought help from civil servants over a speeding fine.
Sunak frowns. He winces. He drinks a glass of water. Even after that, though, his reply — "Do you have any questions about . . . the summit?" — still has all the thin and dangerous fury of Genghis Khan coming back to his war chariot to find it's got a wheel clamp. He's beyond all that stuff. He's above it. Except he's not.
Suella Braverman is a problem. She has always been a problem, and she still is. And yet this week some feel she is being smeared. "It is no coincidence," suggested the Conservative MP Miriam Cates, "that it's in the same week that she had been very vocal about the need to put proper limits on legal migration." The problem with this, though, is that it suggests some vast hinterland of other weeks when having Braverman in his government has caused Sunak no embarrassment at all.
Her current infraction, all that being said, doesn't seem a terribly big deal. Caught speeding, she asked her civil servants if they could arrange for her speed awareness course to be done privately. They said no. That's it. Call this "minister tries to dodge speeding fine" and it sounds terrible. Call it "minister asks innocent question" and it sounds like almost nothing at all. So maybe, sure, there really is some blobbish plot to get rid of the home secretary. Although if there isn't, I find myself wondering, why not?
Right at the top of Sunak's cabinet, remarkably enough, all three of the great offices of state are still occupied by people first put in place by Liz Truss. Granted, they don't have much else in common. James Cleverly, for example, is the cabinet equivalent of the bathroom you can't quite be bothered to change when you move into a new house. The toilet still flushes; it'll do for now. Jeremy Hunt, meanwhile, was technically a Truss appointment but having replaced the disastrous Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor, he's better understood as a Sunak appointment who just got there early.
Braverman is a different kettle of fish. There were howls of dismay even in 2020 when Boris Johnson made her attorney-general, thanks to a previous attack on judges for ignoring politics. You might think this rather the point of judges, as indeed do they. She'd go on to suggest that governments were allowed to break international law and to declare that there had been nothing illegal about Dominic Cummings' infamous motorised eye-test, when not even the police, let alone the courts, had yet said any such thing. Rather than upholding the rule of law, she often sort of seemed to think she was the law. Like Judge Dredd.
Few were surprised when Truss made her home secretary, faithful as it was to the overarching Truss philosophy of doing the worst thing whenever possible. You may recall, though, she was actually forced to resign from that cabinet at the height of its dysfunction because of some baffling scandal about an email. Ask even seasoned Westminster hacks what happened there and they're liable to wince and shrug. As if some political shenanigans are too twisted for human ken, like the Upside Down in Stranger Things. That Sunak opted to reappoint her, a mere six days later, cuts right to the heart of his biggest problem. "This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level," he'd just said, and this was no mere John Major-style "back to basics" hostage to fortune. Because he knew, Sunak, what he had to do.
He knew that the great Tory drift into unseriousness, which beleaguered Theresa May and was exploited by Boris Johnson, had continued, under Truss, to slam the British economy into a wall. He knew that his party's reputation was at rock bottom and he knew that a large part of the reason for that was personnel. And so, alongside the five pledges to the British people he eventually came up with, there has always been a sixth unspoken one. Which is something to do with no longer letting government be dominated by the sort of characters who, as the Twitter meme has it, would struggle to get out of Willy Wonka's factory alive.
The trouble is, he doesn't quite have the guts. He didn't have them right at the start, when the Truss project had flailed off into the sun and he could have done almost anything. And he certainly doesn't have them now, when the challenges to his authority have become so routine that his own cabinet ministers get to deliver them from the stage at rival conferences to which he isn't even invited.
So yes, up there on his own stage in Hiroshima, fresh from trying to avert World War Three, I've no doubt he thought it maddening, dim and trivial that he was being bothered with any of this nonsense. It is he, though, who made the mistake of inviting the nonsense back into government, exactly when it was at its weakest — and he who still seems to lack the courage to knock it on the head. And when you mess up, as Braverman has learnt, you can't dodge the penalty. It's just a question of how you pay.

[GoGilesGo]

Spectator review

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/judge-dredd-the-prescience-of-a-45-year-old-comic-strip/