As the Trump administration continues to press the boundaries of the Constitution, Johns Hopkins Professor Lester Spence says we need to understand one yet-to-be-examined source of the push towards authoritarianism: urban policing.
Yeap, for a long time liberal and conservative politicians utilized putting POC in jail as a middle ground for policy. It’s basically the mortar of third way politics, popularized by the Clinton’s in the US. Their "super predators " policy was instrumental in breaking the gridlock in Congress in the 90s, and basically responsible for current Democrats willingness to capitulate to the GOP at the drop of a dime. Adopting Third way politics is basically opening an express lane to fascism.
That’s why Nixon made weed and cocaine illegal. You couldn’t give black people and hippies felonies (and prevent them from voting) for being black or hippies.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory; one of the administration officials responsible for it straight up said that was why they did it.
In a 1994 interview, Mr. [John] Ehrlichman said, “You want to know what this was really all about?” He went on:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Yeap, for a long time liberal and conservative politicians utilized putting POC in jail as a middle ground for policy. It’s basically the mortar of third way politics, popularized by the Clinton’s in the US. Their "super predators " policy was instrumental in breaking the gridlock in Congress in the 90s, and basically responsible for current Democrats willingness to capitulate to the GOP at the drop of a dime. Adopting Third way politics is basically opening an express lane to fascism.
That’s why Nixon made weed and cocaine illegal. You couldn’t give black people and hippies felonies (and prevent them from voting) for being black or hippies.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory; one of the administration officials responsible for it straight up said that was why they did it.
https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/