United States | News & Politics

8745 readers

167 users here now

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

A Hopkins Professor Says America’s Descent Into Authoritarianism May Have Started With Policing in Blue Cities. If That’s True, We’re in Big Trouble (therealnews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by shreddy_scientist@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 8 months ago

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.”

https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/