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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 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The article draws the line from increased policing in the 90's and 00's to today. I think you can also extend that line further back as a response to the great migration. This isn't a criticism of the article, just adding more to it. And I think the great migration just needs to get talked about more often. We've never really dealt with the fact that many Black communities in the north were formed by refugees fleeing terrorism in the south. They weren't welcomed with open arms in the north, but were rather ghettoized and used as a source of cheaper labor

Of course, the line always goes back further. America's descent into authoritarianism isn't really a "descent" as much as an expansion of who the targets are

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week 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/