The Making of the American Police State

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1. I like this part, note the comment attributed to that sweetheart Nixon...

Here were the old demonizing tropes of white racism. Black people were cast as dangerous, ignorant, unworthy of full citizenship, and thus in need of state repression. As Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, put it in his diary: “[The President] emphasized that you have to face that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” A federal war on heroin followed and with it came new laws like the RICO Act that empowered prosecutors. At the same time Nixon began his appeal to “the silent majority,” a group not named as white but understood as such.