13th Page #4

This can be such a moment.

It's with the Nixon era,

and the law and order period

when crime begins to stand in for race.

If there is one area

where the word "war" is appropriate,

it is in the fight against crime.

Part of what he talked about

was a war on crime.

But that was one of those code words,

what we might call

"dog-whistle politics" now,

which really was referring to

the black political movements of the day,

Black Power, Black Panthers,

the antiwar movement,

the movements for women's

and gay liberation at that time,

which Nixon felt compelled

to fight back against.

Once the federal government,

through the FBI, moves into an area,

this should be warning

to those who engage in these acts

that they eventually

are going to be apprehended.

There's this outcry

for law and order.

And Nixon becomes the person

who articulates that perfectly.

There can be no progress

in America without respect for law.

Many people felt like, uh,

we were losing control.

We need total war

in the United States

against the evils, uh,

that we see in our cities.

Federal spending

for local law enforcement will double.

Time is running out

for the merchants

of crime and corruption

in American society.

The wave of crime is not going to be

the wave of the future

in the United States of America.

We must wage

what I have called "total war"

against public enemy number one

in the United States,

the problem of dangerous drugs.

"A war on drugs."

And that utterance gave birth to this era,

where we decided to deal

with drug addiction and drug dependency

as a crime issue

rather than a health issue.

Hundreds of thousands of people

were sent to jails and prisons

for simple possession of marijuana,

for low-level offenses.

America's public enemy number one

in the United States is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat this enemy,

it is necessary to wage

a new, all-out offensive.

This call for law and order

becomes integral to something that

comes to be known

as the Southern strategy.

Nixon begins to recruit Southern whites,

formerly staunch Democrats,

into the Republican fold.

Persuading poor

and working-class whites

to join the Republican Party in droves...

By speaking to,

in subtle and non-racist terms...

...a thinly veiled racial appeal...

...talking about crime,

by talking about law and order

or the chaos of our urban cities

unleashed by the civil rights movement.

We have launched

an all-out offensive against crime,

against narcotics,

against permissiveness in our country.

The rhetoric of

"get tough" and "law and order,"

um, was part and parcel of the backlash

of the civil rights movement.

A Nixon administration official

Rate this script:3.9 / 15 votes