Willie Horton will never die
by digby
My Salon piece today is about the re-emergence of the GOP “law and order” campaign in this election cycle:
Every election season brings at least a few think pieces about the notorious Willie Horton ad and what it meant to American politics. This is a good thing to the extent that it reminds people of just how racist the whole “law and order” campaign that animated U.S. politics from the time of the civil rights movement on really is. In fact, take a look at it again just to remind yourself of the bad old days:
Infamous GOP strategist Lee Atwater saw that ad and declared he was going to make Willie Horton Michael Dukakis’ running mate. This was a perfect example of his contention that Republicans would need to make their pitch a lot more abstract than just running around screaming the N-word. The law and order campaigns did that by pointing at the “killer, killer, killer” — with a black face.
Read on...
If you haven’t seen this year’s version, here it is:
I discuss the history of various racist appeals over the years and how certain current politicians (Ted Cruz for instance) laud the leaders of the past who used them.
After I filed that piece I came across this, which may explain why the fear campaigns include these moldy old racist tropes. It’s a survey of what people are afraid of. The list is fairly mundane, but this was interesting:
Turning to the crime section of the Chapman Survey on American Fears, the team discovered findings that not only surprised them, but also those who work in fields pertaining to crime.
“What we found when we asked a series of questions pertaining to fears of various crimes is that a majority of Americans not only fear crimes such as, child abduction, gang violence, sexual assaults and others; but they also believe these crimes (and others) have increased over the past 20 years,” said Dr. Edward Day who led this portion of the research and analysis. “When we looked at statistical data from police and FBI records, it showed crime has actually decreased in America in the past 20 years. Criminologists often get angry responses when we try to tell people the crime rate has gone down.”
Despite evidence to the contrary, Americans do not feel like the United States is becoming a safer place. The Chapman Survey on American Fears asked how they think prevalence of several crimes today compare with 20 years ago. In all cases, the clear majority of respondents were pessimistic; and in all cases Americans believe crime has at least remained steady. Crimes specifically asked about were: child abduction, gang violence, human trafficking, mass riots, pedophilia, school shootings, serial killing and sexual assault.
This irrationality distorts our politics in a way that favors the conservatives who are more than happy to pimp the “law and order” trope and tickle the racist lizard brains of their followers. As you can see, they’re doing it in this race already. Combined with the terrorism fear fest they’re aiming at women which I discussed yesterday the GOP strategy is pretty clear: same as it ever was — “they’re comin’ tah git yah!”
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