More recently, white fear of Black violence and Black dominance has lead to misguided urban policies, white flight from urban areas, the rise of the suburbs, difficulties enacting common-sense gun measures and the militarization of policing.
One could argue that Trump’s law and order mantra has its roots in Richard Nixon’s success with it in the 1968 presidential campaign. As Time magazine reported at the time, to some it was “a shorthand message promising repression of the black community”— and to that community, it was “a bleak warning that worse times may be coming.”
This sentiment, if not the phrase itself, has been part of presidential politics ever since. George Bush used it in 1988 with his Willie Horton campaign ad. Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill was an effort to demonstrate that Democrats could be tough on crime. George W. Bush ran his campaign for governor of Texas using a Willie Horton-style ad, promising to be tough on crime and asserting that his opponent, Ann Richards, was soft on it.
The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, may have tapped into it a bit when she claimed that Barack Obama was “palling around with terrorists.”
And now Trump has brought it raging back. He knows, as politicians have known before him, how white fear of violence can be exploited and used as a political tool. He has done it before, and he will do it again.
White people still, for now, are the majority of the population in this country and hold the lion’s share of the country’s power. Trump knows that if he can convince enough of them that they are under threat — that their personal safety, their way of life, their heritage, and their hold on power are in danger — they will act to protect what they have.
Trump believes what his departing counsel Kellyanne Conway told “Fox and Friends” last week: that “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”
But Trump isn’t the originator of law and order demagogy, he’s just its latest vicar.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.