There has been a lot made of Trump’s rhetoric around “law and order” and the push to define Democrats and their base as lawless and violent. This is framed as a security issue, but what I think this is *actually* about is political autonomy. Fear of nonwhites being in power

As we all know, violent crime has dropped precipitously over the past few decades. There is no arguing with the data. Cities are safer than ever. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/

So if cities are very much safe relative to 30 years ago, what is behind the Republican push to define cities as violent war zones? Simple—racial threat. The people Republicans are talking to don’t even live in cities, they are much more likely to live in rural areas.

Republicans aren’t talking about the threat of violence in your city. They are talking about the threat of *nonwhites* making political decisions that whites must accept. This, to many people with high levels of racial resentment, FEELS like violence.

There is a parallel for this, that happened in Reconstruction and the years following afterward. In the south, Black people had gained some limited political power post Civil War. Southern whites used intimidation/propaganda to erode these gains. There’s a piece that was striking

That I found from a North Carolina newspaper in 1900. They published an unbelievably racist political cartoon decrying Blacks voting (and making political decisions for whites) as “Negro Rule” https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/325 

Now what post Reconstuction southern whites called “Negro Rule” today’s Republican Party calls “Democrat violence” or “City violence.” The data shows violence in cities is at generational lows. This isn’t about violence, it is about the fear of nonwhites gaining political power