I appreciated this @schwartzapfel article on the history of the term "law and order," drawing on the insights of several colleagues. No question: the term is racist & Trump uses it to attack BLM. But I have a small addendum...
THREAD https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/10/07/what-trump-really-means-when-he-tweets-law-order

The article shows that "law and order" became mainstream in the mid-1960s as a slightly more acceptable way to proclaim that the Civil Rights Movement was causing social breakdown & leading to street crime. In other words, it was a way to politicize crime/criminalize politics.

I dealt with a bit of the 1960s history of this term in Badges Without Borders, but I left a lot on the cutting-room floor. I think that there are two add'l key pieces to the history of the widespread, bipartisan adoption of "law and order" as a catch phrase in US politics.

The term's adoption is important because this history, as the article points out, is one of right-wing/racist officials using the term as a cudgel, and more liberal officials then pushing tougher crime-control measures and investment in law enforcement in response.

So how did the term "law and order," which everyone knew was basically a racist epithet, get laundered into actual investment in policing? First, police themselves adopted it. Far right figures in law enforcement used this term long before Goldwater did, for the same purpose.

Then, more moderate (but not, like, actually moderate) figures in law enforcement started using the term too, particularly as the Civil Rights Mvmt gained ground and Black urban rebellions occurred. This helped liberal officials transform the term's bigotry into policy.

Second, the character of the crime threat that "law and order" implied was changing. As @VeslaWeaver points out (cited in this article), there was a bi-directional shift. Anti-racist political mobilization was said to cause street crime, and street crime became political.

Weaver: "Before 1960, crime was about the drunk, the 'mad-dog sex killer,' and the juvenile hoodlum. FBI Director Hoover tried to bring crime to the policy agenda and to public concern, most often proclaiming the link between communism and crime..." After 1964, everyone did!

This is so important because it brings in the Cold War context. And this is my main point. It's possible to imagine
"law and order" becoming a way for whites to demonize Black civil rights mobilization as causing crime outside the Cold War context, but it's hard.

The reason, as I have tried to show in my book, is that US police experts spent a decade+ before Goldwater's run actually saying that communism and crime went hand in hand--and to stop the communist threat, the US needed to support cops globally.

What happened in autumn 1964 is that the Johnson administration made the first moves toward federal anticrime efforts, by redirecting inward the existing Cold War effort to bolster police abroad. Here's my wild claim: practically, this mattered more than Goldwater.

And, moreover, once US officials started talking about street crime and political subversion in the same breath, this hailed the coterie of global policing/counterinsurgency experts I cover in the book, who took advantage and started to gain more influence in domestic circles.

Naomi Murakawa offers a key insight on this era: crime policy wasn't somehow "non-racist" at first and then unfortunately turned into an instrument of racism by Goldwater et al once the CRM gained ground. It was always racist.

The corollary, based on my research, is that there was actually no "non-political" version of law and order that became politicized and turned into a tool of anti-communism. Law and order as an ideology and an epithet was always anti-communist, always political.

The reason is that, thanks to the efforts of Hoover and the CIA alike, cops were always "the first line of defense" against communism. The global Cold War was a police problem. "Law and order" was the Cold War coming home.

And guess what...It still is. It wouldn't make sense to try to conflate Black political mobilization and crime today unless the Cold War still resonated. Or, put another way, the Cold War still haunts us b/c it's still possible to make this conflation.

The hopeful part here is that I actually think anti-communism is less resonant nowadays and Trump's appeals to law and order aren't working. OTOH, Biden is the Democrat who, more than literally anyone else, made a career by adopting the law and order mantra.

Anyway, read my book if you want more thoughts on this history. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520295629/badges-without-borders