Sounds Familiar: The War on "Hippies" and Blacks + Media Manipulation

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"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Report: Nixon aide says war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies - CNNPolitics.com

Ehrlichman's comment is the first time the war on drugs has been plainly characterized as a political assault designed to help Nixon win, and keep, the White House.

It's a stark departure from Nixon's public explanation for his first piece of legislation in the war on drugs, delivered in message to Congress in July 1969, which framed it as a response to an increase in heroin addiction and the rising use of marijuana and hallucinogens by students.

However, Nixon's political focus on white voters, the "Silent Majority," is well-known. And Nixon's derision for minorities in private is well-known from his White House recordings.

The comments come as there has been a marked shift in attitudes toward handling drug use -- ranging from the legalization of marijuana in various states to White House candidates focusing heavily on treatment as an answer to New Hampshire's heroin epidemic while they were campaigning across the state.

New Hampshire....NOW its a problem. You can figure that one out.

 

[Dale Smith]

Nixon was part of the establishment and he was involved in the murder of JFK. Watergate was about sending in his "plumbers" to see if the DNC actually had evidence linking him to the murder of JFK. United Flight 553 had 12 people tied to Watergate including E Howard Hunt's wife. E Howard Hunt was one of the people caught at the Watergate Hotel and was also complicit in the murder of JFK. Dorothy Hunt had extorted two million dollars from Nixon as hush money and had it on the flight going into Chicago. The plane crashed and agents were "johnny on the spot" to the site and went through the plane and found the money. Minutes later the fire department and emergency vehicles arrived. The powers that be wanted the Vietnam war and the Golden Triangle that was the biggest producer of opium. The war was never about stopping communism. The rules of engagement were a joke. It was extended for as long as it was to cash in. Antony Sutton revealed that USA.INC was providing spare parts and other military equipment to the USSR that in turn was sending it to the Viet Cong to use against our soldiers. The counter-culture revolution was 100 percent controlled by the CIA ...the hippie movement and the Black Panther party was the controlled opposition. If you were anti-war, you were aligning yourself with the dirty hippies and militant blacks. It was typical of the tactics the CIA uses to silence dissent. They used lots of dirty tactics to silence those that stood up to the criminal corporate "gubermint" and it has only gotten worse since JFK died. This country is FUBAR'd..

Theories and Speculation

 

[WillMunny]

I'm a very, very ex-hippie (I followed the Grateful Dead around the western US in the early '90s) and here's my biggest problem with hippies: their peace/love/granola routine is faker than a $6 bill. If you read hippie cyberspace, hippies are the meanest, most cold-blooded, immature, irresponsible, selfish, self-absorbed, petulant, entitled intellectual retards. With ZERO sense of humor, which I find remarkable for people who do the ultimate laughing-drug, LSD (when I did acid in my teens, I used to laugh myself into physical pain/pulled muscles).

 

[ClosedCaption]

I'm a very, very ex-hippie (I followed the Grateful Dead around the western US in the early '90s) and here's my biggest problem with hippies: their peace/love/granola routine is faker than a $6 bill. If you read hippie cyberspace, hippies are the meanest, most cold-blooded, immature, irresponsible, selfish, self-absorbed, petulant, entitled intellectual retards. With ZERO sense of humor, which I find remarkable for people who do the ultimate laughing-drug, LSD (when I did acid in my teens, I used to laugh myself into physical pain/pulled muscles).

Way to generalize there bud. This should help stop the unfair characterization Nixon was able to put in the media.