A long-time colleague perceptively pointed out to me that on the topic of Nixon, the DEA, and the War on Drugs Keith Preston delivered an excellent podcast on the role of the war on drugs as part of the power elite’s reaction to the twin student and negro revolutions of the sixties. He sees the war on drugs (and the associated phenomena of prison industrial complex, police militarization and war on terror) and political correctness (and associated phenomena of multiculturalism, affirmative action) as two arms of the same divide and rule strategy. DEA is mentioned one piece of this. He also mentions earlier use of anti-narcotics treaties etc. by earlier expansionists like TR and other progressives who cottoned on to the idea before Nixon.
Keith Preston discusses the power elite’s system of ideological and legal control.
Topics include:
- How international drug prohibition is largely an American creation.
- How the war on drugs was instigated to suppress dissident political movements.
- The various components of the American police state that has emerged in recent decades.
- How constitutional rights have been hollowed out by police state legislation and a compliant judiciary.
- How the system has been able to co-opt past protest movements and integrate these into the system, and how the growth of political correctness is a reflection of this.
- How the ideological superstructure of totalitarian humanism represents the system’s carrot, while the police state represents the stick.
