The novelist William Faulkner said: “The past is not dead. It is not even past.” The past 72 hours of burning US cities triggered parallels with 1968 — a year of urban white flight that ended with the election of Richard Nixon. He won on a law-and-order platform that appealed implicitly to white anxiety. Donald Trump does not deal in implicit language. In response to protests in Minneapolis after the police suffocation last week of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, Mr Trump tweeted: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The line was used by George Wallace, the segregationist third-party candidate in 1968. Republicans launched the “southern strategy” to win over resentful white Democrats after the civil rights revolution. Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign was the apotheosis of that approach.
小说家威廉•福克纳(William Faulkner)曾说：“过去从未消亡。它甚至从未过去。”前几天美国多地发生的打砸抢烧让人想起了1968年发生的类似事件——那一年，住在市区的白人纷纷逃亡，最终以理查德•尼克松(Richard Nixon)当选总统而结束。尼克松依靠“法律与秩序”的政纲胜选，这一政纲隐晦地迎合了白人的焦虑情绪。但唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的用语就不怎么含蓄了。上周，46岁的黑人乔治•弗洛伊德(George Floyd)被警察压迫窒息而亡，明尼阿波利斯市爆发抗议活动。对此，特朗普在Twitter发帖表示：“当抢劫开始时，射击就会开始。”这句话曾被主张种族隔离的1968年大选第三党候选人乔治•华莱士(George Wallace)用过。民权革命后，共和党发起“南方战略”，拉拢民主党中愤愤不平的白人。特朗普2016年的竞选活动就把这种方法运用得炉火纯青。