Thread by @PatBlanchfield

(quietly) the link between alcohol and violence is real and awful, but Prohibition was also built on WASP racism and entailed a giant exercise of state violence against the poor and minorities while leaving white elites largely untouched

for those curious, let me enthusiastically recommend the work of Lisa McGirr on this point books.wwnorton.com/books/The-War-…. in a nutshell, she documents how Prohibition produced the template for modern discriminatory policing of entire communities

among other things, Prohibition produced (1) a devastating corrosion of the Fourth Amendment (but only for blacks and immigrants, natch); (2)
the first real militarization of Federal policing, in an arms race with an ever-more-brutal underground economy

and, perhaps most decisively, (3) a normalization of total, flagrant impunity for elites, who could buy smuggled booze, have it prescribed by docs, throw Gatsby-esque parties etc, and still beat and kill women as always, with the law not applying to them at all

probably even greater than the War on Drugs/Crime of the '70s (for which it provided a model and almost uncanny preview) the Prohibition experiment of the '20s was a nightmare, that somehow Americans consistently forget and/or romanticize. it's scary TBH