Donald Trump’s campaign language is disturbing, but not for the reason you might think. There is no doubt that Trump is inciting crowds when he promises to pay legal fees if supporters rough up protesters. He is also inciting dangerous behavior when he disgustedly says “get them out of here,” or recalls the good old days when protesters got carried out on a stretcher.

None of that is behavior becoming of a candidate for the Oval Office. It is the language of an old-style mob boss or union enforcer, and if that is the image Trump thinks the majority of the nation wants from a president, he’s sorely mistaken.

Some people want to compare Trump to Hitler, a comparison that greatly cheapens the horrors of the Holocaust. A more apt comparison can be found in George Wallace, a populist Democrat-turned-third-party candidate.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wallace opposed integration and played into the fears of alienated white voters. He laid the groundwork for a troubling strain of conservative dogma that had nothing to do with public policy and everything to do with racial discord and authoritarianism. Indirectly, he gave birth to the Southern Strategy that has been a dog whistle to some extent in the rhetoric of every GOP campaign since then. Now, Trump has replaced the dog whistle with a bullhorn.

Also, like Wallace, Trump plays the law-and-order card, as noted in a fivethirtyeight.com piece by Julia Azari, an associate professor of political science at Marquette University.

“As Trump rallies attract protesters . . . racial tension has fused with the old 1960s definitions of law-and-order politics: disdain for those who question tradition and support for the use of force to keep order. Over the past 50 years, law-and-order politics has evolved to mean different things. The 2016 definition has arrived.”

She is right. Trump calls the protesters “thugs,” but defends a 78-year-old white supporter as “passionate” when he sucker-punches a protester as security is removing him. Why should Trump think it is OK for his supporters to seek their pound of flesh? Obviously, Trump should let security escort people from the rally without adding his brand of inciting commentary. Instead, he continues to double down on his defense of his supporters with inflammatory and totally unnecessary remarks. Once again, Trump spins his created chaos into another strand in his web of victimization narrative.

What makes Trump arguably more dangerous than Wallace is that he could win the GOP nomination, which would put him just a single fall election away from the White House. Usually, this brand of nonsense has a short shelf life. Wallace, who ran several times for president, never was a serious threat to become president. Trump is.

America has tried hard to keep its demons under wraps. Trump is encouraging those demons to become more overt and public, which puts fringe attitudes into mainstream thought. And frankly, I wonder how long it will take for the nation to suppress its demons one more time.

Jim Mitchell is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.