I’m strongly liberal and anti-Trump, and I really hate Breitbart news and Steve Bannon. But as far as I can tell, there’s a lot clearer evidence that he’s unscrupulous, power-hungry, some kind of crazy anarchist who wants to burn the whole system down, and the biggest troll in the history of the internet; than that he’s a white supremacist. And it bugs me when my fellow liberals constantly take something for granted that I’m not confident is true.
So… prove “us” right. Where’s the actual evidence that Bannon is a white supremacist, white nationalist, racist, or anti-semite?
AFAICT the evidence that Bannon’s own personal views are white-supremacist or anti-semitic is sparse and fuzzy, like his beard. The accusations have been based mostly on his management of Breitbart, which definitely promotes white-supremacist, anti-semitic, racist, xenophobic, you-name-it anti-democratic views.
Personally, I call Bannon a “white supremacism promoter” rather than a “white supremacist”. I don’t know or care what he personally believes, but he’s made it very clear what ideas he’s interested in fostering in public discourse.
Bannon famously told a journalist for Mother Jones that he wanted Breitbart News to be the platform of the alt-right. The alt-right is undeniably a white nationalist movement that uses some of the ugliest stereotypes and language to describe non whites; when called out on it, they invariably say they’re just joking. Bannon as a promoter of the alt-right sure seems like a white nationalist, why else would he want to promote them? If he’s not, he sure picked a strange way to show it. Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion – Mother Jones
Given that one of his main writers is a gay Jew, I think it’s reasonable to say that his stated mission of being anti-PC is accurate. That just doesn’t leave much room to argue for anti-semitism and intolerance. Liberal readers simply aren’t able to catch the sarcasm or to think rationally about what is actually being said.
He may well be a horrible human being, but saying negative things about certain minorities doesn’t always make one a racist. All humans are fallible and “culture” isn’t de facto a good and laudable thing. Though not very many are able to accept that there is such a distinction. And certainly someone who is actively going out of their way to bring up such topics and sensationalize them is going to gather a lot of racists to his feet.
Personally, I would worry more that he’s a journalist than that he’s a racist or a troll. In what way does a journalism background make you a good and reasonable choice to lead national security?
Huh, what’s wrong with wanting to establish the United States as a nation populated exclusively by whites? What a strange question. I guess at the minimum, there are lots and lots of non-whites living in the US who have just as much right to be there as Bannon and Spencer. Does that help?
It depends on if you agree that “a war of northern aggression” is PC talk for supporting racism. Blaming president Lincoln for the confederacies defection when they often called out their fears around protecting slavery as a primary reason they left is a good indicator.
Sorry you will have to sit through it to find the reference, I can’t sit through his speech again.
But he has also bragged that Breitbart News is “the platform for the alt-right,”
He describes Islam as “a political ideology” and Sharia law as “like Nazism, fascism, and communism.”
Add in his victim blaming of minorities etc…
If he is not racist he has been willing to strategically encourage people’s hate as a way of inciting them to action. The fact that he is willing to brands him with that label or indicates that he is possibly a sociopath.
But it is pretty simple, if you sell hate, make your living off hate, people will assume that you hate.
True. Maybe they’ll come up with a solution for how to get rid of all those non-white people. It might take a few iterations, but I’m sure there’s a Final Solution…
I’m not amazingly desirous of defending the alt-right, but I will note that declaring Meryl Streep the intellectual leader of Liberals does not make this the truth, that Jefferson and Hamilton were both leaders of ‘American’ political thought, against British, and that there’s money to be made by finding an untapped market and filling it.
I don’t know enough about any of this to make anything like a dependable and conclusive answer. But an hour’s worth of Googling made me pretty hesitant to endorse the view that Bannon should properly be labeled a racist. That’s not an endorsement of him, nor the choices he would make in regards to minorities. It’s just saying that it does not seem to be that simple and I think that line of thought will make it easier to get yourself dismissed as an idiot if you try to attack him through that path.
Hey, maybe he got better now [sarcasm], but as Kimstu noted I agree that what the actions and the kind of reporting shows that Bannon panders a lot to xenophobes, bigots and racists. So much so that whereas he is a panderer or a racist it looks more to be a distinction with not much of a difference.
And then we got his latest “work” he has been pointed as the one that added the rejection of even green card holders in the latest Trump executive order.
It doesn’t have to lead to genocide to be objectionable. “Not quite so bad as Hitler” isn’t much of a sales pitch, is it?
The problem with being a “white nationalist” is that “white” isn’t really a nation, is it? So this looks a lot like an attempt to define a nation - in this case, the American nation - as white, thereby excluding, marginalising and alienating non-whites.
I think it’s clear that the alt-right is a racist organization, would you agree? And I would argue that wanting to build a platform for a racist organization to spread its message is probably not something that a non-racist would work towards. I think any distinction between Bannon as a racist versus Bannon as a racist enabler is meaningless, the results are exactly the same.
A nation is always a manufactured construct. Serbs and Croats have little differences, did not stop the wars in the 1990’s. Black Americans share language, religion and culture with white Americans, yet are differentiated. In your own homeland, you have ethnically identical peoples fighting long wars over different views of nationhood and identity.
In a foreigners perspective, Whites in the US absolutely seem to be and be thought of as a distinct entity from others. I don’t see white nationalism on its own being objectionable. Policies and ideologies that it’s adherents put out? Certainly can be objectionable.
In their divorce proceedings, Bannon’s second wife said that he didn’t want their kids to go to a particular school because there were too many Jews there.
Serbs and Croats generally agree on at least one thing; they are two nations, not a single Serbo-Croat nation. Similarly the two communities in Ireland do identify one another as distinct communities.
Americans, by contrast, are generally pretty strong on the view that the US is one nation, and that a black American is just as much an American as a white American. White nationalists reject that view. While you may not find that stance objectionable, many will.
It was Jefferson and Adams, not Jefferson and Hamilton. The latter pair were famous political enemies, but Hamilton’s philosophy was all Adamsian. As many if not most of the premises of the Republicans are today. (Yes, I know there was bad blood between Jefferson and Adams as well, but the pitched political battles were mostly with Hamilton.)