A week ago I published a post on Medium pleading with journalists to focus their coverage on what can easily be proven, instead of grasping at straws. In that article I called Steve Bannon a white supremacist without providing evidence, because I didn’t realize that the obvious needed to be spelled out. I now realize that it does, and will attempt to spell it out below.
About a year ago, after a social media debate on Black Lives Matter, I received a link in my inbox. It contained a video by Paul Joseph Waton, who is the British version of Tomi Lahren, in the sense that they are both young, well spoken firebrands. Waton also works for Infowars, number one super fan of Donald Trump and host of illuminating articles like “FORGET TORNADOES. RAIN BOMBS ARE COMING FOR YOUR TOWN.” I responded to the message and said I wouldn’t play catch without a ball. These assholes harass the parents of kids killed at Sandy Hook. No, I won’t watch or read anything they do.
I bring this up because I thought (and still think) the same thing about Breitbart. I didn’t realize people took this shit seriously. I figured most everyone poked around, thought to themselves “this Milo guy sure seems like a dickhead,” and disregarded everything else that ever came from it. It baffles me that there are millions of people who read, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” nodded their head in agreement, and then went and kissed their daughters goodnight without seeing the insanity of it all.
Why, or how, is Steve Bannon a white supremacist? In a world that doesn’t make me want to lock myself in my closet, I’d say, “Um, have you ever read Breitbart?” and you’d shrug and go, “Oh yeah, good point.” The problem is that these people do read Breitbart. A ton of it. Trying to convince somebody with a Richard Spencer haircut (y’all all go to the same barber?) that “alt-right,” or ethno-nationalism, are fairy tale bullshit terms for white supremacy, is pointless.
It doesn’t matter that Steve Bannon’s ex-wife, in a sworn statement, claimed he made numerous anti-Semitic marks, or that for years Breitbart allowed Milo carte blanche to say whatever anti-Semitic shit he wanted. It also doesn’t matter that hate crimes against Jews have been on the rise since January 20, and that the administration has been largely silent.
It doesn’t matter that David Duke, Infostormer, Daily Stormer, and Richard Spencer praised Bannon’s appointment as chief strategist. It doesn’t matter that Bannon explains his worldview through The Camp of the Saints, which has been compared to “Mein Kampf.” It doesn’t matter that Bannon was one of the main architects of a ban on Muslims and prioritization of Christians coming to this country, and it doesn’t matter that a mosque in Quebec was attacked after that ban was announced.
It doesn’t matter that Bannon believes the West is in a holy war against Islam, or that he cited Julius Evola in a 2014 speech. It doesn’t matter that he got himself a seat on the NSC (we’re all fucked, by the way), and it doesn’t matter that we’re currently bombing Yemen at a shocking rate and just blew a mosque in Syria to smithereens.
None of this matters to people who live in an echo chamber of alt-right (white supremacist) nonsense, spewed by boring people to gin up hatred. It doesn’t matter to those people who kiss their daughters goodnight without any sense of irony. I thought it could be easily ignored, like rain bombs and headlines equating feminism to cancer. But it can’t be ignored, so let’s not ignore it; all you need to do is connect the dots. Say it out loud, and say it as much as you can. Steve Bannon, the chief White House strategist, is a white supremacist.
