Along with appointing RNC chair Reince Priebus as chief of staff, yesterday Trump named his last campaign chairman Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counselor. Shall we have a look at Mr. Bannon?
[W]hen Donald Trump tapped the chairman of Breitbart Media to lead his campaign, he wasn't simply turning to a trusted ally and veteran propagandist. By bringing on Stephen Bannon, Trump was signaling a wholehearted embrace of the "alt-right," a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee's favor on social media.
[...]
Some Breitbart staffers who resisted the site's transformation into a pro-Trump alt-right hub eventually resigned in protest. Several jumped ship after Corey Lewandowski, then Trump's campaign manager, manhandled Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields at a rally. (The site appeared to side with Lewandowski, and staffers were reportedly told not to question his account.)
[...]
[Alt-right proponents] who tend to be young, white, and male [...] often criticize immigration policies and a "globalist" agenda as examples of how the deck is stacked in favor of outsiders instead of "real Americans." They bash social conservatives as ineffective sellouts to the GOP establishment, and rail against neo-conservative hawks for their embrace of Israel. They see themselves as a threat to the establishment, far bolder and edgier than Fox News. While often tapping into legitimate economic grievances, their social-media hashtags (such as #altright on Twitter) dredge up torrents of racist, sexist, and xenophobic memes.
[...]
While only 5 percent of key influencers using the supremacist hashtag #whitegenocide follow the National Review, and 10 percent follow the Daily Caller, 31 percent follow Breitbart. The disparities are even starker for the anti-Muslim hashtag #counterjihad: National Review, 26 percent; the Daily Caller, 37 percent; Breitbart News, 62 percent.
[...]
On his Sirius XM radio show, [Bannon] heaped praise on Pamela Geller, whose American Freedom Defense Initiative has been labeled an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
[...]
Bannon also pointed to his own films, which include a Sarah Palin biopic and an "exposé" of the Occupy movement, as "very nationalistic films." Trump, he said, "is very late to this party."
Mother Jones
"President-elect Trump's choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump's White House," Adam Jentleson [a spokesman for Harry Reid] said. "It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide ... Sworn testimony in a court case alleged that Bannon committed violent domestic abuse and stated that he 'didn't want the girls going to school with Jews.'"
NBC
Note: Bannon has denied the accusation. I don't have the case, so I can't confirm. If he's like Donald Trump (and I imagine he is) he has no problem denying things that can be proven. (Update: I've been seeing references to this as a statement his ex-wife made in court.)
Under Bannon, Breitbart published a call to “hoist [the Confederate flag] high and fly it with pride” 2 weeks after the Charleston massacre pic.twitter.com/uUECganaWs— SPLC (@splcenter) November 13, 2016
I met Steve Bannon— [...] we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
[...]
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
[...]
His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups.
[...]
I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:
“I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.”
Daily Beast
[Bannon] argued that Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Ann Coulter pose an existential threat to the left.
“These women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative,” he explained. “That's one of the unintended consequences of the women's liberation movement––that, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be feminine, they would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn't be a bunch of dykes that came from the 7 Sisters schools."
The Atlantic
Enough?I have a bit of experience with Bannon, given that I was the editor-at-large of Breitbart News for four years, and worked closely with Breitbart and Bannon.
[...]
Back in March, I quit Breitbart News when it became clear to me that they had decided that loyalty to Donald Trump outweighed loyalty to their own employees, helping Trump smear one of their own reporters, Michelle Fields.
[...]
In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew [Breitbart]’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump.
Now Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website, [...] pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers. [...]
He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: he’s an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. There’s a reason Sarah Palin went from legitimate political figure to parody artist to Trump endorser, with Steve Bannon standing alongside her every step of the way.
Daily Wire
Sarah Palin was a legitimate political figure?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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