Our New Minister of Propaganda.


A scene from 1984 by George Orwell @ Nottingham Playhouse. Directed by Robert Icke. (Opening 16-09-13) ©Tristram Kenton 09/13 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com

A scene from 1984 by George Orwell @ Nottingham Playhouse. Directed by Robert Icke. ©Tristram Kenton 09/13.

Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he would be appointing former Breitbart boss Steve Bannon as his official chief strategist — and a leading white nationalist couldn’t be happier about it.

Reacting to the news of Bannon’s appointment, white nationalist Richard Spencer gushed on Twitter that he was in the “best possible position” to implement long-term strategy inside the Trump White House.

Spencer, who first coined the term “alt-right” last decade with his website Alternative Right, believes that America should work to eject all non-white races from our borders and make the country into a giant “safe space” for white people. He believes that Bannon’s appointment means that the Trump administration will push the country more in a direction favored by white supremacists like himself.

Spencer’s fellow white nationalists were similarly giddy about the appointment, and one of them gushed that Bannon would be the perfect “Minister of Propaganda” for the Trump administration.

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, for instance, has called Bannon “a legitimately sinister figure” who pushed the website to “openly embrace the white supremacist alt-right.” Additionally, former Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella, meanwhile, has said that Bannon represents “a worldview that is incredibly dangerous and divisive.”

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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sent out an email alert Sunday night that explained Bannon’s ties to the racist, antifeminist alt-right and white nationalists. Here are a few of the things they listed:

1. Breitbart.com went from covert to overt racism when Bannon came on board in 2012.

The controversial conservative blog had made attacks on black public figures under the guidance of its late founder Andrew Breitbart, but when Bannon joined, the site became something of a standard-bearer for white nationalists, strident anti-Muslim activists, antifeminist “men’s rights” activists and other internet trolls.

“Breitbart’s Alt-Right primer, published at the end of March, is possibly its most disturbing piece to date,” said the SPLC. “The piece ignores the racist views of the Alt-Right founders –– white nationalists Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor and others –– instead referring to them as the movement’s ‘intellectuals.’ The piece is a striking example of the direction the network has moved over the past year.”

2. He is on the record as being racist and anti-Semitic.

“CNN’s Jake Tapper noted on Twitter after today’s announcement, Bannon’s ex-wife swore in court that ‘he said he doesn’t like Jews’ and didn’t want his children to go to school with Jews,” said Media Matters. “Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart News has featured racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBT rhetoric.”

The Washington Post called Bannon a “loose cannon” and said, “The new Trump adviser calls himself a ‘populist nationalist’ — his hiring has been cheered by white supremacists — and calls his fellow believers a ‘small, crazy wing’ of the conservative movement. He has referred to the Civil War as the ‘war of Southern Independence’ fought over ‘economic development.’ He found ‘zero evidence’ of racial motives in the Trayvon Martin shooting and warned that ‘cities could be washed away in an orgy of de-gentrification.’”

3. He is a member of a secretive conservative cabal that seeks to reshape the nation’s laws according to a far-right agenda.

Both Bannon and Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway are members of the Council for National Policy (CNP). The SPLC’s Hatewatch blog described the group as “an intensely secretive and shadowy group of what The New York Times once described as ‘the most powerful conservatives in the country.’ It is so tight-lipped that it tells people not to admit their membership or even name the group. Revealing when or where the group meets, or what it discusses, is also forbidden. The organization, which can only be joined by invitation and at a cost of thousands of dollars, strives mightily to keep its membership rolls secret.”

The group, Hatewatch said, “provides an important venue in which relatively mainstream conservatives meet and very possibly are influenced by real extremists, people who regularly defame LGBT people with utter falsehoods, describe Latino immigrants as a dangerous group of rapists and disease-carriers, engage in the kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing for which the John Birch Society is famous, and even suggest that certain people should be stoned to death in line with Old Testament law.”

4. He will encourage the worst behaviors in nascent President Donald Trump.

Bannon is known for his bomb-throwing, take-no-prisoners attitude toward bare knuckle political brawling. Over the course of his tenure at Breitbart.com, he has edged out the site’s senior staff, engaged in shady business practices and ran the site like a tinpot dictator.

Former ally and spokesman Kurt Bardella said to Media Matters that Bannon is a “pathological liar who has a temperament that governs by bullying and intimidation and functions very much like a dictator at Breitbart.”

Former Breitbart senior editor Ben Shapiro said that Bannon’s personal philosophy is “shot through with racism and anti-Semitism.”

As Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce tweeted on Sunday night, “Let us be clear. The hiring of Steve Bannon as a WH policy adviser is exactly the same as hiring David Duke. Please don’t normalize this.”

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Fuck. Fuckety fuck fuck fuck. That’s all I have. Two sources: one, two. Also see: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/here-are-some-of-the-worst-breitbart-headlines-signed-off-by-trumps-new-chief-strategist/

Comments

  1. says

    Giliell:

    White liberals, forever holding fascism’s stirrups

    :snort: Yeah, that’s the truth of it. I can’t even try to lie to myself anymore with “well, it can’t get much worse.” It’s getting worse by the bloody minute.

  2. says

    Yeah, that’s the truth of it. I can’t even try to lie to myself anymore with “well, it can’t get much worse.” It’s getting worse by the bloody minute.

    Yes, and it’s going to get normalised. I studied my country’s history well. Nobody would have stood for the Reichspogromnacht in 1933 and people just thought that it wasn’t too bad. By 1938 they cheered on as the Synagogues burned.

  3. says

    Giliell:

    Yes, and it’s going to get normalised. I studied my country’s history well. Nobody would have stood for the Reichspogromnacht in 1933 and people just thought that it wasn’t too bad. By 1938 they cheered on as the Synagogues burned.

    It’s already being normalised. It’s only been days. Alternet has a good piece on the normalisation. Yesterday, I saw all these headlines, “Oprah has hope”. Fuck Oprah. She has more money than Trump, and is so damn insulated she doesn’t know jack shit about anything. And yet, so very many americans will fall for it.

  4. Crimson Clupeidae says

    I try to remind conservatives that 1984 was supposed to be fiction, not a ‘how to’ guide.

    I can see several scenarios in the next couple of years that lead to civil war (or if there aren’t enough people of conscience in the military, martial law and a parallel to 1930s Germany).

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