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.”
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: