It's fair to say that Donald Trump won the race for
the White House by appealing to some of the very
worst sentiments in America - misogyny,
xenophobia and racism to name but three.
For some people that wasn't a
consequence of a bad man, more the result
of a candidate who's willing to win by
any means necessary
it was the result of somebody who is
willing to say all is fair in love war
and politics, and that Trump given his
career given his celebrity isn't a
racist let alone a fascist. And yet I
think that kind interpretation of Trump
has taken a turn for the worse over the
last week with the appointment of Steve
Bannon, now Steve Bannon was previously
the executive chairman of breitbart news
more about them in a second. Then this
summer he became the CEO to trump
campaign, last week Trump named him as
the chief stretches prison pending
administration at the White House
So who's Steve Bannon, who's Breitbart News,
Breitbart are a relatively new media
organization, conservative media
organization founded by Andrew Breitbart
he's since passed away he's been
replaced by, he was replaced by Bannon as the
top guy. What's their relationship to the
far right well speaking to Sarah Posner
earlier this year
immediately following the Republican
National Convention Steve Bannon said that
Breitbart News is quote the platform
for the alt-right, well who are the
Alt-Right, well Breitbart were kind enough
to pen an article, again earlier this year
called "An establishment conservative's
guide to the alt-right". In that article they
identify amongst other things the
leading intellectuals of this movement
one of which includes one Richard
Spencer. So let's rewind a bit here, Bannon
is now Trump pic, he's his number one guy, his
right hand man in the White House, he's
coming from Breitbart news, what's Breitbart
news, a platform for the alt-right who's
one of the big thinkers of the Alt-Right, a guy
called Richard Spencer. So let's go back
to Spencer, what does this guy think, well he's
said and done some pretty remarkable
things, I think again
he's a fascist but you decide for
yourself. Here's a quote from january
2013 in his column for the National
Policy Institute, it concerns one Martin
Luther King jr. and i quote:
"Martin Luther King Jr., a fraud and degenerate in his
life has become the symbol and cynosure
of white dispossession and the
deconstruction of Occidental
civilization.
We must overcome!" A month later in February
2013 in the same place in his column
for the national policy institute, Spencer
wrote and I quote: "Immigration is a kind
of proxy war and maybe a last stand
for White Americans who are undergoing a
painful recognition that unless dramatic
action is taken their grandchildren will
live in a country that is alien and
hostile." So I hear what you're saying you're going,
well those two quotes - okay the guy's a
white supremacist, maybe a Tony Robinson
but not a fascist - hold your horses,
hold your horses
Richard Spencer quote in Vice 2013
you will not believe this:
"Our dream is a new society an ethno-state,
that would be a gathering point for
all Europeans, it would be a new
society based on very different ideals
than, say, the declaration of independence."
So to remind you,
Bannon, Breitbart, they are the platform for the
Alt-Right, they've identified, themselves,
Richard Spencer as a key intellectual for
the Alt-Right, okay? Spencer is on record
as saying he's an ethno-nationalist,
he wants a country for people of
European, i.e. white origin and have a
constitution different to the
Declaration of Independence, i.e. it wouldn't
really call for universal equality.
So that's Richard Spencer, back to Steve Bannon,
by the way I don't think there's much difference
between their two politics, I think one
of them is better keeping his mouth shut
masking his politics slightly better,
Nonetheless, Bannon is on record as saying
he thinks that there is an inevitable
global holy war, right...OK this is not Osama
Bin Laden, this is the chief strategist to
the next president of states between the
west and between Islam.
Furthermore he believes that the
Judaeo-Christian West as he calls it has
been weakened by the cult of secularism
and that it might not have sufficient
strength in this impending war because
of secularism, because of Judaism, because
of things like feminism, multiculturalism
that we might not be able to survive this
global conflict with Islam that's on the
horizon in the 21st century.
This is millenarian claptrap, this is
complete nonsense, it's unhinged, no other
word for it and yet this gentleman's the
right-hand man for
the president-elect. If you want to hear
Bannon's politics
in his own words, look the guy used to do a podcast
for Breitbart, Breitbart News Daily, Daily News
with Sirius XM, go check it out and he
used to have racist and misogynist and
sexist and Islamophobes on week after week
you know, really racking them up
Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Roger Stone,
so that's cut now to an excerpt from an
interview with Roger Stone and I really
want to be clear, look these people have
worse politics than a Tommy Robinson,
they're horrific people and it wasn't a
one-off, that was the norm in these
interviews. So let's hear Roger Stone:
I'd say Trump is a pretty, a repudiation of
30 years bipartisan treason and failure,
Bush equals Clinton equals Bush equals
Obama equals Clinton is the same
policies, immigration policies that may
turn us into Europe where hordes of
Islamic mad men are raping, killing
pigeoning, pillaging, defecating in
public fountains, harassing private
citizens, elderly people, that's what's
coming that wave is coming this way."
Now to anyone with a brain that's racist
spurious nonsense, but they're making
inroads with it right, and that's what's
most concerning of all, Bannon wasn't
just not challenging these people, he
wasn't just giving a platforms to these
people. I think it's such a regular
feature of his work, his political work
over the last of couple of years, he agrees with
them, he believes this stuff,
this misogynistic, racist stuff and it wasn't
just him right, because like we've
already said, Breitbart under his
leadership became a platform for the
Alt-Right and white supremacism generally.
Just look at the tweets of their home
page editor, one Kate McHugh - she's a
really really nasty person.
Now look at these tweets
this is ridiculous these are the kinds of
statements and thoughts and assertions
that should be the absolute periphery of
society, as we now know they're becoming
more and more mainstream. Breitbart and
its changed direction is a big part of
that and Steve Bannon hasn't just not
stopped, hasn't just given a platform
to it
he's been the daddy! Steve Bannon has been
the puppeteer he's been making all of this
possible.
He has tried his damned hardest to make
far-right white supremacist politics as
popular as possible in the United States,
to normalize what's fundamentally
a hateful, vengeful, disgusting, inhumane way
of looking at the world, he's making it
normal, he's made it so normal guy's now
in the White House. And just look at some
of the articles that Breitbart have
published with Bannon at the helm. This isn't
an attempt at politics,
this is propaganda, this is about
maximizing something, this is about
playing on the very worst sentiments of
Americans up and down the country, that's
culminated now with the election of Donald
Trump, but this has been bubbling for
quite a while and Bannon's been a key
player, there is a record of Breitbart
doing and saying things which are
fundamentally at odds with liberal
democratic societies. No one has been as
crucial as Steve Bannon in the last couple of
years in taking a violent, peripheral
politics into the American mainstream.
He has been absolutely pivotal in
everything that has happened.
What's more I think his politics are
remarkably similar to the likes of
Richard Spencer I believe both are them are
racists, I believe both of them are misogynists and I
believe in my heart of hearts that both
are fascists. Is Donald Trump? I don't know,
I can't answer that question, what I do
know is this: if Republicans, if
mainstream America doesn't now try to
isolate people like Spencer, people like
Bannon, and cool them out for exactly what
they are and call out the president-elect too,
when he acts on their advice, then I'm
not sure what the future holds for
America, there's been a debate for a very long
time: is the United States a republic or
a democracy? Well if the likes of Bannon and
Richard Spencer get their way
mark my words, it will be neither.