Steve Bannon is wrong but he's not a racist

So Bannon is in the news again, and just about everywhere he is referred as a "white nationalist".

If you think Bannon is a white nationalist, please find me one direct quote where he says something to that effect. Go on...I'll wait. If you think Breitbart was a vehicle for fascism, please send me a link to a Breitbart article promoting fascism. Go on...I'll wait. I attempted to find such comments maybe a year ago and couldn't find anything. Maybe I'm a terrible detective. If I am, please show me the evidence and I will gladly change my mind.

I used to read Breitbart maybe once a week when Bannon was editor in an effort to keep myself from living in an echo chamber and I have no memory of reading racism or fascism there. Indeed, it was Breitbart who published the first exposes of the alt-right, which is the racially and gender-theory (pick up artists, red-pill etc.) charged portion of the right wing. Guess who wrote them? MILO! Who, incidentally, is a homosexual married to a black man. He's not a fascist white supremacist - he's a libertarian troll!

Bannon is an economic nationalist, not a racist. He says things like "this isn't about whether you're white, or Christian or whatever, this is about whether you're an American citizen. If you are, we're going to take care of you." That's where the tariffs, the wall, and all the rest of it come from. He says this in *every* interview. He doesn't understand shit about trade theory, shit about how to actually help the working class, and his policies can be detonated by anyone who is economically literate. But instead the fixation is always on his racism, which is a mirage. Best example of this was the BBC interview where he bated away flimsy accusations that allowed him to advance his economic nationalist paradigm unchecked.

It is precisely the tendency of his critics to make false allegations against him while ignoring the actually dumb shit he says that allows him to garner right wing votes. The way to mount an effective criticism of someone, as everyone should have learnt in school, is to quote them directly and then explain how they are wrong. I don't think I've ever come across a critique that quotes Bannon. The closest you get is "you stood next to Orban." Big whoop.

And this shit about the New Yorker dropping him under pressure. We are talking about one of the most influential figures in America, who channels an enormous portion of the Zeitgeist and was recently in the White House. Not listening to him is like putting your head in the sand. Listen to him and if he says something fascist, call him out. But don't ride off on your high horse when you don't even know what he's saying, or you'll just be riding off a cliff.

I have no doubt that there is racism in America. I have no doubt that racism (and sexism) played a role in Trump winning the Presidency. I have no doubt that racism was one motivating factor for the muslim ban and the border policy. But there is more to the story, and left-leaning progressives are missing it for all the wrong reasons. I DON'T WANT THESE PEOPLE IN POWER ANYMORE. To get them out, we need to understand the problem. Screaming racism hysterically and boycotting anything with a whiff of Trump is a surefire way to stay in opposition.

****************************************************

Someone suggested to me that Bannon's interview on the Australia TV show 4 Corners (our best investigative journalists) contained xenophobic statements. I went and listened to it and have pasted a rough transcript of notes I made below. I can't see anything racist. Indeed, I see the opposite. The point that the racism is a tiny minority of losers. So long as the left and the MSM continues to focus on these losers, they will continue to miss the bigger economic story, which is critical to address if the left wants to be a genuine progressive movement.

What’s happening in the streets with these antifa and these neo-nazis, it’s almost like the 1960s The country is very divided…you have to decide it at the ballot box. “I’m not so sure it’s fear and anger as rationality. Working class people in this country realise that something’s wrong, you know, upon their shoulders rest the entire tax burden, this kind of liberal post-war international order, this globalist system that’s out there, right they are actually quite rational. So I think what you’re going to see in this election is that there is still a lot of anger in them, and I think this anger could be harnessed to have another big victory for Trump. “Me two is about sexual harassment. Time’s up is really about the power dynamics in society.” “It’s trying to upend how civilisation has been structured for 5000 years. Whether that’s Hindu-Islamic-Judeo Christian patriarchy…and I’m not arguing whether it’s right or wrong, I’m saying that this movement is much deeper than sexual harassment….I equate it kind of like the French Revolution…I don’t agree with the ideology, I have a lot of respect for its latent power.” “A lot of these people are seeing Trump as a disruptor and they just don’t like the style….I don’t think punish but the numbers we had among women…are not coming back” “The Grassroots of the democratic party are doing exactly what the tea party did in 2010. I admire that they have enthusiasm for their beliefs….I don’t believe in it but I believe in democracy and what they’re doing is going out there and getting votes. ” “By October, if it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a blue wave, the left of the democratic party is going to go to war with its establishment….I’ve been at civil war with the republican party for ten years—the democrats have not had the civil war. “You respect Robert Mueller? Yes. You’re not asking for him to be sacked? No….I was quite opposed to firing Comey…I think it’s imperative that Mueller finish his report, but it’s got to be issued before the November election. I think the American people have got to weigh in here.” “I want to see those subpoenas executed. I want information.” Ferguson pressed Bannon hard on seeming hypocrisy about never backing down, never apologising, never explaining. “I come from an Irish-Catholic family what you get around the dinner table is a hundred times worse than what you get [in Trump’s tweets]” Here I’m thinking this might speak to the cultural divide between progs and cons in America, and Ferguson is write in there: “We accept that what you get around the dinner table is different to the President of the United States.” Bannon responds on que: “The reason why he is President…we are in a media age.” “It does sound like someone who is not fully in control of their emotions, is that really want you want inside the White House?” “Okay let’s talk about that for a second…giving people to vote for him about commander in chief. There has never been someone who is more prudent or less trigger happy about decisions, it took us 7 or 8 months to make the Afghanistan decision. It took us so many months to come up with the Korea situation and get engaged in the negotiations. Donald Trump is very prudent about how he goes about things. You got to separate the signal from the noise. The twitter feed [is the noise]…” Ferguson: “There’s never a moment when you look at it and think it’s denigrating the office?” … “You’ve unemployment at 4%, historically low unemployment among blacks and Hispanics, people are starting to see the benefits of this economic nationalism…” “But that economy was already improving under Obama” “This is the mainstream media’s hooey. Growth under Obama was 1.9%” “Coming out of the GFC – a totally different circumstances” “Let’s talk about the GFC for a second. Global capital markets exploded, caused by the elites. Obama comes in, the most progressive President in history, and the elites just print money. If you’re an asset holder you’ve had a great 10 years. If you’re working class you’ve just paid the bills. You haven’t had a wage rise….and that’s why the Republican party hates us, because what we’ve done is turn this into more of a workers’ party…Who is getting all this from? The Republican establishment, and Wall Street. These trade deals are about much more than tariffs and trade. This is about bringing jobs back. That bring worth and dignity to workers and they can actually have one income that may be able to support a family.” “When you talk about the GFC you sound a lot like Bernie Sanders” “We share a lot. One of things we do a lot in this house is have meetings with Bernie’s people. I think there’s 20% of the Bernie movement that can be taken over to the Trump movement. Where are we going to replace suburban women—there is a larger working class of black and hispanic people that are economic nationalists.” “This is not a trade war…we are in an economic war with China…they are a totalitarian mercantilist system. They always talk about this international rules-based order—the Chinese don’t play by any rules. They don’t have any internal rules. It’s a completely totalitarian regime. Not the Chinese people, the regime.” “When many of the economic assets of a country are owned by another country and all of a sudden you start to see influence on politicians…” “If there is a recession, who losers their job? If people lose the dignity of work, which is central to your platform…” “We send very few finished goods and no high value added goods. We essentially send natural resources, agricultural products, all Donald Trump is saying is that human action made this situation. Wall Street shipped those jobs over there. What DT is saying is that to have a robust economy you have to make things, you have to make high value added things.” “And you’re prepared to go through a recession in order to achieve that?” “We in the Judeo-Christian West have to start thinking in generational cycles” Predatory lending by China “WE want a relationship with China but we want it on terms where we have our sovereignty. Look I’m a hawk on China….Here’s the good thing, right now, you have a much more vibrant debate on China in Australia than we’re having here in the United States.” “We’ve got a populist revolution in America. I have announced that I’m going to work on making this a global movement, with ideas, polling, analytics. I absolutely see Australia as a hotbed of populism. Remember that the thing about populism is about getting decision making away from global elites, the Goldman Sachs of the world, party of Davos, and get it back to working class people.” Ferguson: How do you stop economic nationalism from morphing into something that is essentially racist? Bannon: I don’t think economic nationalism has anything to do with racism in fact it doesn’t matter about your religion, your ethnicity, your colour, your gender, it doesn’t matter your sexual preference, all of that is totally irrelevant. Ferguson: You say that line a lot. I’ve watched people ask you or accuse you of racism and there’s no evidence that that’s what you are. But do you understand how that particular group, that group of disenfranchised white workers, how that turns into [racism]. Bannon: the white workers of this country are not racist. Do we have an element? [Sure—nobody turns up to those rallies]. My point is, it’s such an infinitesimally small percentage of people, and they’re only made important because the left media gives them a microphone. The other day we had thousands of police officers and hundreds of media and six guys showed up, twenty guys showed up, it was nothing. Ferguson: what happened a year ago [the unite the right rally] was not a joke Bannon: what happened a year was the neo nazis, the confederates, the KKK, they have no place in American society. Cut to Trump: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. Ferguson: You know what an unambiguous declaration against people wearing swastikas sounds like and that’s not what we heard. Bannon: Trump was adamant that day. He has condemned the neo nazis, he has condemned the KKK, he has condemned the confederates. What you’re hearing is the mainstream media hears what it wants to hear. They’re never going to let Trump off the hook on this. They’re just not going to do it. … As long as the mainstream media doesn’t take responsibility; there is two things they’ve done—1) they’ve given dangerous people a platform, Ferguson: But you know how to harness their anger too don’t you? You’ve worked out a way to try and separate yourself and your views from them but at the same time there comments filled the Breitbart website, you know how to harness their anger. Bannon: that anger is about the 800Billion dollars to the 4.5 trillion. What it’s about is that a set of elites took care of themselves and basically screwed over the American worker and the American middle. The anger comes because people are rational. Ferguson: do you understand what transforms that into racism? Because it does. What you have seen is people with racist views cleave to your economic nationalist movement. Bannon: You can beat this dog all day, but it doesn’t cleave this is my point. What the media always does is “aren’t you worried about this 0.00001 per cent. We put the cameras on em, say oh yeah we support them, versus the basis of the argument, here’s the argument: the republican party is being turned into a workers party. The workers of this country are finally standing up for themselves. This movement is not going to stop and doesn’t matter how many liberal journalists come in here and say oh this is a bunch of fascists this is a bunch of nazis this is a bunch of racists, and this is why you’ve lost so much credibility, this is why the mainstream media in this country Ferguson: don’t put me in that crowd Bannon: that’s what I argued in France Cut to footage of Bannon talking: “Let them call you racists, let them call you xenophones, let them call you nativist, wear it as a badge of honour Bannon: when they can’t beat you on the facts they are always going to go back to the same parlour trick. That trick is very simple: they’re going to call you a racist. They’re going to call you a xenophobe. Ferguson: let’s be very clear about that. What you’re talking about is what you said in response to…{lot of interjection}—you’re standing there in a party that is steeped in a history of anti-semistism Bannon: I said when they can’t beat you on the facts, because what DT has done is the lowest unemployment in the history of African-Americans and Hispanics, we now have wages rising, what else are they going to do but go back to the old trick of xenophobia, racists, wear that with pride because then in the argument you know you’ve got them. Ferguson: you know very the history of that party is steeped in virulent anti-semitism. So when you say to those supporters, that is the context for the word racist Bannon: They had certain taints of anti-semitism and they’ve left that behind. Ferguson: let’s be clear let’s call a spade a spade Bannon: Okay, when people went to the polls in France, and [Le Pen] split the youth vote, they were not voting for anti-semitism. And that you guys keep going back to that shows you are afraid of dealing with that they are trying to deal with over there. This is about economic nationalism. This is about populism. … Ferguson: You’ve described Trump and Brexit as an inflection point. What did you mean by that. Bannon: …really it was China. What you saw was a deindustrialisation of Western Europe and a deindustrialisation of the United States. What drove Brexit and what surprised all the pundits was the midlands Labour vote. Boris Johnston and those guys ran on the “oh we hate Brussels they’re controlling our courts” a very intellectual argument that I agree with, but it wasn’t the emotional argument of immigration of Nigel Farage, but Nigel Farage said hey “because of the immigration policies we have, jobs are being replaced by lower wage migrants and we’ve exported all the high value-added manufacturing jobs out of here.” Kind of the argument we made several months later in America.