How Do You Fight Back Against Someone Like Steve Bannon? A Guide for the Left.
To speak his name with any air of affability, any degree of defensiveness, has become one among a host of sins any progressive person wouldn’t dare commit. To approach Bannon without a pen for his removal by petition, without a pitchfork and torch, is to be complicit in all the most malodorous and demented elements of the elusive, decentralized, multi-perspectival alt-right. Don’t worry, I’m not going to defend him. I signed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s petition to make it known this guy doesn’t have any business in the White House and I suggest you do too. We all know he sucks. The catch is, as of now: we do too.
Steve Bannon is the first true test for American media in the “Trump is POTUS” era. So far, right, center and left news outlets are all failing it. The right because they are cozying up to him, showing too much comfort with racially tinged controversy to truly unite the country as they say they hope to. The center because their language on Bannon is disturbingly neutral, problematically stoic. The left because they’re embracing a “sentence first, full trial later” approach to the data we have.
Here, to the best of my knowledge, is all we know.
Steve Bannon was charged in a domestic violence case by his now ex-wife who, during the court proceedings, said under oath that her husband didn’t want their children going to school with Jews. His ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, never appeared in court and the charges were dropped. His appointment to such a high position in Trump’s staff has also been celebrated by a variety of white nationalist and hate groups.
He also runs Breitbart, a website he said he turned into “the platform for the alt-right.” The alt-right is controversial but nebulous. Its wide berth of ideologies make it damn near impossible to critique in a way that applies to all its contributors alike. They are as much the trollish, anti-political-correctness of frequent Breitbart contributor Milo Yiannopoulos as they are the more decisively white nationalist websites like American Renaissance. Yiannopoulos himself co-wrote a guide to what the alt-right is as well as giving a tongue-in-cheek speech about how to destroy it. The alt-right is like a religion in that all its adherents and proponents practice in a different way, coming together in factions based on varying levels of extremism and intensity.
Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has published some incendiary material. On women, feminism makes them ugly, birth control makes them crazy and, if they’re getting harassed online, they should log off. Yiannopoulos is behind all these, writing in his characteristically sarcastic, quippy way, making it hard to know where the tasteless jokes start and the actual “analysis” begins. Some other choice headlines: “Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture,” “Trannies whine about hilarious Bruce Jenner”, “Hoist it High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage” (the last was published shortly after the Charlestown church shooting). The comments section on most Breitbart articles is where it gets really nasty.
Perhaps the most notable headline, given the allegations, is ”“Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew. This article was published on May 15, 2016 and was followed up by reassurance the phrase “renegade Jew” was used without remorse or regret on May 16, 2016. The fact Bannon published these articles is used in most articles as the clincher that he must be a white nationalist anti-Semite.
This is where it starts to get flimsy though. The article everyone is talking about was written by a Jewish man, David Horowitz, critiquing another Jewish man, Bill Kristol, for possibly throwing the election to Hillary Clinton by mounting a third party bid. His critique of Clinton? He saw her as anti-Israel. Horowitz has gone on to defend Bannon since these allegations began. Breitbart also features a strongly pro-Israel Jerusalem section.