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How US Media Sanitize & Excuse Stephen Bannon’s White Supremacy

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The fact that media is so afraid to speak in absolute terms is so dumb. Even when they do they have people on that would die on a grenade rather than admit they are right to allow doubt to enter the picture.

HEY MEDIA IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE OBJECTIVELY RIGHT ABOUT SOMETHING STOP GIVING THE OTHER SIDE A SAY IN IT!!!!

It allows the echo chambers to exist because just as someone is about to step outside of it the stooges you have on talk them back inside of it.
 

Lime

Member
Look who's treating Breitbart as a valid source already

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Toxi

Banned
Last November, for instance, Trump said he was concerned that foreign students attending Ivy League schools have to return home because of U.S. immigration laws.

“We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country,” Trump said. He paused. Bannon said, “Um.”

“I think you agree with that,” Trump said. “Do you agree with that?”

Bannon was hesitant.

“When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” Bannon said, not finishing the sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannon-flattered-and-coaxed-trump-on-policies-key-to-the-alt-right/2016/11/15/53c66362-ab69-11e6-a31b-4b6397e625d0_story.html
 

cornerman

Member
They had no problem believing Obama was a secret Muslim...or a non-citizen... or the anti-christ. No willingness to give him benefit of the doubt. Not an inch of respect. 'We've got real questions about him' yet Bannon is a foregone conclusion. Amazing.

People keep telling me it's not about race. I want to believe them. It's just hard to see the calm respectful demeanor of Obama...and then think back to loud outbursts during the state of the union, a woman sticking her fingers in his face on a tarmac, fox news consistently name-calling him, demands to see his birth certificate, refusal to vote on anything he does, chastising a new Jersey governor for hugging him when Obama showed up to help with hurricane relief, passing along images of him as a monkey, dictator, demon, claiming he's the worst president ever when he's clearly not, and the election of a guy who's actually done, said , proposed much worse.

I keep hearing how polls say we are headed in the wrong direction with our terrorist, non-citizen, racist, weakling, socialist, dictator, Obama. And somehow Trump, a man with a laundry list of provable and documented failures of business and morality, is a step on the right direction?

I see a man continually lie on camera and in our collective faces...and people actively overlook it. People can say I'm just sad that he was chosen over Hillary and that's fair. But he was also chosen over others within his party. What does it say that the worst among the candidates was chosen as champion. The man who most ardently ignorant was America's best offer. That these same folks that crucified the black president, now ask me to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when he's had more scandals on his campaign than presidents have on the job. I really want someone to explain how that isn't about race.
 

RaidenZR

Member
I tuned into CNN for a hot minute earlier tonight and immediately regretted it. Anderson Cooper was giving Glenn Beck a ton of air time to suggest being cautious about how we label it (although he seems completely against Bannon). I just can't believe these news anchors cover this with such serious question marks above their head and are treating it with kids gloves. This is something you MUST NOT treat lightly. Call it out for what it is... Where the fuck is Van Jones when you need him?

Entertaining it like there's another angle is such a disgrace.
 

SL128

Member
I tuned into CNN for a hot minute earlier tonight and immediately regretted it. Anderson Cooper was giving Glenn Beck a ton of air time to suggest being cautious about how we label it (although he seems completely against Bannon). I just can't believe these news anchors cover this with such serious question marks above their head and are treating it with kids gloves. This is something you MUST NOT treat lightly. Call it out for what it is... Where the fuck is Van Jones when you need him?

Entertaining it like there's another angle is such a disgrace.
We're in a world where Glenn Beck's position on an issue would lead to accusations of left-wing bias if said by televised media. :/
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
This is one of the true, deeper dangers of Trump: that he can act as an umbrella for truly horrifying people, people that aren't just assholes, but are literally evil. And the media will tip-toe around it because of fear.
 
I love how none of them can actually deny that his site is frequented by hate groups.

I'm honestly not even sure why the apologists exist at this point. Why feel the need to protect a site like Breitbart and the people who run it? Why go to bat for fake news that galvanizes bigotry? It's not like the KKK is gonna stop taking it to heart just because you claim "it's all just clickbait"
 

besada

Banned
Look, Bannon is terrible, but there's some solace in the fact that he couldn't be made Chief of Staff.

Look around Trump, it's mostly mainstream republicans: Pence, terrible guy but mainstream republican.

And herein lies the problem. You just described Mike Pence, a person so far to the right that he thinks women should have to pay for funerals for aborted fetuses, as a mainstream Republican, which only makes sense when the set includes people like Bannon. A year ago, anyone paying attention would have described Pence as being on the far-right, not the mainstream.

The very existence of people like Bannon in positions of power skews the scale by which we judge politicians, and normalizes more and more awful behavior. We'll be calling Ryan a liberal next, as the Overton Window goes zooming on past.
 
They had no problem believing Obama was a secret Muslim...or a non-citizen... or the anti-christ. No willingness to give him benefit of the doubt. Not an inch of respect. 'We've got real questions about him' yet Bannon is a foregone conclusion. Amazing.

People keep telling me it's not about race. I want to believe them. It's just hard to see the calm respectful demeanor of Obama...and then think back to loud outbursts during the state of the union, a woman sticking her fingers in his face on a tarmac, fox news consistently name-calling him, demands to see his birth certificate, refusal to vote on anything he does, chastising a new Jersey governor for hugging him when Obama showed up to help with hurricane relief, passing along images of him as a monkey, dictator, demon, claiming he's the worst president ever when he's clearly not, and the election of a guy who's actually done, said , proposed much worse.

I keep hearing how polls say we are headed in the wrong direction with our terrorist, non-citizen, racist, weakling, socialist, dictator, Obama. And somehow Trump, a man with a laundry list of provable and documented failures of business and morality, is a step on the right direction?

I see a man continually lie on camera and in our collective faces...and people actively overlook it. People can say I'm just sad that he was chosen over Hillary and that's fair. But he was also chosen over others within his party. What does it say that the worst among the candidates was chosen as champion. The man who most ardently ignorant was America's best offer. That these same folks that crucified the black president, now ask me to give Trump the benefit of the doubt when he's had more scandals on his campaign than presidents have on the job. I really want someone to explain how that isn't about race.

It's about race.

But then again, it's not really about race. It's about privilege. It's about a horde of shitty, entitled white people being tired of a progressive society that is trying (still rather poorly, mind you, but trying) to give a fair shake to everyone else. It's about people having "economic anxiety", some to reasonable degrees, and believing that their long-gone jobs matter more than other people's present safety or self-respect. It's about the privilege of thinking you don't have to join the real world and its issues; you can just invent a reality that suits you best and expect everyone else to get in line.

I can't remember who said it, but it's true: equality starts to look like oppression when you've been on top for so long. Race is just a simple and tangible proxy for people's concerns over their own privilege. And now that racism is becoming more apparent, these same people want to derail the conversation by saying "we're not racists, we're just worried about America's future" or "it's just a racist to call me a racist."

We need to stay on these people. People like Bannon are terrible, but that's the point - he's there to make us see someone else as "less bad." It's exploiting the human social instinct to not seem too demanding in a negotiation, like, "Oh well, they didn't decide to push their blatant anti-Semite hate mongerer, we should take this other guy."

We can't fall for this. That's how democracies are undermined.
 

JeTmAn81

Member
If he isn't racist then he cultivated a community of racists and sexists for profit. At that point what's the difference?

I think there's a difference between being amoral (like Drumpf) and being intentionally hateful, but...both are bad.
 
CNN made a point of giving Trump surrogates as much air time as humanly possible during the election. I feel most of the major news outlets are clinging to the ideal of the status quo. It is the same kind of mentality that ruralites have with wanting the return of manufacturing jobs and the 'good old days' of the 50s-60s.

EDIT: also I wouldn't be surprised if our political parties haven't been trying to wiggle their fingers into these networks via moles.
They also made a point of allowing these Trump surrogates to be debunked repeatedly, and usually with a lot of flair, by liberal guests if not by the hosts themselves. CNN was absolutely brutal to Trump's people, and I don't think it's fair to paint them as enablers given how often they very accurately painted Donald and his ilk as batshit insane.
 
Especially since Trump's own daughter, son in law and daughter in law are Jewish. How is it that they can be ok with this?

What? If you have money and status, it should always be expected that you'll count yourself in an entirely different category. Trump's son and daughter in law are no longer like those "normal Jews". If there's profit to be had in spinning up hatred and appealing to the vitriol that clearly exists within Trump's constituents, it'll be taken.
 

MogCakes

Member
They also made a point of allowing these Trump surrogates to be debunked repeatedly, and usually with a lot of flair, by liberal guests if not by the hosts themselves. CNN was absolutely brutal to Trump's people, and I don't think it's fair to paint them as enablers given how often they very accurately painted Donald and his ilk as batshit insane.

That is true. I feel that allowing Trump surrogates to spout their nonsense for so long actually created new Trump fans despite or to spite CNN's attempts to discredit the surrogates. But, perhaps those people would have supported Trump either way.
 

Polari

Member
Especially since Trump's own daughter, son in law and daughter in law are Jewish. How is it that they can be ok with this?

I genuinely have no idea, but if we've sunk to the level of posting random shit from Twitter and taking it as legitimate that's pretty pathetic.
 
Who is this and why should we consider them a legitimate source of information?

Did you actually read that Twitter thread? It's not intended to provide information, it's someone who knows history giving an opinion on events to come based on the known fact that Stephen Bannon is a white nationalist.

I genuinely have no idea, but if we've sunk to the level of posting random shit from Twitter and taking it as legitimate that's pretty pathetic.

What exactly are you trying to say here? Do you think Bannon is not a white nationalist? Because it's been pretty well established.
 
I genuinely have no idea, but if we've sunk to the level of posting random shit from Twitter and taking it as legitimate that's pretty pathetic.

It's not a news story nor is it being presented as one, just another example of people talking about the same issue this thread is.

Calm down
 
What? If you have money and status, it should always be expected that you'll count yourself in an entirely different category. Trump's son and daughter in law are no longer like those "normal Jews". If there's profit to be had in spinning up hatred and appealing to the vitriol that clearly exists within Trump's constituents, it'll be taken.

This makes no sense. Anti-semites don't distinguish on the basis of money, power, or anything. No Jew would be comfortable around one under *any* circumstance. And vice versa.
 

Polari

Member
Did you actually read that Twitter thread? It's not intended to provide information, it's someone who knows history giving an opinion on events to come based on the known fact that Stephen Bannon is a white nationalist.



What exactly are you trying to say here? Do you think Bannon is not a white nationalist? Because it's been pretty well established.

I don't know anything about Bannon, besides the fact he runs Breitbart which appears to be a site with some pretty questionable headlines. I'm not really sure what qualifies him as a "white nationalist" - that's a pretty big call. "Someone who knows history" lol, seriously? Based on what - are they a respected academic? There are plenty of reputable sources in the world beyond libellous conjecture.
 
This makes no sense. Anti-semites don't distinguish on the basis of money, power, or anything. No Jew would be comfortable around one under *any* circumstance. And vice versa.

The reason people like Ben Carson and Milo Y. exist, people who fall squarely into a minority but work against that minorities best interest, is that they have set up a bubble around themselves that keeps them specifically in power, whether that be money or influence as they deride people outside their bubble who are otherwise just like them. Same with Trump's son and daughter in law. As long as they're insulated, they will tolerate and support antisemitism if it benefits them.

I don't know anything about Bannon, besides the fact he runs Breitbart which appears to be a site with some pretty questionable headlines. I'm not really sure what qualifies him as a "white nationalist" - that's a pretty big call. "Someone who knows history" lol, seriously? Based on what - are they a respected academic? There are plenty of reputable sources in the world beyond libellous conjecture.

"Republican spoiler, renegade Jew", "Trannies whine about hilarious Bruce Jenner billboard" and "Gay rights have made us dumber" are not "pretty questionable" headlines. They're are disgusting headlines that precede bigoted and false information and it's hilarious and telling that you're on a crusade for reputable sources and against libel for a twitter poster when you don't expect the same of what claims to be a news site.

And Bannon heading such a site doesn't make it a big call to qualify him as a white nationalist. Let alone the support he gains from white supremacists.
 

Polari

Member
"Republican spoiler, renegade Jew", "Trannies whine about hilarious Bruce Jenner billboard" and "Gay rights have made us dumber" are not "pretty questionable" headlines. They're are disgusting headlines that precede bigoted and false information and it's hilarious and telling that you're on a crusade for reputable sources and against libel for a twitter poster when you don't expect the same of what claims to be a news site.

And Bannon heading such a site doesn't make it a big call to qualify him as a white nationalist. Let alone the support he gains from white supremacists.

One of those headlines hints at white nationalism, and according to this thread it was written by someone Jewish? Pretty sure people of all ethnic backgrounds can be trans and homophobic. Disgusting sure - I'm just not convinced running a website that publishes those sort of headlines necessarily him a "white nationalist". Someone of despicable character without a doubt, but we only weaken the argument by using hyperbole.

A Twitter poster making a completely baseless, alarmist statement ("Steve Bannon is a nazi. When given power he will kill Jewish people.") repeated in this thread simply to stir things up further. What is the basis for Steve Bannon being a) a nazi (this is a different thing from a white nationalist, if he's even that) b) the assumption that when in power he will kill Jewish people?

As for the KKK or whatever praising him being in the transition team, those people only want notoriety and headlines. Remember when one of them endorsed Hillary? You've played into their hands though, so well done.
 

Toxi

Banned
This makes no sense. Anti-semites don't distinguish on the basis of money, power, or anything. No Jew would be comfortable around one under *any* circumstance. And vice versa.
One of the Breitbart writers, Milo Yiannopoulos, is a gay man who spouts constant homophobia.

They're pretty comfortable with self-hating minorities.
 

Toxi

Banned
One of those headlines hints at white nationalism, and according to this thread it was written by someone Jewish? Pretty sure people of all ethnic backgrounds can be trans and homophobic. Disgusting sure - I'm just not convinced running a website that publishes those sort of headlines necessarily him a "white nationalist". Someone of despicable character, but we only weaken the argument by using hyperbole.
I'm sorry, this
Last November, for instance, Trump said he was concerned that foreign students attending Ivy League schools have to return home because of U.S. immigration laws.

“We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country,” Trump said. He paused. Bannon said, “Um.”

“I think you agree with that,” Trump said. “Do you agree with that?”

Bannon was hesitant.

“When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” Bannon said, not finishing the sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

This is fucking white nationalism. It's disgusting.
 

Opto

Banned
Anti-semites will accept certain jews if it benefits them in their overall ambitions. "I decide who is a jew" and all that.
 

royalan

Member
I don't know anything about Bannon, besides the fact he runs Breitbart which appears to be a site with some pretty questionable headlines. I'm not really sure what qualifies him as a "white nationalist" - that's a pretty big call. "Someone who knows history" lol, seriously? Based on what - are they a respected academic? There are plenty of reputable sources in the world beyond libellous conjecture.

What the hell about this is libelous?

The man is telling an anecdotal story about his mother and relating it, quite accurately, to Nazism in Germany. You don't need to be a historian to do that.

And you just admitted you don't know anything about Bannon, so how can you say it's a "big call" to label him a white nationalist? It isn't.

And this rush to label something/someone "not racist" without pausing to parse the facts of the situation and consider that something/someone might actually be racist, as you just demonstrated, is EXACTLY why the media failed to properly cover Trump this election.
 
One of those headlines hints at white nationalism, and according to this thread it was written by someone Jewish? Pretty sure people of all ethnic backgrounds can be trans and homophobic. Disgusting sure - I'm just not convinced running a website that publishes those sort of headlines necessarily him a "white nationalist". Someone of despicable character without a doubt, but we only weaken the argument by using hyperbole.

A Twitter poster making a completely baseless, alarmist statement ("Steve Bannon is a nazi. When given power he will kill Jewish people.") repeated in this thread simply to stir things up further. What is the basis for Steve Bannon being a) a nazi (this is a different thing from a white nationalist, if he's even that) b) the assumption that when in power he will kill Jewish people?

As for the KKK or whatever praising him being in the transition team, those people only want notoriety and headlines. Remember when one of them endorsed Hillary? You've played into their hands though, so well done.

The KKK can say they endorse Hillary and it can immediately be rebutted by Hillary's actual stance and actions. The KKK and Steve Bannon, as much as you'd like to separate the site from the man, share many similar talking points to the point of being indistinguishable. KKK and alt right enthusiasts use Breitbart as their media bible and Bannon can claim all he wants that he's just an opportunist. But the company he keeps, the stories he tells and the profit he makes show that there's not much to separate him from an actual white nationalist beyond just not using the label himself. There is no weakened argument when you call a spade a spade. All Bannon and you can use to claim that he's not a white nationalist is simply stating "I'm not a white nationalist" when everything else in Bannon's life is an orgy of evidence that the opposite is true. He's not going to avoid the label or claim it's hyperbole when him and the material in question are inseparable.
 
The alt-right have their roots in white nationalism. Bannon actively worked to make Breitbart the platform of the alt-right. Arguing against the idea that he can be reasonably labeled a white nationalist is totally insane.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
There's an interview with Ben Shapiro on Vox today.

Shapiro was a former editor at Brietbart who resigned after they refused to support Michelle Fields after she was assaulted by Trump's campaign manager.

As a former contributor to Brietbart, he is not a great person, and he has a bone to pick with his former colleagues. But keeping that in mind, he claims that the alt-right and Brietbart are primarily interested in the goal of white nationalism, and are willing to obscure that fact. They like that they can hook people with other soft avenues like Milo's anti-PC trolling, but they have an endgame informed by white superiority.

Sean Illing

There’s a lot of confusion about what the alt-right is and who it represents. It’s become an umbrella term for marginal right-wing positions. But it does refer to something specific, right?

Ben Shapiro

The alt-right are people like Richard Spencer who think that Western civilization and Western culture are inseparable from ethnicity. In other words, European ethnicity is the dominant force behind Western culture and Western civilization biologically. So it's a racist and anti-Semitic movement.

They truly believe that multiethnic democracies cannot succeed. This is essentially a white nationalist movement that claims to have intellectual backing for its cause.

Sean Illing

Are there any concrete political goals on the alt-right, apart from restoring a kind of cultural hegemony?

Ben Shapiro

They want to destroy the Republican Party from within and take it over. They want the constitutional right destroyed. They actually hate the constitutional right more than they hate the left. They don't actually hate the left. They think the left is wrong about racism but they don't object to big government that takes care of people; rather, they think you should have special privileges if you're of European descent. They want what they call "Christendom" protected from foreign bodies.

Sean Illing

Are they in the process of destroying the GOP?

Ben Shapiro

In order for the alt-right to achieve its goals, it has to do a few things. The first thing they have to do is make connections with people in power — clearly they've done that. The next thing they have to do is obfuscate what the alt-right actually is, so a lot of people think they're alt-right when they're not.

Rather than say the alt-right is an explicitly white nationalist movement, they say, well, if you're pissed off at the establishment, you're probably alt-right. If you're somebody who lurks online, you're probably alt-right. If you don't like Paul Ryan, if you think he's soft, you're probably alt-right. And they trap a lot of people in this way.


They also need what I call fellow travelers, people who are willing to nod and look the other way about the alt-right's racism because they think the alt-right is essentially correct about Western civilization being under assault. Someone like Pat Buchanan, for example, falls under this category.

http://www.vox.com/conversations/20...ht-ben-shapiro-richard-spencer-2016-elections
 

Nanashrew

Banned
Bannon is a white nationalist, his supporters know he's a white nationalist, his critics say he's a white nationalist.

But let's give him the benefit of a doubt, kay?
/s
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Part of the problem with openly labeling Bannon a white nationalist is the political and media reluctance to talk about white nationalism period. When wannabe cowboys and militia men take over public land and try to build a fort, they're "passionate citizens", not nationalistic conspiracy nuts. White supremacists are still only politic to talk about if they're caught literally burning a cross while wearing their role-playing gown, and shouting "I AM A BAD PERSON WHO WANTS TO HURT PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT WHITE."

Otherwise, racism doesn't exist, white supremacy doesn't exist as an ideology and movement, etc. When Beck was on, I wonder how many people caught him using his own dog whistles: chiding liberals for using "racist" too much and spoiling the word, acting naive and shocked at the idea there could be any real racists left in America, confused at the idea of nativist bigotry.

It's awful but Bannon for the moment is still benefiting from America's magical thinking that if we don't accuse individuals of racism it won't exist. The media can't deny this "alt right" business looks pretty fucking racist, but to accuse any one specific person of being a racist is like whaaaaaaat?
 

MogCakes

Member
There's an interview with Ben Shapiro on Vox today.

Shapiro was a former editor at Brietbart who resigned after they refused to support Michelle Fields after she was assaulted by Trump's campaign manager.

As a former contributor to Brietbart, he is not a great person, and he has a bone to pick with his former colleagues. But keeping that in mind, he claims that the alt-right and Brietbart are primarily interested in the goal of white nationalism, and are willing to obscure that fact. They like that they can hook people with other soft avenues like Milo's anti-PC trolling, but they have an endgame informed by white superiority.

This is fascinating.
 

Nanashrew

Banned
Part of the problem with openly labeling Bannon a white nationalist is the political and media reluctance to talk about white nationalism period. When wannabe cowboys and militia men take over public land and try to build a fort, they're "passionate citizens", not nationalistic conspiracy nuts. White supremacists are still only politic to talk about if they're caught literally burning a cross while wearing their role-playing gown, and shouting "I AM A BAD PERSON WHO WANTS TO HURT PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT WHITE."

Otherwise, racism doesn't exist, white supremacy doesn't exist as an ideology and movement, etc. When Beck was on, I wonder how many people caught him using his own dog whistles: chiding liberals for using "racist" too much and spoiling the word, acting naive and shocked at the idea there could be any real racists left in America, confused at the idea of nativist bigotry.

It's awful but Bannon for the moment is still benefiting from America's magical thinking that if we don't accuse individuals of racism it won't exist. The media can't deny this "alt right" business looks pretty fucking racist, but to accuse any one specific person of being a racist is like whaaaaaaat?

And their cowards. That's the only thing I can say about them, that they're cowards to call a spade a spade. They are journalists that can dig deep to learn more about an individual, especially someone of Bannon's stature who is the CEO of a terrible site and made so many disgusting articles and supports so many disgusting things and has so many disgusting beliefs.

They can easily get all the facts and lay them all out. But they won't because they look the other way and choose to not believe in it. They don't deserve those degrees.

It makes me angry.
 
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