Stephen K. Bannon cuts a rather unprepossessing figure, said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. “Photos of him show a dishevelled, shaggy-haired man in need of a shave who appears to have slept in his clothes, possibly on a sidewalk grate.” But he has an intriguing background. A former naval officer, Goldman Sachs banker, Hollywood producer and documentary maker, he helped steer
Donald Trump’s campaign to victory.
And he’s the man the president-elect has now chosen to serve as his chief White House strategist and senior counsellor. Cue outrage from Bannon’s many critics, who believe he is a “racist, xenophobic,
misogynist, anti-Semitic nationalist” who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Let’s get one thing clear, said Ian Tuttle in National Review: “Steve Bannon is not Josef Goebbels”. People who know him well, such as Julia Jones, his long-term screenwriting partner in Hollywood, say he has never displayed any hint of racism or anti-Semitism in his personal life. He does, however, have questions to answer about his chairmanship of the controversial Breitbart News website. Before he took over, in 2012, the right-wing website was provocative and irreverent, but under his aegis the
tone has become altogether more ugly as the site has catered to the so-called “alt-right”, a “small but vocal fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites and internet trolls”.
For example, Breitbart reported as “100% vindicated” Trump’s specious claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Bannon might not subscribe to these poisonous views himself, but he was happy to give them a media platform. Bannon’s enemies should beware of
exaggerating the alt-right’s influence for partisan advantage, said The Wall Street Journal. One lesson of 2016 is that denouncing those who disagree with you as bigots is “a losing strategy”. That said, the political tendency Bannon represents “deserves a watchful eye”. The White House will regret it if it encourages the “white-identity grievance politics” fostered by Breitbart. Another lesson of the election, after all, is that partisan propaganda is a misleading guide to reality. Democrats are “reeling” today partly because The New York Times and other liberal media voices assured them that Trump “could never win. Republicans don’t need a right-wing version.”
