Sleazy bigot Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart boss who Donald Trump wants as his chief White House strategist, isn’t terribly popular in Washington at the moment. But he’s getting a lot of support from the white supremacists he pandered to at Breitbart — from former Klan leader David Duke; from Richard Spencer, the guy who came up with the euphemism “alt right” in the first place; and (of course) from Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer.
“Bannon is the best person who could have been placed in this key role, besides perhaps Pat Buchanan and me,” Anglin wrote in a post on the Daily Stormer (archived here).”This is all going in the right direction, and I am very happy to see the Jews raging.”
Anglin cites one rather unique reason for supporting Bannon, above and beyond his ideological affinities with the neo-Nazi alt-right: Bannon was once arrested for allegedly beating his now-ex-wife.
Anglin quotes the following paragraph from a Washington Post piece on Bannon, putting the last sentence in bold text:
Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence against his former wife more than 20 years ago; the charges included trying to prevent a victim or witness of crime from reporting, inflicting injury and battery. Bannon was never convicted and the case was dismissed. His former wife also accused him of making anti-Semitic remarks, according to a court statement obtained by the New York Daily News.
Anglin’s response?
He declares that “the age of bitch-slapping Jew-haters has dawned,” by which he evidently means a new age for (alleged) “Jew-haters” like Bannon who (allegedly) demonstrate this hatred by (allegedly) slapping those who show sympathy with Jews.
Bannon once famously declared that activists on the right needed to “bitch slap the Republican party.” Anglin evidently likes that, for Bannon, “bitch-slapping” isn’t just a metaphor (allegedly).
Anti-Semitism and violent misogyny, all wrapped up in one nice neat little package.
@Dali: Words fail. I’m so sorry.
@Dali
Bloody hell! I am so, so sorry.
@Dali: that’s dreadful. But, I’m not surprised: I’ve got family up in Portland, and although they are quite liberal, they tell stories.
Is there anything we can do for you?
#Phryne: My real fear with this election is that Trump will attempt to act like a dictator, get himself impeached, and then we’ll be stuck with President Pence for three years. Which would be worse, as Pence is a competent bigoted asshole.
I’ve had a really hard week. I still feel very depressed and I’m looking for motivation to get out of bed everyday and get stuff done.
@Dalillama, HistoryNerd and anyone else: Love and internet hugs.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how average people think about Nazi Germany. There is the idea that the people just didn’t realize what was going on. There are questions about how it was able to take root etc. Our education in this country isn’t all that great and people forget a lot by the time they’re adults. It’s like people think that shit could never possibly happen again.
Now I see pundits and soccer moms/dads rolling their eyes when we say people are actual neo-nazis. They think we are unreasonable for not wanting to cooperate. It is scary because it seems like a lot of people in this country will just ignore how bad things get as long as it doesn’t directly effect them. All it would take is one bad terrorist attack to get a lot of Americans to rally around Trump and maybe support Muslim registries or camps for our “safety”.
@Dalillama, @Samantha oh my god. What horrible people. I’ve been pushed up against a wall and threatened, but then the guy dropped out of college and I didn’t have to deal with him again. I can’t imagine having to live in the same building with him.
@History Nerd: If I didn’t have a job and the sprogs, I’d stay in bed too, I think.
Love and hugs and hope for the future for everyone.
It’s good to look on the bright side because this is hardly the worst possible outcome despite the horrors Trump could inflict (assuming people are vigilant and Trump doesn’t become a dictator or a president-for-life). I don’t want to minimize the horrors that many people might face or the damage the election has already done, though.
Senate Republicans said they would continue to block any of Clinton’s Supreme Court appointments. So if she won and Congress didn’t flip, we’d have another 4 years of deadlock and possible impeachment proceedings. The GOP would move even further to the right. Then she’d be up for reelection in 2020, possibly against someone worse than Trump or Pence, like Ted Cruz (plus even more momentum for a pendulum swing). We haven’t had three consecutive democratic presidents since Roosevelt and Truman.
Sooner or later, people will regret Trump’s policies. Three Republican administrations in a row will be enough to push back the pendulum.
With all the alt-Right praising Bannon, I found the following news item particularly ironic, if not downright perverse. New York Magazine reports “Breitbart News Plans Lawsuit Against Unnamed Media Company for ‘White Nationalist’ Label.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/breitbart-news-plans-lawsuit-against-media-company.html
Based on a Google search, the possible targets include Salon, Media Matters, and Raw Story. CNN also seems to have done so. Since the legal threat is against a “major” media company, speculation in the article is that its CNN. Oh, boy, Breitbart vs. Time-Warner. That might be one way Trump could make good on his threat to stop the Time-Warner/AT&T merger.
@boobury: “Now I see pundits and soccer moms/dads rolling their eyes when we say people are actual neo-nazis.”
One of my friends said that saying that there are real neo-Nazis in America is like Xander telling Buffy that vampires are real. There were a lot of vampires in Sunnyvale and there are a lot of corn-pone fascists here in America. It might be hard to accept at first, but once you do, it explains a lot!
Oh my gosh, @Dali :C That’s so horrible. Please stay safe. If there’s anything we can do to help, please ask. Set up a patreon if you need it, or whatever. That just isn’t right.
@joekster:
“My real fear with this election is that Trump will attempt to act like a dictator, get himself impeached, and then we’ll be stuck with President Pence for three years. Which would be worse, as Pence is a competent bigoted asshole.”
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/942/556/e73.jpg
@Dali & Samantha
… I don’t have the words 🙁
I hope you’re okay.
So, huh, I found, err, this on the Daily Stormer, at the end of a post. Not sure what to make of it (I mean really ? A public post ?).
[CW : Daily Stormer]
[CW]
Dat part about “act how you think black people act”. Kinda high right now (that’s the insomnia issue solved for a while !) so I thought I might just leave it out here. Again, not sure what to make of whatever the fuck that’s supposed to be.
@Sinkable John
Uh, I think they’re gonna swarm Twitter with sock accounts because Twitter has been cracking down on alt-right accounts.
It’s not gonna work for several reasons.
@John
Yay! 🙂
Oh, that’s easy. Say ‘muffuga’ instead of ‘person’, ‘peep’ instead of ‘look’, be as profane as possible, tweet out some quotes by lesser known black thinkers (less MLK, more Medgar Evers), and hype up Black Panther to no end #BlackPantherSoLIT
Simple formula really. You too can be an indistinguishable part of Black Twitter. Wait, I forgot. You also can’t be racist… Dealbreaker? Nah, I’m sure y’all can manage
Jackasses
I’ve seen right wingers pretend to be black before. It doesn’t tend to be very convincing. I think we all remember the era of the #notyourshield pro gamergate fake woman and POC socks.
@Jack & Axe
Yeah I just don’t get why Anglin would ostensibly announce that at the bottom of a public post. That’s, like… dumb. The nazi level of dumb, I guess.
“Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity”.
Then again in his case we already know he’s the evil kind of stupid.
They all assume that we’re stupid and that we won’t notice this sort of thing – or, more correct, that some of us will notice, but the large mass of people won’t. They aren’t doing this for us, they’re doing this to convince and sway the bulk of society that aren’t aware of 4Chan and the Daily Stormer and whatever. And to an extent, they’re right.
Or, they would be, if it weren’t for the fact that Bannon is a fucking White House Cabinet member.
He hasn’t quite realized that the entire world is now watching his every move. These jerks have always had the relative privacy of obscurity on their sides, but that’s now changed.
Channers and Stormers and Alt-Right assholes: Your previous successes weren’t because you’re evil genius masterminds, they happened because you were an obscure fringe group, and no one cared what you were gabbling about on imageboards. That shit won’t fly anymore.
Sunlight, best disinfectant, etc.
We’ve been blessed, everyone. Our enemies have revealed themselves, and they’re idiots.
^^^
This.
The only way for me to accept all this was to realise ah well at least the ‘fashy’ kids are getting cocky now and stepping outside were we can see them. Turns out they are like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
Also look at Anglin’s recent fare. He is definitely upping the comedy quotient so he can plead parody, the more the sun hits him, the more spoofy his content.
@Scildfreja
And even then their schemes never really worked. They always get spotted so easily, and this time won’t be much different even if they’ve taken time to, huh, “prepare”.
@D. Glen
Yeaaaah I noticed that. I can think of a few posts that were so egregious that my brain got stuck in a “I know the DS ain’t exactly trustworthy but who do they expect will believe that ?” loop.
Case in point, with added hilarity :
[CW : still the Daily Stormer]
[CW]
Poe’s Law gone wild.
By the way, things here are weird now. There seems to be a lot of misconceptions regarding how Trump got elected. That whole popular vote/electoral college thing ? We don’t have that here. As such, people just think he won the popular vote. I’m hearing that from the right and far-right, sure, but also from the government “left” and my own particular flavor of far-left pansy ass pinkos. Most of us didn’t pay nearly enough attention during the election. Additionally, that whole thing with fascists in the White House ? No one here seems to have noticed yet.
I’m trying to ring as many alarm bells as I can and tell people that something is wrong but it’s not exactly working. Some have even told me that I’m just growing paranoid after years of studying far-right and fringe movements, that I’m seeing them everywhere now.
Please send halp.
@ Angry Since…
Whether or not an area is ‘liberal’ does not guarantee any sort of safety for GLBT, women, racial minorities, etc.
I used to live in the Deep South, I currently live up north in Massachusetts. Really don’t feel any safer here than I did there and somehow still neck-deep in Trump voters even though he didn’t win our state. Back when I worked on the teller line (so up to about six months ago) would get stuck in conversations with customers who really needed me to know how much they hate women, The Gays, Them Mexicans, etc.
@joekster: As I well fucking know, given that I’m stuck in Indiana.
@dali: I’m so sorry. Are you and he safe? I hope you are…
@Samantha: That’s horrible!
@Sinkable John: I… but… wha… There’s so much wrong with that bit that you quoted (and the other bit that you quoted) that I don’t even know where to START. It’s too early in the morning for this nonsense. It’s ALWAYS too early in the morning for this nonsense, or too late at night.
David Futrelle,
These hate mongers are going to be so angry when Trump fails to bring back Jim Crow, or kick everyone out of the country that isn’t white. I’m going to love to see how they’ll behave when they realize that Trump is not going to be America’s fuhrer.
Fucking hell, Dali. Wishing you both safe.
@Dali
Wait, what… *reads* OMG. *holds out her hug-proxy cat* I’m so sorry. Kittyhugs?