The same Manhattanites who booed Donald Trump at the Al Smith Dinner on Oct. 20 gave him a standing ovation at the 21 Club when he dined out this past Tuesday night. Etiquette, not to mention people’s respect for victory, promises every president-elect a brief honeymoon. Meanwhile, the election’s losers have to find a new outlet for their wounded feelings.
Enter, stage right, Steve Bannon, senior counselor to Trump and dastardly villain.
The leftap condemnation of Steve Bannon, although fervent, relies on weak forensics: guilt by association, hearsay and quotes out of context. Given the level of scrutiny that accompanies presidential appointments, the most shocking revelation is that Bannon’s critics can’t make a stronger case against him.
The thrust is thus: Bannon called his website, Breitbart, the platform for the alt-right. The alt-right, in turn, comprises some dubious characters, including out-and-out racists whose fashion sense is fascist chic. Bannon, therefore, represents the “racist, fascist extreme right,” in the words of Gov. John Kasich’s former adviser John Weaver.
Itap easy to parody this illogic. Sen. Bernie Sanders called his campaign the voice of the left. The left, in turn, comprises some dubious characters, including Josef Stalin, who murdered millions, and Anthony Weiner. The Sanders campaign, therefore, was the voice of homicidal perverts.
“But,” Bannon’s critics butt in, “Nazis, like the national director of the Aryan Renaissance Society, support Bannon!”
True. Itap also true that Communists, such as Communist Party USA chairman John Bachtell, supported Hillary Clinton. Their applause didn’t make her one of them.
Other arguments against Bannon are equally easily debunked.
The Southern Poverty Law Center flogged Bannon because Breitbart once published an article in defense of the Confederate flag. But President George W. Bush also defended it. Is he, too, unfit to step foot inside the White House?
The Huffington Post flogged Bannon because he once complained that “two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia.” Granted that he exaggerated the statistic, Bannon was referring to Asians, not Americans of Asian descent; to nationality, not race. There is nothing racist in the suggestion that American citizens, not foreign nationals, should occupy America’s top jobs.
As so often, Bannon’s supposed racialism is projection. Commentators in rainbow glasses see color everywhere.
The transcript of a 2014 talk delivered to the Human Dignity Institute reveals a flesh-and-blood man wholly unlike the stage villain. In the space of 5,600 words, Bannon uses “Judeo-Christian,” which is not a popular expression among anti-Semites, 12 times. He refers with ease to the “Holy Father,” which is not how anti-Catholics normally invoke the pope. Most importantly, he imagines, with evident satisfaction, the future disintegration of the bigoted fringe.
That, despite the caricature circulating on the internet, is the real Steve Bannon. Letap hope he serves the president more effectively than he serves the momentap need for a boogeyman.
Daniel Cole is a Republican consultant in Colorado Springs.
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