Donald Trump has set about building his presidential support network, less than a week after being voted into office by people who definitely aren’t racist but just wanted change.
Oh, and also by people who definitely are racist, like the actual KKK and the sort of people who have responded to Trump’s election victory by committing abhorrent racially motivated attacks.
Oh, and by the white supremacists emboldened to share their messages of hate.
https://twitter.com/lukeoneil47/status/797593432466321408
Trump has already pledged to deport as many as three million undocumented immigrants, while one of his first appointments sees Steve Bannon – who ran his presidential campaign – confirmed as his chief strategist.
He’s already got Mike ‘give homosexuals conversion therapy’ Pence as Vice President-elect, of course, but the extent of Bannon’s dealings should absolutely be cause for concern.
The 62-year-old is executive chairman of Breitbart News, a site which has run headlines such as ‘Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?’ and a number of misogynistic and transphobic articles, who published the line ‘And hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned’ in an article about journalist Anne Appelbaum, and whose technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos has called Islam ‘the real rape culture’.
These are actual headlines Bannon published on his "news" site, this is Trump's chief strategist & sr. counselor: pic.twitter.com/4xRyWabKDS
— Peter Bondi (@pbondi) November 13, 2016
The New York Daily News published comments from Bannon’s ex-wife saying that he did not want his children going to school with Jewish pupils (a claim denied by Bannon through a spokesperson).
And, as the Washington Post notes, Bannon was among those on the American right to call London Mayor Sadiq Khan a ‘radical Muslim’, while CBS News noted that among Breitbart’s most staunch supporters are those members of the alt-right who are prone to personal attacks on Jewish journalists.
Indeed Ben Shapiro, former editor-at-large of Breitbart, has accused Bannon of turning the publication into ‘a cesspool of the alt-right’ and called him ‘a legitimately sinister character’.
In a recent piece, Shapiro also cites interviews with Yiannopoulos in which the British journalist has popularised antisemitic conspiracy theories and dismissed anti-Jewish sentiment as ‘merely “mischievous, dissident, trolly”‘.
And just recently, Marion Le Pen, leader of the French far-right party Front National, tweeted her support for and willingness to work with Bannon.
I answer yes to the invitation of Stephen Bannon, CEO of @realDonaldTrump presidential campaign, to work together. https://t.co/tPSoY5A2vS
— Marion Maréchal (@MarionMarechal) November 12, 2016
And these are just the things of which we have evidence or direct citations. We’ll likely see far more of Bannon’s influence when President Trump is inaugurated in two months’ time.
https://twitter.com/jackantonoff/status/797941827277987840
