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Friday, November 18, 2016

Bannon Called Racist & Antisemite by Hearsay

John R. Houk
© November 18, 2016



The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a Jewish civil rights organization that might lean a little to militancy in defense of Jews wronged by non-Jews. The ADL posted a huge character assassination on Steve Bannon – Trump’s Chief Strategist at the White House: “BANNON HAS EMBRACED THE ALT RIGHT, A LOOSE NETWORK OF WHITE NATIONALISTS AND ANTI-SEMITES”.

Four/fifths of this article is as anti-Bannon as one can be. Here are some excerpts:

The alt right is a loose network of individuals and groups that promote white identity and reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Often by leveraging social media and the Internet, alt right adherents express opposition to multiculturalism, immigration and often claim that there is a Jewish conspiracy to advocate for “white genocide.”  Bannon “proudly” told a reporter at the 2016 Republican National Convention “we’re the platform for the alt right.” In the same interview in Mother Jones magazine, he denied that the alt right is inherently racist or anti-Semitic, although a vast majority of people affiliated with that movement hold racist and anti-Semitic views.  In addition, under Bannon, Breitbart News published an article co-authored by Milo Yiannopoulos, a figure who is associated with the alt right, that played down the racism of some of the alt right’s main ideologues.  In The Daily Beast in August 2016, alt right figure Richard Spencer, said:

Breitbart has elective affinities with the alt-right and the alt-right has clearly influenced Breitbart. In this way, Breitbart has acted as a ‘gateway’ to alt-right ideas and writers.” 

Bannon has also been embraced by white supremacists for his views in recent days. Numerous well-known white supremacists weighed in on President-elect Trump’s appointment of Bannon as his chief strategist. David Duke called the selection of Bannon “excellent,” adding that Bannon was “basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going.” Peter Brimelow, who runs the racist site VDare, said that the Bannon hire was “amazing.”  Jared Taylor of American Renaissance and Brad Griffin who runs the Occidental Dissent website both said that Bannon would help hold Trump to his campaign rhetoric on immigration and other issues.  Rocky Suhayda of the American Nazi Party voiced the same view.  In addition, Bannon has reportedly reached out to far-right figure and French political activist Marine Le Pen. She tweeted that he had invited her to work together with the new Trump administration.


After linking Bannon to everything that can be White National Supremacist racism, the ADL in the article’s last point – kind-of – exonerates Steve Bannon of Antisemitism:

WE ARE NOT AWARE OF ANY ANTI-SEMITIC STATEMENTS FROM BANNON.

While there is a long fact pattern of evidence that Breitbart served as a platform for a wide range of bigotry and there is some controversy related to statements from Mr. Bannon’s divorce proceedings in 2007, we are not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by Bannon himself.  In fact, Jewish employees of Breitbart have challenged the characterization of him and defended him from charges of anti-Semitism. Some have pointed out that Breitbart Jerusalem was launched during his tenure.

Nevertheless, Bannon essentially has established himself as the chief curator for the alt right. Under his stewardship, Breitbart has emerged as the leading source for the extreme views of a vocal minority who peddle bigotry and promote hate. (Ibid.)

The American Spectator demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Left labelling Steve Bannon an Antisemitic White Identity racist:

The things you hear when the left stops trending.

Steve Bannon is a white nationalist. Anderson Cooper touched me in the gym one time. Wolf Blitzer is an actual wolf, it’s true, I heard it from an ex-staffer’s best friend’s brother’s uncle who used to work next door to the building that is next door to CNN. Martha Raddatz was an extra in the movie They Live, Megyn Kelly has talent, CNN is fair and balanced, liberals are open-minded. Every Republican that gets into power is a descendant of Hitler, and of course none of these are true, but it is fun and I can keep going. That’s where we are as a media and a public that just says whatever it wants to, with not an ounce of factual or concrete evidence to back it up. But, hey, it’s trending, so it must be true. Here are few little things that we do know to be stone cold facts that you never ever hear reported by those I was touched by.

The behind-the-scenes financial leader of the Democrat party, George Soros, was an actual Nazi collaborator. You want to throw the word Nazi around? Well, so will this Jew. Yes, he was 14 years old during the war, and God I can’t imagine what he saw. But like 50 is the new 30 now, back then 14 was the old 44. He has said he feels no remorse or guilt, so I feel no remorse or guilt about saying it, and saying it, and saying it. He has given millions to anti-Israel/anti-Zionist organizations, not to mention that he was convicted of insider trading by the French Courts. He has also broken economies, and to paraphrase Paul Krugman, done so with glee. You want to call people Nazis and Hitler, or white nationalist, your de facto party leader was an actual, well I don’t want to be sued, so I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

You want to accuse Mr. Bannon of being anti-Semitic and a white nationalist? Let’s talk about Time magazine, who made Hitler their Man of the Year in 1938. Let’s talk about the New York Times, who will never pass up the chance to portray Israel as being in the wrong — and, yes, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Let’s talk about MSNBC, and Al Sharpton calling Jews interlopers and diamond merchants. He also led marches in which people chanted “death to Jews.” But if you really want to talk about white power, look no further than the gratefully deceased Robert Byrd, who was an actual white nationalist, pillow case and all. But maybe I’m actually being a little too factual for people on the left.

What exactly is the basis of the left’s arguments against Mr. Bannon? Is it that his wife, in a divorce, accused him of spewing anti-Semitic comments? Yeah, no one in a divorce has ever accused their spouses with false claims. It also never happens in the real world, with people making false claims like: Brian Williams, the Duke rape accuser, the Benghazi attack was caused by a video, John Kerry’s life, Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, and celebrities threatening to leave the country. This really does piss me off, and I don’t know Mr. Bannon, but I do know Breitbart. Like The American Spectator, and the Drudge Report, there are no better friends of Israel, and by proxy, the Jews, than these sites. But if the ADL really wants to go after people for being anti-Semites, let them go after the DNC. It was they who debated bringing up Bernie’s Judaism. It was they who debated whether or not bringing up Israel was a good or bad idea, like it’s 1935 all over again, and should we or should we not mention the horrible Jews. It was Obama officials who called Bibi a chickens**t, not Mr. Bannon. It’s Mr. Obama who attended Rev. Wright’s church and gladly welcomed Al Sharpton to the White House. These are facts, not divorce proceedings conjecture.

Yes, I am an avid reader of Breitbart, and maybe I missed the white nationalist section. Maybe there is a secret code that Jews weren’t given for that section. I guess it comes after Big HollywoodBreitbart Texas, and Breitbart Israel, where Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew, is bureau chief. I guess he wasn’t given access to the White Power section either. Do you really think Ivanka and Jared Kushner, being Orthodox Jews, would be okay with a white nationalist anti-Semite helping run their father and father-in-law’s presidency? I guess they don’t have the codes for the secret Breitbart section either.

READ THE REST (A Better Perspective: Steve Bannon Is a What? By JUDAH FRIEDMAN; American Spectator; 11/15/16 1:07 am)

I’ll be honest that I was a bit uninformed about Steve Bannon until the Left went ballistic about Trump’s staffing decision in the White House. ONCE AGAIN there is the appearance that Dems, the Left Stream Media and Leftists in general are using half-truths and downright lies to smear an opponent of the American Left agenda.

John Zmirak writes of the Leftist tactics to smear their opponents to eliminate them:


The Guilt-By-Association Method

These attempts to destroy Bannon follow a time-tested formula used against skeptics of globalism:

1.    Call Mr. X a racist or anti-Semite.

2.    When pressed for evidence, if there isn’t any, cite some old friend or one-time associate of Mr. X, who can be plausibly framed as prejudiced — in little munchable sound bites, shorn of context. Demand to know why Mr. X hasn’t already denounced his former associate. Muse publicly about how very suspicious that is.

3.    If some pundit defends Mr. X, publicly charge that he is enabling racism and anti-Semitism.

4.    Denounce that pundit, and demand that his friends and associates denounce him, too. Try to get him fired.

5.    When anyone else sticks his neck out for Mr. X, rinse and repeat.


Steve Bannon, Breitbart, and the Alt-Right

Now Bannon is being targeted because the website which he inherited and helped to build into a behemoth, Breitbart, has been called a venue for white supremacists and anti-Semites. And so, because he ran the place, Bannon is also at best a cynical opportunist, and at worse a hater himself. The evidence for these charges is  somewhere between thin and none.

No one has cited an article that appeared at Breitbart whose contents can be plausibly construed as racist or anti-Semitic. No one has found a writer who published at Breitbart whose other writings, elsewhere, are racist or anti-Semitic. No one has produced any evidence of personal or political racism or anti-Semitism that Bannon himself engaged in. A number of conservatives who happen to be Jewish, such as David Horowitz, have come forward to deny that Bannon has ever shown any sign of prejudice. No one has offered any tangible evidence of racism, either.

So what does the charge come down to? Two things:

1) That Bannon once said that Breitbart was a platform for the “Alt-Right.” and

2) That some of the attention-grabbing headlines which Bannon approved could be considered “dog-whistles” intended to get racists and anti-Semites to read them and forward them around, increasing traffic on the site.

Let’s Look at the Evidence

The best analysis of these headlines was done by London-based writer Melanie Phillips, a brave and embattled defender of Israel and the rights of Jews in an increasingly hostile, sharia-friendly country. As she wrote on Facebook: “False allegations are made against Donald Trump and his new head of strategy Stephen Bannon, smearing them as antisemites, fascists and racists. Whether through laziness or ideological malice, these smears are recycled uncritically throughout both mainstream and social media.” Phillips addresses the controversial headlines as follows:

Exhibit A: an article entitled “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.”

That headline is said to be antisemitic. The author of the article, David Horowitz, has written however:

“In fact, neither Breitbart nor Bannon is responsible for that statement. A Jew is. I wrote the article, which was neither requested nor commissioned by Breitbart. And I wrote the headline: “Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.

“I wrote the article when Kristol set out to lead the Never Trump movement, after Trump had secured the Republican nomination. I would write it again in a heartbeat. I would write it the same way and with the same headline. Bill Kristol and his friends betrayed the Republican Party, betrayed the American people, and betrayed the Jews when he set out to undermine Trump and elect the criminal Hillary Clinton. Obama and Hillary are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that launched the Arab drive to destroy Israel and push its Jews into the sea (that was their slogan).”


Exhibit B: an article which said of journalist Anne Applebaum [a Yale classmate of mine, and a fine Cold War scholar—J.Z.] that “hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned.” That phrase is said to be antisemitic.

The article attacked Applebaum for what it claimed was her “disinformation offensive against the anti-globalist right.” Central to its argument was a description of Applebaum’s circumstances and political world-view as the wife of the former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. It said: “Sikorski desperately wanted to replace Baroness Catherine Ashton as EU foreign affairs spokesman. This bid died with the exposure of the Civic Platform corruption. This turn of events ended Applebaum’s dream of being Poland’s first Jewish-American first lady. And hell hath no fury like a Polish, Jewish, American elitist scorned”.

There was nothing gratuitous or innately offensive about this Jewish reference any more than the references to her being Polish or American. It was simply another biographical detail in a highly personal piece. The claim that this was “antisemitic” is absurd.


• The charge of racism.

After the murder in 2015 of nine black worshippers in a Charleston church by a man who posed with a Confederate flag, an article attacking the left for cynically exploiting this tragedy to attack conservatism, tradition and the south.

The author said the left had rewritten history. “The epitome of everything they detest and fear is the Confederate Flag, so that is now the target of a hate campaign so fanatical and irrational as to seem barely sane.”

The insanity has gone one stage further; the left has extended this hate campaign to the website’s chief executive, smearing him as a racist for running this article merely criticising the left for its hatred and lies.

• The charge of Islamophobia

Breitbart has run numerous pieces exposing Islamist aggression and sexual violence. For this it has been falsely accused of anti-Muslim prejudice by those who wish to censor facts which it is overwhelmingly in the public interest to report.


• The charge that it has promoted the “alt-right.”

This term is being used as a smear in itself. It makes no distinction between the legitimate populist movement for western cultural identity to which millions who voted for both Trump and Brexit subscribe, and neo-Nazis and white supremacists who have leeched onto that populist movement — whether to legitimise themselves or to make trouble for the populists through “guilt by association” isn’t clear.

An article about the “alt-right” on Breitbart itself noted that those who use these Nazi types to tarnish the alt-right movement should, to be consistent, use Islamist killers to tarnish all Muslims or Black Lives Matter to tarnish all black people. Of course they would think that preposterous, but they use this tactic against their political enemies. The authors went on:

“The politics of identity, when it comes from women, LGBT people, blacks and other non-white, non-straight, non-male demographics is seen as acceptable — even when it descends into outright hatred. Any discussion of white identity, or white interests, is seen as a heretical offense. Even for us — a gay man of Jewish descent and a mixed-ethnic half-Pakistani — the dangers of writing on this topic loom large. Though we do not identify with the alt-right, even writing an article about them is akin to prancing through a minefield.”

Racism and Globalism: Equal and Opposite Heresies

Of course, there are some people out there who really are racists, anti-Semites, or some other variety of anti-Christian extremist. Some white nationalists today have gone as far as calling to keep abortion legal to lower the non-white birth rate — you know, as eugenicist Margaret Sanger tried to do when she founded Planned Parenthood. Such twisted, hate-goaded people ought to be shunned. One of the READ ENTIRETY (Steve Bannon: Bigot, Cynic or Brave Contrarian? By JOHN ZMIRAK; The Stream; 11/16/16)

Much like the character assassination in the past by Leftists against Sarah Palin and Donald Trump before the election, Steve Bannon is a part of that Leftist tactic.

The inspiration for these thoughts comes from Americans for Limited Government (AGL) noting that the ADL has retracted its Antisemite charge against Steve Bannon.


JRH 11/18/16
***************
ADL backs off Bannon smear: ‘Not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by Bannon’

By press
November 17, 2016

Stephen Bannon and Breitbart News owed apology.

Nov. 17, 2016, Fairfax, Va.–Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement condemning the Anti-Defamation League for finally revealing that “we are not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by [Stephen] Bannon” four days after smearing Bannon as “a man who presided over the premier website of the Alt Right, a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists”:

“The Anti-Defamation League has engaged in the most partisan libelous smear campaign imaginable against Stephen Bannon based on their own political prejudices and bias. One would expect ADL to actually look at the record prior to defaming someone who has proven to not only not be an anti-Semite, but to be a true friend of Israel. After four days of obscene character assassination of Bannon and Breitbart News, ADL has been forced to admit that there is no evidence that Bannon has ever made any anti-Semitic comments. This should provide a cautionary tale for the media that all too often engages in ready, fire, aim narratives unsupported by facts when talking about people they disagree with.

“Everyone in the media who reported this without first checking and ADL in particular owe Stephen Bannon and Breitbart News a front-page apology for their reckless political smear job.

“It is absolutely fair to have a public policy discussion based upon real statements and positions taken by public figures. But this discourse is destroyed by the left’s continued insistence that anyone who disagrees with them is by definition a racist, bigot, anti-Semitic, white supremacist. At a time when the entire media needs to engage in thorough self-examination to determine how they got so far off course, these false attacks on Bannon serve as the prosecution’s Exhibit A in exposing that the left is composed of nothing more than hacks undeserving of the moniker news.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Rick Manning.
______________
Bannon Called Racist & Antisemite by Hearsay
John R. Houk
© November 18, 2016
______________
ADL backs off Bannon smear: ‘Not aware of any anti-Semitic statements made by Bannon’

©2016 Americans for Limited Government. All rights reserved.


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1 comment:

  1. Please +1 my posts to protest my G+ suspension that views rebuttals of Leftists as a personal attack. Suspension ends 11/22/16.

    ReplyDelete