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
Hollywood, Breitbart 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.
See Also: Why the Big Lie About 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’
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