This is all so strange — is he playing 16-dimensional chess (or perhaps just tic-tac-toe) with the little minds of his followers and will come out with a big fat “fake news” denial campaign by using American Prospect as a stooge?? Hard to believe he would just be so free with so much vitriol against so many of Donnie Two Scoops’ base…
I’m glad President Bannon could find time for an interview.
This is uniformly being called bizarre and it’s very hard to imagine what his game is here. Does he think he’ll come crawling out of the wreckage and be hailed as the only voice of sanity? Just for sounding reasonable once in his life? It’s an overture, obviously, but to whom and for what–pfft, I got nothin’.
He even surprised the BBC:
This may be the key passage:
“The Democrats,” Bannon told the American Prospect, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
Note the substitution of “economic” for “ethno-.” One can still preserve much of the rhetoric of white nationalism with such a substitution.
How many times are we going to allow Mr Bannon to rebrand “White Racist Resentment?”
Maybe he’s just not that bright. Certainly in this case he forgot Ben Franklin’s advice, “Better to keep one’s mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and confirm the impression.”
To which I’d add that Bannon has always fancied himself the Big Ideas Guy of these nationalist movements. I don’t see it as at all out of character for him to see some/many of those folks as clowns. They haven’t done the reading and thinking, after all; they just want to dress up and bust some heads. To crush the Democrats, one must be more subtle, more dog-whistle-y, about these things.
OT but just found this over at HuffPo:
A German city is fighting back against neo-nazis by turning their marches into “involuntary walk-a-thons”… People sign up to donate per step marched by the hated group, with the proceeds going to an anti-neo-nazi group. They even paint lines on the march route to indicate how much money is going into the fund at each point. At the end of the marches, the neo-nazis are each presented with a “Siegerurkunde” (“winner’s certificate”) telling them how much money they have “earned” for the good cause and thanking them for their participation in the “involuntary” march-a-thon.
Apparently, it’s spreading. What a great idea!
It’s one of the things that worked for them, sure. So maybe this is a species of job application for a Gingrich-like role, as a consultant and oft-booked voice on cable and such. He’d be wise to think about the future, that’s for sure.
He’s one of those people who think they’re luminously brilliant when they’re really only bright. Mouth-shutting is not big in their repertoire.
Bannon speaks out publicly so few times, that he must be up to something here. I think there is a disproportionate amount of time spent by the media and some Democrats, talking about the Russia investigations, racism and some of the high profile stories. Meanwhile, the administration with Republican support is systematically dismantling much of the progressive policy that has been slowly put in place over a long, difficult road. Bannon, Trump and the Republicans welcome all the attention given to issues that don’t effect their deregulation of business and deconstruction of social programs. Just gotta hope Mueller finds some devastating information,because I don’t think they really care what the public thinks or what the media says.
I could certainly understand if he’s playing white nationalist like fiddles, I think that’s what the Republican strategy has been for decades. Really hard to know what any of these fuckers really care about. I say if you always went with only caring about what puts money into their pocket, left and right, you win close to 100% of the time.
No doubt there’s a constant, quiet leaching away of the policy and infrastructure for doing constructive stuff put in place in the last eight years. But that same stuff went on in the Bush years without the constant turmoil and chaos. I think these people aren’t competent enough to make the distraction happen deliberately—IMHO it’s a for-them happy byproduct of how much they suck.
Well, BumbleB annon, you’re the one who said you weren’t going to make it through this summer without being fired. Probably the only thing you ever said that was true.
And of course it wasn’t sincere.
Write up a bunch of immigration legislation before ya go, OK?
Its quite possible that he had a few scotches, liked the guys report on China, gave him a call and kept on drinking and talking. Drunks do really stupid things sometimes when they are drinking, even when they aren’t falling down drunk.
“The Democrats,” Bannon told the American Prospect, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
It’s funny, there are a not small number of Democrats who pretty much agree with him here, and I think those Democrats tend to be fairly clueless as to who gets Democrats elected. They think they can trade having a moral compass on social issues for economic populism, and that it will somehow bring back all those blue collar Democrats without sacrificing the base of the party. Instead of bringing in more naturally aligned Democrats and turning them out, they think there’s short term success in ignoring the people who brung em. I would like to think that if there’s anything we’ve learned over the last week, it’s what a colossal mistake that would be.
No one said being the party that stands against racial hate would be easy, Johnson knew that signing the CRA would cost his party for at least a generation. But with these Klan rallies planned to jump off all over the country in the coming weeks, Democrats can’t afford to be ambiguous about where they stand. Some things you do because they’re worth doing, because it’s right and decent, and some things have the benefit of being advantageous in the long run. Confronting racism is one of those things.
In a recently released intelligence brief, the intelligence community disagrees and qualifies and quantifies the problem. Of course we could always take the word of a white nationalist asshole looking to destroy democratic conventions over theirs…
The Mercers are trying to reign him in. They want to keep control and if he goes they lose it. They’re protecting their investment.
ETA: @rickjones as well, and @lizzymom – to whom I’d also like to say Donnie Two Scoops is the best I’ve run into. Kudos! I havn’t stolen it to use but I’ve told my sister about it, and she also thinks it’s the best ever, so kudos from her too.
Here’s Politico’s version of the story, FWIW (short version: mostly about China):