Even the dark knight himself, Steve Bannon, has to do the ritual washing of hands when it comes to right-wing extremism. Axed by the 60 Minutes on-air talent the ritual question of whether he was now, or ever had been soft on the radical right, he answered:
Yes, why is it that fake news journalists aren't out there attacking Antifa and the Black Block that are actually rioting and physically attacking "peaceful protesters?" Why aren't they axin' lefty politicians from Kamala Harris to Bernie Sanders "have you now or have you ever had a soft spot for the radical left organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa? Well because.
I think that the reason we have Donald Trump as president is precisely because the conventional conservative movement and the conventional Republicans have failed to protect ordinary people from the vile accusation of racism. And the vile accusation of sexism and homophobia and hate speech and I know not what else.
What this nation needs is a political genius that can turn the left's rhetoric back on itself, to accuse the accusers, to tell the racists on the left that they are the haters and the racists. That Black Lives Matter is black racism. That feminism is sexism. That the gay mafia is heterophobia.
Look I get it. If you are a moderately dull scion of the professional middle class, from Marx to Lenin to Castro, and you have have appetite for power, the go-to strategy since at the latest 1848 is to advocate for the Wretched of the Earth: the poor helpless working class, poor helpless women; poor helpless non-whites; poor helpless gays; poor helpless coionized peoples. Now the well-born scions of the professional middle class are advocating for illegal immigrants and Muslims.
It would be much harder to do something really useful, like invent a new product, build a business, start a family. Or even restore the wasteland that is Detroit, Michigan. Really today's political activist is merely the modern equivalent of the young feudal lord bucking against his king. Because rebellion is the obvious thing to do if the king won't ransom the young lord's prisoners home.
I like to think that politically we are presently in a Panic, like the 1907 Panic when Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's African American librarian asked him to tell the folks what to do to get the nation out of the crash. And Morgan is said to have replied that
But the solution to the 150 year Panic where nobody has the guts to tell lefties to put it where the sun don't shine, is that someone, somewhere has to brush back the vile accusation of racism, or right-wing extremism and live to tell the tale.
In that moment the sun will come out, the fake news journalists will turn on a dime, and we will all "move forward into broad, sunlit uplands."
Meanwhile, I am sitting in my library goggling at Belle Greene and wondering if she is really as Portuguese as she pretends, and waiting for that chap to turn up with a plan.
[T]he Neo-Nazis and Neo-Confederates and the Klan, who, by the way, are absolutely awful – there’s no room in American politics for that.Now Steve Bannon is a smart guy, so if he is saying that rather than:
Look, there are always kooks and clowns on the radical extremes. In a way a healthy politics demands it. But here is what I worry about. I worry that you fake news journalists spend all your time asking me to disavow the radical right. I don't recall ever hearing about a fake news journalist demanding that the racist Representative Maxine Walters to disavow the racist Black Lives Matter. Why is that?There must be a reason.
Yes, why is it that fake news journalists aren't out there attacking Antifa and the Black Block that are actually rioting and physically attacking "peaceful protesters?" Why aren't they axin' lefty politicians from Kamala Harris to Bernie Sanders "have you now or have you ever had a soft spot for the radical left organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa? Well because.
I think that the reason we have Donald Trump as president is precisely because the conventional conservative movement and the conventional Republicans have failed to protect ordinary people from the vile accusation of racism. And the vile accusation of sexism and homophobia and hate speech and I know not what else.
What this nation needs is a political genius that can turn the left's rhetoric back on itself, to accuse the accusers, to tell the racists on the left that they are the haters and the racists. That Black Lives Matter is black racism. That feminism is sexism. That the gay mafia is heterophobia.
Look I get it. If you are a moderately dull scion of the professional middle class, from Marx to Lenin to Castro, and you have have appetite for power, the go-to strategy since at the latest 1848 is to advocate for the Wretched of the Earth: the poor helpless working class, poor helpless women; poor helpless non-whites; poor helpless gays; poor helpless coionized peoples. Now the well-born scions of the professional middle class are advocating for illegal immigrants and Muslims.
It would be much harder to do something really useful, like invent a new product, build a business, start a family. Or even restore the wasteland that is Detroit, Michigan. Really today's political activist is merely the modern equivalent of the young feudal lord bucking against his king. Because rebellion is the obvious thing to do if the king won't ransom the young lord's prisoners home.
I like to think that politically we are presently in a Panic, like the 1907 Panic when Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's African American librarian asked him to tell the folks what to do to get the nation out of the crash. And Morgan is said to have replied that
I don't know what to do myself, but sometime, someone will come in with a plan that I know will work; and then I will tell them what to do.Well, I don't know about that, because the solution to every Panic is to cover the uncertain credit of troubled financial institutions with the credit of a bigger, sounder institution. And these days that means the credit of the United States government, as in guaranteeing the trillions of dollars in money market mutual funds during the Crash of 2008.
But the solution to the 150 year Panic where nobody has the guts to tell lefties to put it where the sun don't shine, is that someone, somewhere has to brush back the vile accusation of racism, or right-wing extremism and live to tell the tale.
In that moment the sun will come out, the fake news journalists will turn on a dime, and we will all "move forward into broad, sunlit uplands."
Meanwhile, I am sitting in my library goggling at Belle Greene and wondering if she is really as Portuguese as she pretends, and waiting for that chap to turn up with a plan.
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