Steve Bannon from USA Today staff video.
Steve Bannon from USA Today staff video.
There is no difference between Nazi, white supremacist, KKK, Proud Boy, Oath Keeper, Three Percenter—except spelling. With "alt-right" Bannon essentially rebranded hate for anything not white or "Christian."
It is good news that Steve Bannon—former adviser to the former president—has been indicted for Contempt of Congress. But what he represents and what he has actually been trying to accomplish—with extremely well-financed backing—is much worse.
I’m not going to enumerate Bannon’s full history here, Wikipedia has that covered. But there are some key elements of his destructiveness that need to be examined. Before the 2016 election Bannon was part of the founding board of Breitbart News, a far-right propaganda operation. At Breitbart he popularized the concept of the “alt-right.” This was a clever move to rebrand, and essentially unite, the right wing white supremacist factions in the United States under one banner. Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of the German language would get the joke. Alt in German means “old.” So the “alt-right” really means “old right” and is really a covert nod to the Nazi party.
This is in keeping with these folks’ habit of speaking in code. Like using the “okay” hand sign to say “white power” or shouting “Let’s go Brandon” mean “F You Biden.” All fun and games to yokels more comfortable with their faces covered in white hoods or shouting “you will not replace us” while carrying tiki torches.
In terms of attitude and character, there is no difference between Nazi, white supremacist, KKK, Proud Boy, Oath Keeper, Three Percenter—except spelling. With “alt-right” Bannon essentially rebranded hate for anything not white or “Christian.”
There is a funny thing about hate. It is very closely related to other nearby emotional bands like fear, anger, terror and covert hostility. When you get down to it, these guys are absolutely terrified of their fellow man. And frankly, because of the history to which they have attached themselves and seem to want to repeat, they probably should be.
The very important thing to remember about people who operate like Bannon—and his insane not-so-clowny posse—is that these people have little or no personal power or charisma. They only feed off inflaming the negative emotions of other people. Like their hero from history, Hitler, when finally stopped by reality and left bereft of “yes men” will collapse in the mental morass of failure that lies behind their facade.
The true insanity motivating people like Bannon and his billionaire backers—remember the Mercers?—is a deep and pervasive terror of their fellow man. These people have long forgotten that the vast majority of Mankind is composed of good and caring people, social personalities, people who enjoy life and seeing others succeed.
The approach of Bannon’s alt-right to the majority of Mankind is to try to subdivide it into segments and then to try to generate hate between those divisions. It is unfortunately an old and repeating abberation of Mankind to fall for this subterfuge all too many times in history. And each one of these failures ended in war and genocide.
Bannon and his cronies are—as far as they are concerned—the wheels of history destined to grind down the “excess” population of Earth. Hitler called this Lebensraum or “room to live.” But it is nothing but insanity wrought by people who fear every other human at a level that would stun anyone sane.
Bannon represents not just the old-right, but the Alt-Reich and its ambition to overthrow the United States. His indictment for Contempt of Congress is a toe hold in what should be a trial for treason—which of course should have quite a few other defendants, you can add the names. You know who they are.
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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