If you are not familiar with Breitbart.com, aren't you lucky! It's an extreme right-wing website which gives its readers strong helpings of racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, anti-LGBT bigotry and misogyny.* Its comments are a cesspool of white supremacists. Or were, the last time I waded in.
Given that, it's interesting to note that the Trump administration has hired at least three Breitbarn alumni: The Rasputin behind Trump's throne, Stephen Bannon, who used to be Breitbart editor, as chief strategist (and quite possibly as the real president), Julia Hahn, a writer strongly opposed to all the "wrong" kinds of immigrants, as special assistant, and Sebastian Gorka, who previously advised Hungary's autocratic president Victor Orban, as deputy assistant to the president. Notice that Gorka clearly has expertise in counseling dictators!
Did this country vote for Breitbart to run it? I doubt that, to be honest, despite the very vociferous racist and misogynist Trump supporters we all saw during the campaign. But the Breitbart people are close to the white-Christian-male supremacists, and on some deep level that seems to be the base of Trump's heart, the people whom he will not let go, the people whose desires he aims to satisfy.
This means a bumpy road for the clear majority of Americans who do not fall into that privileged group.
Now given that the three mentioned Breitbart alumni are all supposed to know how to write, was one of them behind the firing note handed to acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, for her statement that the Department of Justice would not defend Trump's Muslim ban?
Here's Yates's sacking notice:
Note the emotional tone of the notice: Yates has betrayed the Department of Justice, she is weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.**
That sounds like Trump, doesn't it? Or at least someone who must smear anyone who has stood up against him or her, someone who must always dominate, someone who is extremely thin-skinned.
The whole thing also sounds like one of those emails I get about Nigerian inheritance or how my PayPal account has been frozen, full of inappropriate language. And it sounds like something a teenager would have written.
But it's always possible that the flavor comes from the Breitbart alumni.
O how I miss the times, long gone, when notices like that were written without unnecessary slurs, in proper English.
The more serious question for all of us has to do with Breitbart's visible and powerful presence in the Trump administration. Are we going to be governed from that white-Christian-male supremacist angle? Early signs suggest that this will be the case.
That makes resistance both more urgent, but also more likely to succeed, because most Americans, including most of those who voted for Trump, do not want to live in the kind of world Bannon and friends plan to build after they destroy the current establishment:
“I’m a Leninist,” Steve Bannon told a writer for The Daily Beast, in late 2013. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”*Well, Leninist he is not. The gist of that quote is in the destruction of the current institutions of the state (which are based on democratic principles, however flawed) and in the building of something different. What that "different" might be should be of some concern for all real patriots.
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* During Bannon's editorship, Breitbart posted articles with these headlines:
“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”
“Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture.”
“Suck It Up Buttercups: Dangerous Faggot Tour Returns to Colleges in September.”
“The Solution to Online ‘Harassment’ Is Simple: Women Should Log Off.”
“Two Months Left Until Obama Gives Dictators Control of Internet.”
“There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews.”
“Trannies Whine About Hilarious Bruce Jenner Billboard.”
I also spotted several other anti-feminist and anti-women articles while keeping an eye on the whole establishment for a period of couple of years. (Yes, I'm heroic, send me money).
More on the contents of Breitbart:
Under Bannon, Breitbart, which was read by Republicans across the political spectrum, allowed this so-called alt-right movement to enter the mainstream conservative conversation. The site published a tag on “black crime.” Bannon sent reporters to the Mexican border to cover immigration from the perspective of American citizens who felt victimized by undocumented immigrants. Breitbart writers used traditional tropes of anti-Semitism, attacking international bankers and globalists. “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told Sarah Posner, of Mother Jones, in July, weeks before he became the chairman of Trump’s campaign.
** And Yates is a chick! Trump would never let a chick get the better of him (though, of course, Yates knew that her job would be terminated). Chicks are supposed to exist only for sex in the Trump Reich, though their tits and butts can also be rated. Even aloud, given that political correctness (read: common courtesy) is supposed to have died on November 9, 2016.