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Major newspapers normalize Trump’s selection of white nationalist as chief strategist

Making the abnormal seem normal.

CREDIT: AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
CREDIT: AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump appointed Steve Bannon as “Chief Strategist to the President.” Bannon is the proprietor of Breitbart, a website that promotes and caters to the alt-right, a euphemism for people who promote white nationalist and white supremacist ideologies.

Ben Shapiro, who worked alongside Bannon as Editor-at-Large of Breitbart, said that under Bannon’s leadership “Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website… pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.”

Bannon described himself in 2014 as a “Leninist.”

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,” Bannon said, according to a a report by Ronald Radosh in the Daily Beast.

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According to a sworn statement by his ex-wife in 2007, Bannon said that he didn’t like Jews and didn’t want his daughters to go to school with Jewish people.

The Anti-Defamation League condemned Bannon’s selection, saying he presided over a “group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists.”

But if you picked up any copies of the nation’s major newspapers, everything seems normal.

USA Today describes Bannon as an “ally” and “loyalist.”

The Wall Street Journal describes Bannon as an “outsider.”

The Washington Post also describes Bannon as an “outsider,” while devoting most of the front page to the local NFL team.

The New York Times describes Bannon as a “firebrand” in the headline.

The actual article is more clear-eyed, however, and the subhead does note that he is an “extremist figure.”