Attempting to Humanize the Dehumanizers

Nicole Glotzer
Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read

Over the past few days, Steve Bannon was announced and then uninvited as the headliner at the annual New Yorker Festival. David Remnick, the magazine’s editor and would-be interviewer of Bannon at the festival, was essentially forced into this decision after other speakers (including Judd Apatow and Jim Carrey) backed out, and after his own staff rebelled on Twitter. While I and many others are glad that Bannon will no longer be at the event, Remnick still says that he plans to interview him in “a more journalistic setting.” More importantly, rescinding his invitation makes this situation into more of a circus than it already was to begin with.

All of this could have been avoided if The New Yorker simply had not invited Bannon in the first place.

I am still trying to figure out what Remnick’s motive was in doing this. Was it to create a scene? If so, he succeeded, but perhaps at the peril of his magazine and its writers who seemed to have no say in the initial decision. Was it to make money from ticket sales (and let’s not forget, Bannon would be paid for his appearance)? Perhaps. Or was it, as he claims, to have an open dialogue with an “opponent”?

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what the reasoning was, because any of them can easily be refuted, particularly the idea of having a dialogue: just as the case of another professional provocateur, Dinesh D’Souza, who often challenges Princeton professor of history Kevin Kruse to a “debate” via Twitter, the challenge is not made in good faith. People in the vein of D’Souza and Bannon make clear that they are not interested in having a true debate, like the debates of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, for instance. Those two were bitter rivals on complete opposite ends of the political spectrum, but both showed up to debates with clean hands, and nothing up their sleeves, ready to listen to and consider the other.

The Bannons of the world are not of this tradition. They are of a tradition that has become increasingly and disturbingly mainstream: that of purposely lying and manipulating for a living, with no intention of debating or talking through issues, only creating a scene. Even more alarming, they are amazingly adept at manipulating a room or an interviewer. Even Donald Trump, who is no genius, is able to manipulate most interviewers he comes into contact with, is a master at talking over the interviewer, and, most of all, at deflecting. Instead of talking about his own possible obstruction of justice in various situations, deflect to Hillary Clinton and why she should be in prison. Worse, some of these folks will try to downplay their racism and convince you that it’s not really there. Whether the interviewers are poorly skilled in dealing with this is certainly an issue. So that is why I readily dismiss Remnick’s claims (and those of his defenders) that he would ask him “difficult questions” and somehow hold his feet to the fire. Not possible.

To those who would defend this choice and lament the missed opportunity to “engage in dialogue” (as I heard on the frustrating Morning Joe recently), I would ask you to consider a tweet by writer/journalist Sulome Anderson on this issue: “You want to see detachment from reality in the ‘elite media,’ look no further than @NewYorker headlining a festival with Bannon. The people who made that decision are likely personally unaffected by his continued legacy of hate. He’s just an interesting controversy to them.”

This statement encapsulates my point: those who say “we should hear and challenge people like Steve Bannon” do not recognize that they have a unique level of privilege that allows them to say that. They would never make such a statement unless they knew with absolute certainty that such an issue would never affect them directly. This is where a line in the sand must be drawn between the free exchange of ideas and those that directly threaten certain people’s very existence, their right to live. There is no obligation to engage with or provide a platform to such ideas, and these ideas are not protected by the First Amendment.

Though this is said so often that it almost no longer has meaning, we are at a crossroads at this moment in American history. After the disastrous mistake this country made in 2016 which is manifesting itself every second of every day it is allowed to continue, we are on a very dangerous path that risks being irreversible.

In other words, these are not ordinary times. These are not times where we can afford to listen to “both sides” of an issue when one side rejects the humanity of certain people in this country who are every bit American as they are, whether they like it or not. To give even the smallest bit of oxygen to dangerous views like this only risks them growing like the flames of a wildfire. To speak of sitting in a room with these folks as if they are operating on the same plane as we are is lethal, because it normalizes them and their “beliefs”; it humanizes those who would dehumanize others if given the opportunity. Once they are normalized, there is almost certainly no turning back (see the many writings of Hannah Arendt on this very issue from the last time we dealt with Nazis).

Often in politics, and especially in our current era of particularly poisonous division, we hear that we need to engage the other side, have a productive dialogue. In almost any other era, that would have been true. Even during the Bush years, which were no picnic either, there were still enough people in each party level-headed enough to be willing to reach across the aisle to come up with solutions to problems (as in the case of the late Senator John McCain). Even those with whom we vehemently disagreed could at least engage in a good faith, policy-centered discussion, not personal or race-based attacks.

But in our current era, we are dealing with something completely different. Instead of debating particular points of policy, we are debating people’s humanity. Whether immigrants and their children who cross the border seeking asylum deserve to be treated like any other person, whether in this country legally or illegally. Whether black men who are simply trying to move about their lives deserve to be shot by police for absolutely no legitimate reason. If people’s basic humanity has become a matter of debate instead of a basic fact, then something is horribly wrong, and we must do everything we can to prevent it from spreading like the disease that it is, and more than it already has.

Steve Bannon is a prime proponent of this change in thought. So for The New Yorker to not only have offered him a platform to share these views (no matter how “combative” David Remnick promised it would be), but to have rewarded him with the title of headliner was not only illogical and bizarre, but a slap in the face to those he has directly harmed with his words and actions, and to many of the magazine’s loyal readers.

But beyond the impact this decision has on other people, how does it make sense to the magazine itself? Since before Trump was elected, the magazine has been decidedly anti-Trump, as one might expect an “elite liberal” New York publication to be. So it is astonishing that Remnick and whoever else was in the room to make this decision went in this direction. It is astonishing that they didn’t think there would be massive backlash and outrage to it, or if they did, that they could handle it and get away with it by saying that Remnick would ask him “difficult questions.”

Additionally, did they consider what kind of reception Bannon would get at the event, if it had gone forward? One might predict the type of audience that would have attended would not have been sympathetic to Bannon’s “views.” If the reaction got out of hand, how would that have made Bannon look? It would have made him like a sympathetic character, much like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to be at Berkeley last year. And now that Remnick was forced to rescind the invitation, Bannon’s goal has been accomplished with absolutely no effort on his part. I’m not sure if Remnick and his supporters understand this either. This is the last thing we need in this already difficult time, so the decision to engage him at all was nothing short of self-defeating.

I know that every time one of these situations comes up, where someone dubbed “controversial” is invited to speak at a highly publicized event and there is subsequent backlash, some devil’s advocate raises the “slippery slope” argument. “If we don’t allow this person to speak, then who’s next? Then we are limiting everyone’s freedom of speech.” The problem with this argument is that it is equating two different planes of argument, as I mentioned before: one that argues based on logic and facts, and one that argues based on complete irrationality. Sure, we all have emotional reactions to things and even individual people we don’t like. But the idea that certain groups are inferior and deserve to be eliminated is not based on logic and facts (despite what the pseudoscience of Charles Murray may suggest).

It’s disheartening and mentally exhausting that this discussion even needs to be had. At this point in our nation’s history, in the 21st century when we have unprecedented access to information and to each other, we should not still be stuck on whether or not certain “ideas” should be debated or heard. In fact, we decided that 70 years ago when the Allies defeated Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Why is it being allowed to happen again? Only because media platforms who have extraordinary power are allowing it to, to increase ratings or ticket sales. But the rest of us, who are already or may one day be directly affected by these “ideas”, cannot afford to allow this “exchange” to go on without intervening. Because at this point they are no longer just ideas. If we do not remain vigilant and push back against those who would attempt to give people who promote such ideas more airtime, we risk going down a road whose destructive outcomes we’ve already seen. Because when it comes to beliefs that involve the elimination of entire groups of people, there is no other side.

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