The Consequences of Steve Bannon’s Ideas Need to Be Interrogated, Not Just His Words
The ABC was wrong to believe that through an interview alone Bannon could be held to account
By Jason Wilson
In his interview with Sarah Ferguson on the ABC, Steve Bannon sought to distance himself from the openly neo-Nazi far right, blaming their surge on the dreaded mainstream media. With extraordinary chutzpah, he said, “they’ve given a bunch of marginal, dangerous people a platform”.
By this point Bannon, who has himself become more marginal (having lost his perches in the White House and at Breitbart) but is still dangerous (given his record in those positions), had already been given a significant pass by his interviewer.
Ferguson had said that while she had heard other interviewers call Bannon racist, on the basis of interviews and speeches she had watched, “there’s no evidence that that’s what you are”.
Ferguson should have looked harder. The archive of Breitbart — the website where Bannon had leadership positions for a decade — groans under the weight of the receipts.
In March 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center published just one of many extensive accounts of the website’s promotion of Islamophobia…
