WHAT SORT OF “NEW POLITICAL ORDER” IS BANNON PLANNING?
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY M WARNER
APRIL 13, 2017
“A NEW POLITICAL ORDER IS BEING FORMED,” SAID BANNON. SEE THE SEVERAL ARTICLES BELOW, A NUMBER OF WHICH, AS USUAL, ARE IN EXPLANATION OF UNCOMMON OR UNFAMILIAR TERMS AND IDEAS, BUT THEY ARE ALL WELL-WRITTEN AND FASCINATING. ALL MY LIFE I’VE BEEN BASICALLY A KNEE-JERK PATRIOT WITHOUT THE KILLER INSTINCT THAT I SEE IN SO MANY CONSERVATIVES, BUT THESE ARTICLES GAVE ME A GREAT DEAL OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION. UNFORTUNATELY, I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT BANNON WAS REFERRING TO SPECIFICALLY BY A “NEW POLITICAL ORDER,” BUT THE GUESSES I MAKE FROM THE CONTEXT OF BANNON’S ALT-RIGHT BACKGROUND AND TRUMP’S SHEER EGOTISM MAKE ME SHIVER.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-bannon-role-trump-inner-circle-jeopardy-sources/
Steve Bannon's role in Trump's inner circle in jeopardy, sources say
By MAJOR GARRETT CBS NEWS
April 12, 2017, 7:51 PM
Photograph -- From left, White House Senior Counselor for Economic Initiatives Dina Powell, President Trump’s White House Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and President Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus attend a news conference with Mr. Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the East Room at the White House, Wed., April 12, 2017, in Washington. AP
WASHINGTON -- There’s been something of a Cold War inside the White House.
It appears President Trump is putting some distance between himself and his most controversial adviser, Steve Bannon.
Bannon is the former right-wing media executive who’s been the author of Mr. Trump’s darkest rhetoric.
Do Americans think President Trump is doing a good job?
Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, took a seat in the front row of Mr. Trump’s news conference Wednesday, but sources close to the president say Bannon’s role in Mr. Trump’s inner circle is in jeopardy.
Photograph -- ap-17102776906271.jpg, From left, White House Senior Counselor for Economic Initiatives Dina Powell, President Trump’s White House Senior Adviser Steve Bannon, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and President Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus attend a news conference with Mr. Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the East Room at the White House, Wed., April 12, 2017, in Washington. AP
“There’s a new political order that’s being formed,” Bannon said during the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year.
Clashes with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, have angered Mr. Trump, as was evident in an interview Tuesday with the New York Post.
“Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will,” Mr. Trump said, after ordering a Bannon-Kushner truce late last week.
Mr. Trump also tried to minimize Bannon’s influence.
Trump advisers Bannon and Kushner told to stop fighting
Play VIDEO
Trump advisers Bannon and Kushner told to stop fighting
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Mr. Trump said.
“I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve,” the president said. “I’m my own strategist.”
In fact, Mr. Trump was well acquainted with Bannon before he became campaign CEO in August.
In rare appearance, Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon speaks at CPAC
Play VIDEO
In rare appearance, Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon speaks at CPAC
Bannon interviewed candidate Trump on Breitbart News more than 10 times starting in November 2015.
All this comes amid another high-profile White House controversy concerning White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
“You had a, someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to the -- to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Spicer tried to apologize for clumsily comparing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s recent use of sarin nerve gas to Adolf Hitler’s actions during the Holocaust.
“To make a gaffe and a mistake like this is inexcusable and reprehensible,” Spicer said. “On a professional level it’s disappointing because I think I’ve let the president down.”
POLITICAL ORDER –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Order
The Origins of Political Order
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Origins of Political Order is a 2011 book by political economist Francis Fukuyama about what makes a state stable. It uses a comparative political history to develop a theory of the stability of a political system. According to Fukuyama, a stable state needs to be modern and strong, to obey the rule of law governing the state and be accountable.[1]
Series of books[edit]
The book is the first of two books on the development of political order. This book goes from its origins to the French Revolution. The next book Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Present Day, published in September 2014, starts with the French Revolution and carries the analysis to the present day.[2]
Why states and institutions fail[edit]
The book is an attempt to understand why modern statebuilding [sic: should be connected by a hyphen instead.] and the building of institutions in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone and Liberia have failed to live up to expectations.[3]
In the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US administration seemed genuinely surprised when the Iraqi state itself collapsed in an orgy of looting and civil conflict.[4]
The book is about "getting to Denmark," in other words creating stable, peaceful, prosperous, inclusive, and honest societies.[5] Fukuyama points out that at the time of writing ninety contemporary 'primitive' societies had been engaged in war,[6] suggesting that political order is preferable to primitive social structures if stability is to be achieved. The author describes how attempts at shaping countries outside the western world into western type democracies failed, and that this book was an attempt to find out why, by trying to find the true origins of political order, by tracing the histories of China, India, Europe and some Muslim countries from the point of view of three components.[7]
Aims[edit]
Since the aim of the book is to understand how institutions and states develop in different countries, it is also a book on comparative historical research.
It is an extension of Samuel P. Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies and similar in scope to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.[8]
Fukuyama develops his argument with respect to the history of China, India and the Middle East before focusing on the way European countries developed in a variety of directions.[9]
From pre-human origins to states[edit]
From chimpanzee hunting groups to tribes[edit]
In his quest for the origins of political order, he first looks at the social order among chimpanzees, notes that the war-like hunting group, rather than the family, was the primary social group, and claims the same for humans. Humans went further: to survive they formed tribes, whose armies were superior to hunting groups by their sheer size.[10][11][12][13]
He uses recent work in sociobiology and other sources to show that sociability built on kin selection and reciprocal altruism is the original default social state of man and not any isolated, presocial human as suggested by Hobbes and Rousseau.[14][15] He suggests that Hobbes and Locke present a fallacy when they argue humans developed cooperative ability only as a result of the invention of the state. This is because chimps, the genetic ancestors to humans, engage in kin relations based on cooperation,[16] and so Hobbes and Locke must be suggesting humans were once sociable, lost this instinct and then regained it due to the state.[17]
Challenge of tribes on the road towards the state[edit]
The next step was to escape beyond tribalism and the "tyranny of cousins", to join tribes into larger coalitions[9] towards states, again due to the advantage of larger armies. This was done with the aid of religion.[13] This was because as groups grew in size, maintaining cooperation became more difficult as face-to-face interactions with much of society became difficult. Religion offered a way of providing a combining social force to hold society together .[18] For example, Fukuyama cites Mohammed as an example of what Weber labels a "charismatic leader" because he used the idea of an 'umma' (community of believers) to bind together the territory that he ruled over .[19] This challenge to transcend tribalism partly remains today in many parts of the world that is outside Western civilization, for example in Afghanistan and in Somalia.[13]
Restrictions on marriage and inheritance as a strategy against corruption[edit]
Loyalty to the tribe or the family, rather than to the state, leads to corruption and weakening of the state. Various strategies were used to overcome the corruption. One such strategy was restrictions against marriage among the ruling official class to make sure that loyalties would not lie with family or tribe.[20]
Mandarins or Scholar-officials, who were the ruling class of China, were not allowed to pass on the lands given to them by the emperor to their own children and were restricted as to whom they were allowed to marry.[21]
Mamluk* slaves, the ruling class of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, were told which slaves to marry while their children could not inherit from them.[22] Jannisarries* were originally forced into celibacy or and prohibited from having a family.[23][24]
Pope Gregory VII forced Catholic priests in Europe to become celibate and they were prohibited from having a family for the same reason.[25]
Spanish administrators in South America were restricted from to marrying local women and from establishing family ties in the territories they were sent to.[26]
Three components of political order[edit]
The books develops [sic] the idea of the development of the three components of a modern political order, which are,[1]
State building
Rule of law
Accountable government
Balance between the components[edit]
A successful modern liberal democracy balances all three components to achieve stability.[41]
In Europe, there was a long period when the emperors and popes were in conflict, creating a balance of power between them ,[5] and ultimately leading to a situation where some small states developed a stable balance between the three components in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden.[27][5]
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/28/francis-fukuyama-political-order-political-decay-review-magisterial-overview
Francis Fukuyama The Observer
Political Order and Political Decay review – volume two of Francis Fukuyama’s magisterial political history
Should we believe in liberal democracy or is it time to shed the west’s last doomed obsession, asks the End of History author
Nick Fraser
Sunday 28 September 2014 03.00 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 February 2017 10.32 EST
Just after the end of the cold war, a young American-Japanese political scientist published an arresting essay entitled The End of History?, followed in 1992 by a book, The End of History and the Last Man. Many chose to interpret Fukuyama’s dense, aphorism-studded argument as an arrogant, misguided spelling out of the triumph of liberal capitalism. But Fukuyama had something subtler to say. He wanted us to think of what we should do with ourselves now democracy was installed globally. Would we be happy as humans – or would we not enter some zone of deep, anti-climactic dissatisfaction? And would liberal democracy be superseded?
Fukuyama mistakenly endorsed the neocon imperial project. Later, after the Iraq invasion, he wrote an admirable short book trashing his ex-associates. He supported Obama, and wrote eloquently of the failures in Congress organised by the latter’s enemies in the name of democracy. Now he has finally and triumphantly completed what must be his life’s work, telling the story of the evolution of the world’s political institutions in two fat volumes loaded up with wisdom and stuffed with facts.
>Volume two skids through the 19th century to the present, but to appreciate the astounding ambition of Fukuyama’s project one must reach back to volume one, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (2011). We begin somewhere remote with primates and family hunter-gatherer groups. Then we visit scattered tribes. Something like an ordered state comes earliest in China. Now we rush through Athens and Rome. Authentic states with functioning bureaucracies come into existence. The Catholic church proves unexpectedly to be an innovator with respect to law. Life becomes less brutish and short in places such as Denmark, England, and, later, the United States, Japan, Germany. There are wars, famines, breakdowns, but some sort of amelioration of the human condition can be seen to occur.
Fukuyama has a gift for catchy, repeatable phrases, and he refers to democratic development as “Getting to Denmark” – a 17th-century pre-Borgen vision of property laws, parliaments governed by a live-and-let-live pluralistic ethos. In Fukuyama’s view “Denmark” is a metaphor of moderate tempers, a good legal system, credible parliamentary democracy, a dose of healthful end-of-history tedium. Denmark, defined both as a real place or a metaphor, is the closest we can get to collective perfection.
Political Order and Political Decay is somewhat less of a good read than the first volume. This is a consequence of the material, which is more complicated and less susceptible to being rendered as a narrative. As Tocqueville did in the 19th century, Fukuyama examines the real prospects for democracy. He wants us to ask ourselves not just whether the world we have can be improved, but whether it can survive at all.
The nearer we get to the present, however, the less this simple narrative appears sustainable. Instead of ascending in orderly fashion, humans begin to behave like demented and exhausted marathon runners. They go in different directions, following often contradictory signs – labelled Democracy, Law, Social Mobilisation – stumbling and falling. There is no finishing line.
There are omissions (modern India is one, and the passages about the Middle East are perfunctory) but the ground covered is astonishing. There are brilliant passages about modernity in Argentina and Japan. A chapter comparing the civil service in Britain, France and Germany left me wondering how such potentially dull subjects can be made so interesting.
Most Americans pay deference to the notion of American exceptionalism, but not Fukuyama. Anyone who thinks that Americans could do without the federal government, or should be happy with the way it is run, should be forced to read the 50-odd subtly argued pages about American railroads and forests. The *“vetocracy” (another good Fukuyama word) of US democracy is a fact of contemporary life.
What he calls “repatrimonialisation” is the lock applied to democratic institutions by the wealthy and powerful in the pursuit of their exclusive interests – and dominance by wealthy individuals and corporations is more pervasive than at almost any time in American history. Without political change, it is clear that America faces decay. But Fukuyama is honest enough to say that he cannot see how that change will take place.
You cannot have democracy without a functioning legal system. Just as important, it would seem, is the creation of a state to which citizens can at least feel some minimal attachment – and that, too, takes time, and isn’t easy to bring off. If you choose one aspect of modernity, such as efficiency, you may rule out another. It proved easy to turn the modern bureaucratic states of Japan and Germany into tyrannies; no civil society existed capable of mobilising opposition. Fukuyama does acknowledge this, yet he forces us to see, too, how liberty has been oversold in recent decades.
Should we believe in the cause of liberal democracy – or is it time to shed what many, after so many botched efforts, see as the last, doomed western obsession with remaking the world in its distorting image? Fukuyama makes us see that such things as good government and laws that protect the weak are more or less universally desired – impulses towards them are to be found wherever political activity exists, and they are surprisingly durable.
Whether humankind can get to Denmark, alas, is less certain. We can all try, but there is no guarantee of success. Decay, meanwhile, is pervasive, easily attained and terrible. Read these wonderful books so that you can never again say that we haven’t been warned. And read them, too, for the way they make uncertainty seem not just tolerable but the only sane way to look at the world.
Nick Fraser is the commissioning editor of Storyville, the BBC’s documentary strand. Political Order and Political Decay is published by Profile (£25). Click here to buy it for £18.99 with free UK p&p
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetocracy
Vetocracy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A vetocracy refers to a dysfunctional system of governance whereby no single entity can acquire enough power to make decisions and take effective charge.[1] The term points to an excessive ability or willingness to use the veto power within a government or institution (without an adequate means of any override). Such limitations may point to a lack of trust among members or hesitance to cede sovereignty.
Some institutions which have been hampered by perceptions of vetocratic limitations (and even responsible for their downfall) include the Articles of Confederation, the Confederate States of America, and the League of Nations. The present-day United Nations Security Council is criticized for its inability to take decisive action due to the exclusive rights of veto power of permanent members. Thomas Friedman and Moisés Naím[2] also used the term to describe the argument of Francis Fukuyama that the United States was facing such a crisis.
THIS IS A LONG AND ANNOYING ARTICLE, NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT HE SAYS, BUT BECAUSE WHEN I COPIED IT AND PRINTED IT HERE THE USEFUL BITS OF INFORMATION WERE STRUNG OUT IN A SERIES OF HALF SENTENCES. RIDICULOUS. I HATE THIS, SO I HAVE ELIMINATED ALL BUT THE IMPORTANT PARTS, AND GIVEN YOU A SORT OF OUTLINE OF THE ARTICLE. TO READ IT WHOLE, GO TO THE WISSENBURG.ORG ARTICLE BELOW. THERE ARE ELLIPSIS MARKS AT THE APPROPRIATE PLACES BELOW, OF COURSE.
http://www.wissenburg.org/pdf/tcoo2012.pdf
Two concepts of political order
Traditional and pluralist perspectives1
Marcel Wissenburg
Summary
Over the past decades, two clusters of developments have been identified as challenges to the actual power of the sovereign nation-state as well as to relatively simple and easy models of the state assumed in political science and political philosophy. Analyses of and answers to these developments, internationalization (including e.g. globalization) and dehierarchization (including e.g. multilevel governance), still presume the continued unity of a society underneath increasingly fluid political structures. . . . .
Behind this framework lies a different conception of order. In this pluralist rather than traditional understanding of political order, the building blocks are individuals and their voluntary and involuntary associations.
Introduction
Contemporary political theorists rarely assume, as Rawls once did, that political theory can take the culturally homogeneous society with closed borders as a ‘simple’ reference point, and subsequently develop ideal theories which one may expect to be modifiable, with just a few technical tricks, to suit the complexities of real existing, far more complicated societies. Yet at a more fundamental level the alternative view of society as complex (as offered by e.g. multiculturalism, feminism and globalism) shares with the classic ‘simplistic’ view the crucial and problematic assumptions that political order as such is natural, that it is desirable, and that it does not really need to be justified explicitly.
In this article, I shall argue that it is prudent to distinguish further between two concepts of political order. One is the more or less traditional view illustrated by contemporary (both mainstream and critical) political theory but also by the way political scientists sometimes tend to conceive of the sovereign state. Here, deliberately oversimplifying, order is hierarchically imposed, top-down, regardless of whether it is legitimized bottom-up – or even independent of actual popular consent. Unity or the desire for unity and cooperation are seen as normal, while secession, dissociation or autonomy are the phenomena that need to be explained.
While this concept of order may be historically accurate on a very large scale, given humanity’s tribal past, it is less accurate today than it was 200 or 20,000 years ago; moreover, there is reason to believe that it is a morally undesirable concept of order.
What I am going to defend is an alternative, pluralist way of conceptualizing order, polity and society – moving away in particular from the sovereign nation-state to a more ecumenical model that does justice to the role of individuals as moral agents, and as building blocks, origins and sometimes creators of society and polity. The state, the nation and sovereignty are historically and philosophically contingent phenomena, and the (hypothetical) alliance they form in the shape of the sovereign nation-state is even more contingent, a phenomenon that perhaps even exists only in the minds and books of social scientists and philosophers.
If reality no longer fits this model, a new one is required. What I offer is a framework for developing such a model – that is, not a model in itself, but a framework for developing one. On the pluralist view, oversimplifying this perspective as well, order is created bottom-up, voluntarily or involuntarily, by individuals and their (in)voluntary associations, in response to the perceived needs and interests of an order’s constituent parts.
. . . .
One reason to argue for the pluralist view is that it enriches normative political theory*, while (as already claimed) its alternative is a morally undesirable concept. The pluralist concept far better suits other assumptions of multicultural, feminist, social liberal and (obviously) libertarian political theory – in general, all heirs of the Enlightenment – than the traditional view, which might even be seen as a contradiction of Enlightenment ideals of human flourishing. Although it is of secondary concern here, I believe that the pluralist view may be relevant to empirical political science as well, as it could help develop alternative explanations and (motivational) understandings of e.g. ‘failed states’ and of the continued wide-spread resistance to the European Union.
NORMATIVE POLITICAL THEORY* – THIS IS THE CLOSEST I COME TO A DEFINITION FOR NORMATIVE POLITICAL THEORY. NORMATIVE MERELY MEANS BEING CONSTRUCTED ACCORDING TO “STANDARDS” OR A MODEL. READ THE DESCRIPTION BELOW OF THE MEANING. IT’S ALL GOOD, BUT I NOTICE IT DOES NOT EVEN MENTION THE NEEDS OF THE LIFEFORMS WHO LIVE UNDER A GIVEN POLITICAL SYSTEM. SOUNDS “CONSERVATIVE” TO ME! WHERE’S THE INTEREST IN QUALITY OF LIFE?
http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/intlpoliticalscience/n396.xml
Normative Political Theory
Russell Hardin
In: International Encyclopedia of Political Science
. . . . Normative political theory offers a framework for the evaluative component of this assessment. This entry first reviews the modern origins of normative political theory and its explanatory basis and then examines its main issues: equality, civil society, civil liberties, justice, democracy, and constitutionalism.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN WILLING TO ESPOUSE UNQUALIFIED “CHANGE” AS MY BATTLECRY. IN FACT, THAT’S DOWNRIGHT SCARY, ESPECIALLY IF A POLITICAL “CONSERVATIVE” IS SAYING IT. THIS “DECONSTRUCT WASHINGTON” IS IN THE EXACT SAME “BASKET OF DEPLORABLES.” THE BARBARIANS CAME RUSHING OVER THE ALPS SOME THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO TO “DECONSTRUCT” THE CIVILIZED WORLD. THIS SOUNDS VERY SIMILAR TO ME.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/politics/steve-bannon-world-view/
Steve Bannon outlines his plan to 'deconstruct' Washington
Zachary Wolf-Profile-Image
By Z. Byron Wolf, CNN
Updated 1:28 AM ET, Fri February 24, 2017
Video -- Steve Bannon makes rare public remarks at CPAC 24:04
Washington (CNN)White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon rarely appears in public and rarely speaks to the press, much less on live television. So his appearance alongside White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus Thursday was hotly anticipated and closely watched.
The men performed a buddy schtick of sorts, portraying the yin and yang that bring the White House together and keep it running not in chaos as some media reports have claimed, but like the "fine-tuned" machine President Donald Trump bragged about during a news conference last week. Priebus keeps the trains running, according to Bannon, and Bannon does the big ideas, according to Priebus.
The fact that Bannon doesn't talk much in public has created an aura in Washington for him. Critics say he's the guiding force behind Trump's policies. "Saturday Night Live" portrayed him as the Grim Reaper who sits behind Trump in the Oval Office.
'SNL': Trump and Bannon call world leaders 01:44
Bannon did not seem like the Grim Reaper on Thursday. He came off as rumpled and overworked, but passionate about his boss, even if he admittedly "runs a little hot."
But he did cram a lot of those big ideas Priebus mentioned into what was billed as a short and informal Q&A. One could infer a lot about Trump's goals for the next four years from what Bannon said. Here are some of the most interesting passages and some of his more interesting word choices:
Trump is going to do exactly what he said during the campaign
"This is the main thing that the mainstream media -- or the opposition party -- never caught, is that if you want to see the Trump agenda it's very simple. It was all in the speeches. He went around to those rallies and the speeches had an enormous amount of content in them ... He's laid out an agenda with those speeches with the promises he made and our job every day is to just to execute on that ... he's maniacally focused on that."
"All of those promises are going to be implemented," he said.
There are three pillars of Trump's plan
"I kind of break it up into three verticals of three buckets," Bannon said. "The first is kind of national security and sovereignty and that's your intelligence, the Defense Department, Homeland Security.
"The second line of work is what I refer to as 'economic nationalism' and that is Wilbur Ross at Commerce, Steven Mnuchin at Treasury, (Robert) Lighthizer at Trade, (National Trade Council head) Peter Navarro, (adviser) Stephen Miller, these people that are rethinking how we're gonna reconstruct our trade arrangements around the world.
"The third, broadly, line of work is what is 'deconstruction' of the administrative state."
'Economic nationalism' is Bannon's favorite buzz term
He used variations of the term three times in describing the Trump agenda.
Multilateral relationships are bad, bilateral relationships are good.
"I think one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history was (Trump's) immediate withdraw from (Trans-Pacific Partnership). That got us out of a trade deal and let our sovereignty come back to ourselves, the people. The mainstream media don't get this, but we're already working in consultation with the Hill. People are starting to think through a whole raft of amazing and innovative, bilateral relationships -- bilateral trading relationships with people that will reposition America in the world as a fair trading nation and start to bring jobs. High value added, manufacturing jobs, back to the United States of America."
They're going to 'deconstruct' the current regulatory system
"Every business leader we've had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent, if you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason, and that is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can't get it passed, they're just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That's all going to be deconstructed and I think that that's why this regulatory thing is so important."
The media is the 'opposition party,' and 'it's only going to get worse'
Bannon used the term "opposition party" several times when describing the media, and he predicted White House confrontations with journalists would get worse.
"They're corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has," he said. "Here's why it's going to get worse: Because he's going to continue to press his agenda. And as economic conditions get better, as more jobs get better, they're going to continue to fight. If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day, it is going to be a fight. And that is what I'm proudest about Donald Trump."
The US will experience a new political order
"I've said that there's a new political order that's being formed out of this," Bannon said. "And it's still being formed. But if you look at the wide degree of opinions in this room -- whether you're a populist; whether you're a limited-government conservative; whether you're libertarian; whether you're an economic nationalist -- we have wide and sometimes divergent opinions. But I think we (agree on) the center core of what we believe, that we're a nation with an economy. Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being. And I think that is what unites us and I think that is what is going to unite this movement going forward."
Bannon is not afraid to use words like 'nationalism' and 'culture'*
"Nationalism, and especially "white nationalism," are terms fraught with historical tensions and can elicit fear from minorities affected by racist or prejudiced mindsets.
And Bannon has been accused of being a friend to white nationalists, although he has rejected it in the past. But that hasn't stopped him from keeping the term "economic nationalism" in his rhetorical quiver. He also said "we are a nation with culture and a reason for being." He didn't elaborate, but that's an idea sure to cause debate and turmoil in a nation where for many years the overriding language from politicians was one of inclusion of new cultures and pride in a nation of immigrants.
*"CULTURE" -- I OFTEN USE "CULTURE" TO MEAN THE FOLKWAYS AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF A NATION, REGION, LANGUAGE GROUP, ETHNIC GROUP. ANTHROPOLOGISTS, AT LEAST IN 1970 WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE, USED IT THAT WAY, AND IT CERTAINLY BORE NO PEJORATIVE OR EXCLUSIVITY MEANING AT ALL. TO ME, THE OLD HYMN SAYS IT ALL: "BLACK AND YELLOW, RED AND WHITE." TO ME, THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF AMERICAN "CULTURE," AND TO IMPOSE SOMETHING ELSE UPON US IS UNACCEPTABLE. SO, IF I HAVE STEPPED INTO AN HIDDEN PIT TRAP VERBALLY, I'M SORRY, BUT THAT'S ALL IT IS. WHEN I, AND I BELIEVE MOST PEOPLE, SAY IT, I AM NOT EVEN THINKING ABOUT AN ALL WHITE, ALL CHRISTIAN, OR ALL ANYTHING "CULTURE." I KNOW THAT THE ALT-RIGHT ARE ALREADY TALKING ABOUT "WHITE NATIONALISM," WHICH IS ONE STEP BEYOND "WHITE SUPREMACY," INTO A MANDATORY SEGREGATION OR WORSE. HITLER'S WAY OF SOLVING THAT PROBLEM, OF COURSE, WAS THE "FINAL SOLUTION."
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/325277/trump-adviser-steve-bannon-hails-'new-political-order'
Trump adviser Steve Bannon hails 'new political order'
4:46 pm on 24 February 2017
The chief strategist to US President Donald Trump has said that his election victory has ushered in a "new political order", calling the media the "opposition party".
White House advisor Steve Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Conference.White House advisor Steve Bannon at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Photo: AFP
Steve Bannon vowed at a conservative conference to bring together those of "wide and sometimes divergent opinions" in support of "economic nationalism".
"We are a nation with a culture and a reason for being," the normally behind-the-scenes adviser told the audience.
He said the president was "maniacally focused" on pursuing his agenda.
"I've said that there's a new political order that's being formed out of this. And it's still being formed," he said.
The former editor of Breitbart News Network appeared with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday.
Vice-President Mike Pence will address the conference later on Thursday, and President Trump will speak on Friday.
The joint appearance comes amid speculation that the two men are competing for power and influence within the Trump White House.
But the two men, who come from very different political backgrounds, attempted to dispel any rumours of their reported division and insisted they work closely in a partnership.
"The truth of the matter is [Trump] brought together the party and the conservative moment [sic] , and I've got to tell you, if the party and the conservative movement are together, it can't be stopped," Mr Priebus said.
Mr Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was viewed as a liaison between the party establishment and Mr Trump's populist campaign.
Mr Bannon, formerly the driving force behind the anti-establishment Breitbart News, is considered one of Mr Trump's key advisers.
The president named Mr Bannon on the crucial National Security Committee at the expense of the joint chiefs of staff, an unprecedented move that signalled his influence on the administration.
During his appearance on Thursday, Mr Bannon repeated his attack on the media, describing members of the press as the "opposition party" who are "always wrong" about Mr Trump.
"I think if you look at, you know, the opposition party," Mr Bannon said, referring to the media.
"How they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition and how they're portraying the administration - it's always wrong," he told Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosted the conference.
Referring to the "corporatist, globalist media", he said: "If you [the audience] think they're going to give you your country back without a fight you are sadly mistaken."
White House senior counsellor Kellyanne Conway also spoke at the annual conservative event, sparking online backlash over her version of "conservative feminism".
Ms Conway said it was difficult for her to call herself feminist because she is not "anti-male" and "pro-abortion".
She added she was a "product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances", which she described as "conservative feminism".
Ms Conway also criticised the Women's March, saying: "It turns out a lot of women don't like women in power".
Merriam-Webster responded on Twitter, sharing the definition of feminism as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities".
- BBC
http://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-statement-election-2016-11
BERNIE SANDERS ON TRUMP: If he's serious, we'll work with him. If not, we'll 'vigorously oppose him'
Bryan Logan
Nov. 9, 2016, 7:07 PM
67,113
“ECONOMIC NATIONALISM”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_nationalism
Economic nationalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economic nationalism is an umbrella term that includes economic policies and theories designed to improve the domestic economy relative to foreign economies. It therefore subsumes theories such as economic patriotism, protectionism, and mercantilism, all of which are different forms of economic nationalism.[1] Economic nationalists oppose globalization, or at least question the benefits of unrestricted free trade. . . . .
Trumponomics[edit]
More recently, the emergence of Trumponomics in the United States in the wake of the United States presidential election, 2016 was considered by some as a (partial) return to the economic nationalism of the Theodore Roosevelt Era.[16]
ECONOMIC PATRIOTISM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/07/17/economic-patriotism-explaining-the-vague-finger-wagging-immortal-phrase/
The Fix
‘Economic patriotism’: Explaining the vague, finger-wagging, immortal phrase
By Philip Bump July 17, 2014
Photograph -- A member of Falcon Skydiving of Kansas City, Kan., offers some aerial patriotism. (AP Photo/The St. Joseph News-Press, Sait Serkan Gurbuz)
"What we need as a nation," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told members of Congress this week, "is a new sense of economic patriotism, where we all rise or fall together."
Pop quiz: What was Lew talking about? Income taxes? Buying American? Reducing income inequality? None of the above. He was talking about corporate tax evasion. But given that the phrase is the perfect combination of all-American, guilt-inducing, and vague, we can see both why you would be confused -- and, of course, why politicians like it so much.
So where does this oft-used and suddenly contentious phrase come from?
A brief history of "economic patriotism"
One of the first mentions of the phrase in the American press comes from an unlikely source on an unlikely topic. In a 1985 defense of then-President Reagan's Star Wars missile defense system, William Safire wrote that a "common denominator" among the American people was "nationalism -- both a military and economic patriotism -- which inclines us to the side of pervasive national defense."
Safire's meaning, simplified: Economic patriotism is being proud of military investment.
Two years later, the Miami Herald interviewed John Bohn, head of the Export-Import Bank (speaking of things being in vogue). "To him," the paper wrote, "a push toward exporting isn't just a good idea. It's an example of his favorite phrase -- 'economic patriotism.'" Bohn explained: "It means being conscious of our role in the international economic system, and the impact of what we do in this international economic system," he said.
Bohn, simplified: Economic patriotism is recognizing the U.S. as a distinct part of the world economy.
When Democratic Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis ran for president in 1988, he seized on the phrase, bringing it to national prominence. "Dukakis delivered a message of 'new economic patriotism' to American workers today," the New York Times reported in 1988, "and took the Reagan Administration and Vice President Bush personally to task for rising interest rates and falling family incomes."
Dukakis: Economic patriotism is keeping the middle class strong.
Dukakis's argument didn't work. But that didn't prevent former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas from picking it up in time for the 1992 Democratic primaries. "By promoting what he called 'economic patriotism,' Tsongas insisted that he was not advocating protectionism but seeking a 'mindset of economic nationalism'," the Boston Globe wrote in 1995. (Bush helped dismantle Dukakis's use of the term by calling it protectionist.) "To a number of questions on the subject, his theme was that American consumers should give American produced products the benefit of the doubt over foreign competition."
Tsongas: Economic patriotism is buying American. Tsongas's argument didn't work either.
In 1996, Pat Buchanan demonstrated that the vagueness of the term made it happily bipartisan. In his conservative challenge to eventual Republican nominee Bob Dole, Buchanan declared that Clinton "sold out our workers" in approving a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
Buchanan: Economic patriotism means protecting jobs at home.
Though he lost the nomination, Buchanan declared victory within the party, as the Post reported in August 1996. "Whole sections" of the party platform, including economic patriotism, were "right out of the speeches of Pat Buchanan," he said. "Friends, there is so much of ours in that platform that we've decided to ask Haley Barbour [then chairman of the Republican National Committee] for royalties."
The phrase moved overseas for a decade or so, being picked up in Europe and Australia. (As we said, it's very utilitarian.) But in 2012, thanks in part to the fact that Barack Obama was running for reelection against the very wealthy Mitt Romney, it returned. Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland (D) said Romney has "so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport." And Obama used the phrase directly in a key ad produced for the race, and released a policy booklet that used in its title the exact phrase first used by Dukakis. "Are we going to double-down on the top-down economic policies that helped get us into this mess?" Obama asked on the campaign trail. "Or do we embrace a new economic patriotism that says America does best when the middle class does best?"
The new push for "economic patriotism"
So: Economic patriotism is when the middle class does best, according to Obama.
In 2012, that meant things like the Buffett Rule, which limits corporate incomes. In the more recent formulation of his Treasury secretary, though, it means preventing corporate tax inversion. As every member of the middle class surely knows.
Let's assume, though, that you're in the 99.9 percent minority of the country that doesn't know what corporate tax inversion is. Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee summarize it as when an American company aims to "avoid U.S. taxation by combining with a smaller foreign business and moving their tax domicile overseas," which is as good a definition as any. We're all familiar with businesses that use foreign tax shelters to avoid paying taxes -- a study from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) earlier this year put the amount of sheltered profits at $2.1 trillion -- but this is a step further.
Take Accenture. It was once Andersen Consulting, an offshoot of Arthur Andersen that originates from a 1953 feasibility study for GE in Kentucky. But today, Accenture is incorporated in Ireland, after having been briefly a Bermuda company thanks to a 2001 inversion.
Ways and Means Democrats, who have introduced legislation opposing the practice, documented the number of corporations that it says have used inversion to become foreign companies, including Accenture. It looks like this, not including seven companies the committee says reincorporated between 2009 and 2014.
Inversions
In a letter to the full committee, Lew derided the practice. "The firms involved in these transactions still expect to benefit from their business location in the United States," he wrote, "with our protection of intellectual property rights, our support for research and development, our investment climate and our infrastructure, all funded by various levels of government." Ergo: "a new sense of economic patriotism."
Lew: Economic patriotism is not merging your corporation with a foreign corporation in order to reduce taxes, and so on.
The upshot is this. "Economic patriotism" is a phrase that means simply, "an economics-related thing that is contentious and which possibly be framed as being un-American." Lew's formulation is a recent iteration. But don't get too comfortable with his definition. It will shift.
ON TRUMPONOMICS, I LOOKED SEEKING SOME SPECIFIC MEANING FOR THIS “WORD,” AND FOUND NONE. I GUESS WE JUST HAVE TO LIVE THROUGH IT TO FIND OUT, RIGHT?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Trumponomics
Trumponomics
Noun[edit]
Trumponomics (uncountable)
(not countable) The managerial precepts popularized by Donald Trump in the mid-2000s (decade) in his books and reality TV shows [1]
(not countable) The economic ideas and policies of U.S. businessman and president Donald Trump. [quotations ▼]
Related terms[edit]
Trumpish
Trumpesque
Trumpism
Rogernomics
Thatchernomics
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uncountable
Adjective[edit]
uncountable (not comparable)
So many as to be incapable of being counted.
The reasons for our failure were as uncountable as the grains of sand on a beach.
One meaning in law of the supposedly uncountable noun "information" is used in the plural and is countable. . . . .
Noun[edit]
IN THIS ARTICLE IS YET ANOTHER SLY REFERENCE TO HITLER COMING FROM BANNON IN THE PRIEBUS/BANNON INTERCHANGE – IT STATES THAT BANNON IS THE BIG IDEA MAN AND PRIEBUS “MAKES THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME.” I FIRST HEARD THAT PHRASE AT UNC WHEN THE FRIEND OF MY HUSBAND SAID IT AS AN EXPLANATION OF HITLER’S POPULARITY IN GERMANY. I FOUND OUT LATER THAT HE WAS AN OVERT HATER OF JEWS. IT’S DEFINITELY A “DOG WHISTLE” PHRASE, WHICH I EXPECT REFERS TO THE TRAINS THROUGHOUT EUROPE CARRYING JEWS TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS. ON THAT SUBJECT, WATCH THE MOVIE “SOPHIE’S CHOICE.” THOSE TRAINS ALSO APPEARED IN THE 1993 BLOCKBUSTER “SCHINDLER’S LIST.” THESE OH SO “CLEVER” LITTLE REFERENCES TO THE GRISLY FATE OF THE JEWS SHOULD MAKE ANY NON-JEW CRINGE OVER SUCH JOKES. THAT REALLY GOES INTO THAT RANGE THAT I SO OFTEN CALL “EVIL.” IT DOESN’T HAPPEN OUT OF IGNORANCE. IT HAPPENS OUT OF VICIOUSNESS. A WORD TO THE WISE: WWJD?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39059990
Trump adviser hails 'new political order'
23 February 2017
From the section US & Canada
Video -- Steve Bannon's three goals for the Trump presidency
The chief strategist to President Donald Trump has said that his election victory has ushered in a "new political order".
Steve Bannon vowed at a conservative conference to bring together those of "wide and sometimes divergent opinions" in support of "economic nationalism".
"We are a nation with a culture and a reason for being," the normally behind-the-scenes adviser told the audience.
He said the president was "maniacally focused" on pursuing his agenda.
"I've said that there's a new political order that's being formed out of this. And it's still being formed," he said.
The former editor of Breitbart News Network appeared with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday.
Vice-President Mike Pence will address the conference later on Thursday, and President Trump will speak on Friday.
The joint appearance comes amid speculation that the two men are competing for power and influence within the Trump White House.
But the two men, who come from very different political backgrounds, attempted to dispel any rumours of their reported division and insisted they work closely in a partnership.
"The truth of the matter is [Trump] brought together the party and the conservative moment, and I've got to tell you, if the party and the conservative movement are together, it can't be stopped," Mr Priebus said.
Media caption "We are not experiencing the best of times", says Justice Ginsburg
Itching for a fight - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News
Steve Bannon is ready for war. Against progressives and protesters. Against the corporatist, globalist media. Even against those in his own party who are telling President Donald Trump to moderate his views or steer clear of controversial policies.
Sitting next to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, the former Republican Party leader who could be a poster boy for the conservative establishment, Bannon said all the right things.
They're working together. The key players in the Trump administration are full of mutual respect. They're busy advancing the president's agenda.
In words and attitude, however, it is clear who is plotting the course of this presidency.
Priebus, as Bannon said, keeps the trains running on time. Bannon, as Priebus concedes, is ensuring the president honours his promises.
Those are promises Bannon, perhaps more than anyone else, helped Candidate Trump make.
That includes "deconstructing the administrative state", advancing an "economic nationalist agenda" and essentially reshaping the existing economic and political world order.
It's a tall task, but the self-professed hot-tempered Bannon is itching for a fight.
Mr Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was viewed as a liaison between the party establishment and Mr Trump's populist campaign.
Mr Bannon, formerly the driving force behind the anti-establishment Breitbart News, is considered one of Mr Trump's key advisers.
The president named Mr Bannon on the crucial National Security Committee at the expense of the joint chiefs of staff, an unprecedented move that signalled his influence on the administration.
Media caption Steve Bannon: Media will 'get worse every day'
During his appearance on Thursday, Mr Bannon repeated his attack on the media, describing members of the press as the "opposition party" who are "always wrong" about Mr Trump.
"I think if you look at, you know, the opposition party," Mr Bannon said, referring to the media.
"How they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition and how they're portraying the administration - it's always wrong," he told Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosted the conference.
Referring to the "corporatist, globalist media", he said: "If you [the audience] think they're going to give you your country back without a fight you are sadly mistaken."
White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
White House senior counsellor Kellyanne Conway also spoke at the annual conservative event, sparking online backlash over her version of "conservative feminism".
Ms Conway said it was difficult for her to call herself feminist because she is not "anti-male" and "pro-abortion".
She added she was a "product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances", which she described as "conservative feminism".
Ms Conway also criticised the Women's March, saying: "It turns out a lot of women don't like women in power".
Merriam-Webster responded on Twitter, sharing the definition of feminism as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities".
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39059988
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer expelled at CPAC conference
23 February 2017
From the section US & Canada
Photograph -- Richard Spencer has been outspoken about his white supremacist views
The leader of the so-called alt-right movement, a movement accused of racism and anti-Semitism, has been asked to leave a conservative event.
Richard Spencer's removal from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) came as one of the organisers attacked his views.
Dan Schneider called the alt-right "a sinister organisation that is trying to worm its way into our ranks".
"They are anti-Semites. They are racists," he said.
RELATED: The rise of the alt-right
Trump’s shock troops
Dan Shneider, of the American Conservative Union, pictured during the Republican convention in July Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
"They are not an extension of conservatism. They are nothing but garden-variety, left-wing fascists," Mr Schneider continued in Thursday's speech, titled The Alt Right Ain't Right At All.
As he was speaking, Mr Spencer got up from his seat and left the conference hall.
"They are not a part of us," said Mr Schneider, of the American Conservative Union.
Afterwards, during a nearly hour-long briefing with reporters in the hallway, Mr Spencer said he had paid money to attend the annual gathering outside Washington, and that his anti-minority views are "clearly resonating with people".
Media caption White supremacist Richard Spencer: 'Donald Trump's arrow is pointing in our direction.'
He condemned Mr Schneider's speech as "totally stupid", and in a tweet paraphrased a Mahatma Gandhi quote: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
As he was talking to reporters, a security guard approached to escort him from the conference.
Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, who Mr Spencer supports, he came to Washington where he led an alt-right gathering in making Nazi salutes while chanting: "Heil Trump!"
He was also punched in the face during protests that shook the US capital in the days after Mr Trump's inauguration as US president.
ORIGINS OF THE ALT-RIGHT – WHO’S IN, WHO’S NOT
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37021991
Trump’s shock troops: Who are the ‘alt-right’?
By Mike Wendling
The Briefing Room, BBC Radio 4
26 August 2016
From the section Magazine
Image: Trump re-tweeted cartoon of himself as the internet meme Pepe the frog, with the caption "Can't stump the Trump"
A disparate group of provocateurs is challenging conservative orthodoxy from the right. They hate political correctness and love Donald Trump - but their critics say they're nothing but bigoted white nationalists.
There was a moment when the phrase "alt-right" first started to get real traction in the mainstream media.
It began with a tweet by US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. It showed an image of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, alongside a six-pointed star containing the words: "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!"
tweetImage copyrightTWITTER
It wasn't long before Trump's critics zeroed in on the six-pointed star - said to resemble a Star of David - and the pile of money. They immediately accused the Republican nominee of using dog-whistle tactics, playing on old stereotypes about Jews, money, and corruption.
The candidate himself denied the allegations - although he deleted the tweet, later reposting the image with a circle replacing the star.
Anthony Smith, a journalist for the website Mic, got a tip that the image had appeared on 8chan, an extreme message board with many users who self-identify as members of the alt-right movement.
At first Smith was sceptical that he'd be able to stand the story up. The message board is fast-moving, threads get deleted quickly, and it's difficult to search for and find images. But within an hour, he had his answer.
8chan front page
Image caption
The Clinton meme had first appeared on the 8Chan message board
"Sure enough I found it, and I was able to confirm that it was on this board before it was on Trump's Twitter feed," he says.
Smith's story was picked up by the BBC and other news outlets, and many picked up on the link between the image and the amorphous movement known as the alt-right. But what is it, what do its members believe, and what influence are they having on mainstream politics?
As a disparate, mostly online phenomenon that lacks a cohesive structure or any sort of central organisation, it's tough to pin down. But observers of the movement - both critics and supporters - agree on a few things.
The alt-right is against political correctness and feminism. It's nationalist, tribalist and anti-establishment. Its followers are fond of internet pranks and using provocative, often grossly offensive messages to goad their enemies on both the right and the left. And many of them are huge supporters of Donald Trump.
The Briefing Room on Radio 4
Hear more about the alt-right on The Briefing Room - you can download the podcast here.
In a speech last night, Hillary Clinton lambasted Trump for his ties to what she called the "emerging racist ideology known as the alt-right" and said her rival was "helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party".
Iain Davis, who lives in Surrey and runs several alt-right social media accounts, says the movement includes a whole range of people, from libertarians, men's rights activists, Christians and traditionalists - as well as neo-nazis.
"There's all these ideas happening in there," says Davis. "This community works over multiple different social media platforms and networks, and there are all sorts of figures and faces involved in it."
They can be particularly vicious towards their perceived enemies. According to Time magazine "trolling has become the main tool of the alt-right". They pejoratively call liberals "social justice warriors" or SJWs, and establishment conservatives are dubbed "cuckservatives" - a portmanteau that the Southern Poverty Law Centre says refers to "cuckolding", a racially-charged genre of pornography.
Twitter meme of Karl Rove
Image caption
An alt-right meme attacking former Bush adviser Karl Rove as a "cuckservative"
Davis says his opposition to immigration from Muslim countries drew him into the movement, and he is an enthusiastic participant in many online spats.
"SJWs will ostracise you, they are very happy to call you 'racist' in their own tight definition of the word, find out where you live, find out who you work for, and make sure your employer gets you fired," he says.
"We are very interested in seeing this kind of behaviour ended. That's one of the things that I like about the alt-right, we are responding to this online bullying, even though we get accused of this online bullying ourselves."
As a nebulous movement, exact numbers are hard to come by, but Smith, the journalist, traces the alt-right to a speech given by an obscure right-wing philosopher, Paul Gottfried, shortly after the election of Barack Obama in 2008.
In it, Gottfried called for "an independent intellectual Right, one that exists without movement establishment funding" and declared: "Our group is also full of young thinkers and activists, and if there is to be an independent Right, our group will have to become its leaders."
"At its core it identified black radicalism, radical feminists, open borders activists, these are the enemies, the enemy is progressive society, the enemy is political correctness," Smith says. "From there in the wake of America electing its first black president, all of a sudden you see these people rising from the shadows and organising in a way they haven't organised before."
Milo Yiannopoulos gained attention online with provocative tweets and politically incorrect stories - he's become a figurehead for the alt-right Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Milo Yiannopoulos has become a figurehead for the alt-right
Perhaps Gottfried did not imagine that his idea would be taken up by a merry band of social-media savvy pranksters. One of the alt-right's figureheads today is Milo Yiannopoulos, technology editor for the website Breitbart. Yiannopoulos is a huge fan of provocation - he hosted a somewhat controversial event at the Republican National Convention and recently made the news for getting banned from Twitter after he was accused of orchestrating abuse directed at Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.
In a guide to the alt-right that he co-authored with Allum Bokhari, Yiannopoulos detailed the movement's factions, including "intellectuals", "natural conservatives" and "the meme team", mostly young activists with a penchant for trolling.
Yiannopoulos acknowledges that the alt-right has attracted some out-and-out racists - but he denies that this is a main theme of the movement's political philosophy. White supremacists are a marginal force, he argues, and culture and specifically Western civilisation, he insists, are the key motivators for the group.
"The real racists… are very serious, are deep into studies and data attempting to prove that some races are smarter than other races - they're really dorky," he says.
Donald Trump Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Yiannopoulos and other commentators on the alt-right consistently attack the sort of "identity politics" that they say are perpetuated by liberals.
"If the left insists on breaking people up like this, then yeah, why can't white guys say, you know what, we did most of the good stuff in the world."
But critics point out the contradiction in this approach.
"So the answer is to replicate that (racial) obsession and extend it to white people? That's ridiculous," says Cathy Young, a libertarian columnist and writer. "The alt-right is going to alienate a lot of reasonable critics of political correctness who are going to see the anti-PC rebellion as associated with these white-identity people."
Oliver Lee Bateman is a freelance journalist, and in the course of writing for Vice Magazine he got to know two dozen or so alt-right activists in the US. From that sample, he developed a rough profile of alt-right activists.
"They're college students who might be bright but don't feel like they fit in or they feel like they've been put upon," he says. "If they're in their 30s, they feel like the country is changing or they're losing their country. They're often people who work completely boring bureaucratic or programming jobs. They don't want to put their names or faces out there.
"I quickly realised that the folks I was talking to were among the most articulate and educated in this group. But there's a level below them, they're running these gross hate group pages," Bateman says.
"And when Trump came along and began saying things like I'm going to build a wall, or that Saddam Hussein was a good guy, he killed terrorists, they liked that."
The movement has branches in other countries too, including the UK, albeit on a smaller scale.
"It's nowhere near as big as the American scene," says Iain Davis. "And I'm not surprised, because we are the nation that fought fascism, we pride ourselves on the fact we went and bashed Hitler. And it's [the alt-right] always going to be associated with a National Socialist element, when in truth we're closer to the kind of conservatism that was around 30 or 40 years ago."
The movement has gained attention in parallel with Trump the politician - so the big question is, will it survive if Trump loses? Yiannopoulos argues the alt-right is bigger than one man.
"The vast majority of people in this movement believe in principle over ethnicity, freedom of speech, libertarianism and free intellectual inquiry. If the effect of Trump and the effect of the alt-right is to make the unsayable sayable again, wonderful."
Orthodox conservatives will take heart from the victory of US House Speaker Paul Ryan over businessman Paul Nehlen by a wide margin in the Republican primary for the speaker's district. Ryan accused his opponent of belonging to the alt-right while attacking Nehlen's rhetoric as "dark, grim, indefensible".
Trump supporters hold up placards saying … Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
But Trump's victory suggests the establishment have little room for complacency.
"But after everything that's happened this year, I have completely given up on making any kind of predictions."
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Racism Donald Trump
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