[ta_donk_gt]

Do you have any evidence you can provide of concrete behavior showing Bannon as racist?

I don't mean responses like "duh, CNN, Maher, Oliver, etc. say he is so duh", or "duh, he was the editor for Breitbart". I mean actual behavior that you can point to.

These accusations come off as "He plays for the other team, and calling him racist will marginalize and demonize him, so that's what I'll do". Willing to be proven wrong though.

Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?

[guelo]

Bannon's ex-wife swore in court that he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews...He said he doesn’t like Jews..."

Also, he turned Breitbart into a white ethno-nationalism website.

[ta_donk_gt]

The quote from his ex-wife is a fair point and does support your case. In the interest of full disclosure, would that statement be equally bad if you replaced the word "Jews" with "rednecks", or "catholics"? Sometimes seems like some groups can be stereotyped and some can't. (OT but related, plenty of first-hand accounts of the Clintons regularly using racially derogatory terms in their Arkansas days, but that doesn't seem to bother people.)

As for Breitbart, I think the "white ethno-" prefix may be unjustified, at least from what I have seen. It is, however, absolutely nationalist, as in anti-globalist, and pushes an agenda targeted at people who feel their standard of living has been reduced due to trade and immigration policies. The Guardian provided a fairly benign review at [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitb...

[guelo]

Just came across some more evidence in a wapo article today. Bannon opposing immigration for highly educated students says: “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannon-flattered...

[ta_donk_gt]

Wanting to limit immigration doesn't make you racist, though. I take it as saying, essentially, if such a significant percentage of jobs in a top industry in this country are held by immigrants, are we maybe not doing enough to help our own residents in need of good paying jobs to be able to acquire these positions?

[yolesaber]

A CEO of a large software company is more than just a "good paying job" for Joe Sixpack over here. It requires experience, education, intuition - it's an incredibly unique position. It's not the kind of thing that you can just go to school for or train in some government New Deal program an then come out with six offers. What Bannon is speaking to isn't about helping the little guy get jobs, it's about getting 'Americans' (see: white) to be in these positions of powers.

[ta_donk_gt]

Let me preface by stating that these are vague, short statements that we are trying to use to extrapolate to some fairly large assertions, and we all come into them with a bias and interpret them based on those biases.

That said, the way I interpreted the CEO statement was that it is symbolic of the depth of penetration of immigrants in the tech labor pool. If that large a percentage of CEOs are immigrants, imagine the numbers from the top to the bottom of the org charts. None of these CEO jobs are going to people straight out of college, they are working their way through the industry.

I've been in this industry for 20 years, at all levels. I haven't seen too many entry level positions that Americans can't be easily trained for, yet there is a nonstop push to massively increase annual H1B limits. At some point, someone has to ask why we can't fill that need with the people we have.

No doubt immigrants would still likely be over-represented at the higher echelons because a person willing to move across the world likely has more drive to get there, but it still seems like we should feel a civic duty to use what we can from home before increasing the numbers coming in.

[yolesaber]

His behavior as the editor of Breitbart doesn't count? Why not? Former editors and writers for the outlet have commented at length at how he essentially turned it into an alt-right clearinghouse. Bannon himself has said that it is the platform for the alt-right. Are you going to now argue that the alt-right movement is not racist or motivated by racial concerns? How about all the stormfronters and ethno-nationalists who are cheering his appointment?

[ta_donk_gt]

Sure, his Breitbart days count, I was just saying that what you typically hear is "Breitbart is racist" without any actual justification, so I was looking for actual examples that show the clear racism as opposed to just saying "Breitbart".

As for bad people supporting someone, bad people support everyone, so that's not really an argument. People, good or bad (or like most of us, good and bad) want to feel that their concerns are heard. I think most of the people championing Bannon are concerned about their standard of living being reduced over the last 30 years, and feeling that trade and immigration policies have been the largest contributors to that decline. They feel Bannon gives them a voice. I have no doubt that plenty of bad people may also feel that Bannon speaks for them, but that doesn't mean he actually is.

[yolesaber]

> I think most of the people championing Bannon are concerned about their standard of living being reduced over the last 30 years, and feeling that trade and immigration policies have been the largest contributors to that decline.

Sure and those are valid concerns. However they are oftentimes framed through a racial lens which Breitbart plays to all the time. To wit, Breitbart continously pushes the "black on black" violence talking point whenever police shootings, police reform, or hell anything related to black people. Like, just look at this article: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devasta... - does it ever go into the context of these shootings or try to assess them critically? No, it just parrots statistics and then labels Black Lives Matter protesters as "blood-lusting junkies"

Breitbart also continuously uses "racial statistics" and relies on the work of cranks http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/17/alt-right-r...

>Bannon didn’t just make Breitbart a safe space for white supremacists; he’s also welcomed a scholar blacklisted from the mainstream conservative movement for arguing there’s a connection between race and IQ. Breitbart frequently highlights the work of Jason Richwine, who resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation when news broke that his Harvard dissertation argued in part that Hispanics have lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites.

>As for bad people supporting someone, bad people support everyone, so that's not really an argument

When high profile American nazis say that this is a good decision and will push Trump in the right direction, I tend to get worried. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/305912-kkk-ameri...

[ta_donk_gt]

I agree, those articles are all one sided. To me, that material comes off as the same way that groups like the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam / Farrakhan target their audiences but at the opposite end of the spectrum. Both are using one-sided rhetoric to advance their case and incite their audience. I think that there is a nuance there, and while Farrakhan and the Black Panthers and their supporters may at times have a lot of animosity, anger, distrust, etc., labelling those groups as racist and something to be ignored is not really fair. I think you have to treat the same feelings on the other side of the spectrum the same way, though, as it is really the same emotions being drawn out.

I see your point, though, in that it would be sort of like having Farrakhan's press secretary or speech writer being appointed as chief strategist for Obama. The right would go apeshit.

[pavel_lishin]

> Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?

Because this is not the place for this discussion.

I downvoted the comment you replied to as well, for the same reason.

[ta_donk_gt]

That is fair..though it might be more beneficial to add a comment stating this at the first point in the tree where things go off topic. Once it gets down this far, everyone's mindset is already off topic.

[zeroer]

This comment does not deserve downvotes. When you punish people for asking polite honest questions, you bring down the level of discourse and turn this place into an echo chamber.