Tornado Alley (PROG)

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‘Let them call you racists’: Steve Bannon delivers fighting speech to France’s National Front
Former White House senior staffer Stephen K. Bannon addressed France’s far-right National Front on Saturday, heralding the global populist tide and attacking the “opposition party media.”
Bannon’s surprise visit to the party’s conference in Lille — announced via Twitter late Friday — was his most recent stop on a European tour that has included Switzerland along with Italy, where last week, voters abandoned establishment parties and opted for a hung Parliament dominated by right-wing anti-immigrant populists.
“I came to Europe as an observer and to learn,” Bannon said, wearing his typical rugged [sic - slovenly] attire before a cadre of the party elite dressed in suits.
“What I’ve learned is that you’re part of a worldwide movement, that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary — bigger than all of it. And history is on our side,” he said. “The tide of history is with us, and it will compel us to victory after victory after victory.”
He also encouraged the party to stick to its nationalistic roots. “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists,” he said.
His speech contained a familiar litany of attacks against a global elite, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and journalists. Some of it translated; some of it did not. When Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, mentioned that he once sold a company to the French bank Société Générale, the room erupted in jeers, not cheers. “I thought you might like that,” he said in response.
On some level, the speech presented another development in the relationship between far-right movements in the United States and Europe, particularly in France. Last month, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen — the niece of National Front leader Marine Le Pen — spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor in Maryland [included at https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=139187453 ].
Her speech echoed many of the statements of Donald Trump, whom Bannon helped to get elected to the U.S. presidency. “I am not offended when I hear President Donald Trump say ‘America first,’ ” she said. “I want Britain first for the British people, and I want France first for the French people.”
But in general, the meeting between Bannon and the party of Marine Le Pen came at a particularly fraught moment for Bannon himself and the National Front, with each trying to remain relevant in an unforgiving political environment.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Bannon was a close ally and confidant of Trump’s, and he joined the West Wing staff as Trump’s chief strategist. But he was forced out of the White House last August.
Likewise, Le Pen was a prominent contender for the French presidency in May 2017, but she suffered a landslide loss to Emmanuel Macron. Her party — widely seen as the alternative to Macron during the election — then fared poorly in France’s legislative elections: In a parliament of 577 seats, the National Front now holds only eight. That figure presents a striking contrast with the 34 percent of the popular vote that Le Pen won in the presidential election, and her party cannot be labeled the opposition.
To that end, rebranding the National Front’s image is the primary purpose of the “party congress” in Lille this weekend. Le Pen and her allies are also expected to announce a new name for the party that they hope will appeal to more voters in the future.
Le Pen has long sought to “de-demonize” her party by distancing it from its origins.
The National Front was co-founded in 1972 by her father, the convicted Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who continues to refer to Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of World War II. Last week, he published the first volume of his memoirs, “Son of the Nation,” which feature an empathic defense of Philippe Pétain, the leader of France’s Vichy government, a body that willingly collaborated with Nazi Germany after Germany’s invasion of France during the war.
Although several of Marine Le Pen’s aides were also accused of Holocaust denial during the recent election campaign, she claims to be estranged from her father. The party conference in Lille also will feature a vote on whether the elder Le Pen can keep his title as the party’s honorary president. His daughter officially expelled him in 2015 for repeating the remark about gas chambers.
Bannon had some advice for those who might be embarrassed by such a history: “Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”
In French media, Jean-Marie Le Pen — noting that Bannon was widely perceived as the “most radical” of Trump’s advisers — cast doubt on the value of his daughter’s American guest.
“I think this is not exactly the definition of ‘de-demonization,’ ” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-tide-of-history-is-with-us-steve-bannon-delivers-rhetoric-filled-speech-to-frances-national-front/2018/03/10/4f21e016-2480-11e8-946c-9420060cb7bd_story.html

Bannon: 'Let them call you racists'
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/10/politics/steve-bannon-national-front/index.html

Bannon Tells France’s National Front: ‘Let Them Call You Racist’
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/bannon-tells-national-front-let-them-call-you-racist.html

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dSg0IKOgENxqdOMGgsq-uSX8KIkxM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

What Trump Means When He Calls Gary Cohn a 'Globalist'
On Thursday, the president applied an epithet with a troubling, anti-Semitic history to the outgoing director of his National Economic Council.
The term “globalist” is a bit like the term “thug.” It’s an epithet that is disproportionately directed at a particular minority group. Just as “thug” is often used to invoke the stereotype that African Americans are violent, “globalist” can play on the stereotype that Jews are disloyal. Used that way, it becomes a modern-day vessel for an ancient slur: that Jews—whether loyal to international Judaism or international capitalism or international communism or international Zionism—aren’t loyal to the countries in which they live.
That slur has a long, dark history. The infamous 1903 forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, warns that, “The nations of the West are being brought under international control”—by Jews. In 1935, Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels railed against “the absolute destruction of all economic, social, state, cultural, and civilizing advances made by western civilization for the benefit of a rootless and nomadic international clique of conspirators”: Jews. David Duke called Brexit a triumph over the “Jewish globalist agenda.”
On Thursday, President Trump saluted his outgoing director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn. “He may be a globalist,” Trump declared, “but I still like him.”
The generous interpretation is that Trump was merely referring to Cohn’s support of free trade, as illustrated by his opposition to the steel and aluminum tariffs Trump just imposed. Cohn’s Jewishness had nothing to do with it.
That’s conceivable. Not all the people who Trump’s supporters call globalists are Jews. Breitbart enjoys hurling the term at National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who it considers too supportive of military intervention. And some Trump administration Jews—for instance, Stephen Miller, a fierce opponent of immigration—are rarely called globalists.
It’s possible to use the term “globalist”—even about a Jew—innocently, just like it’s possible to use the term “thug” about an African American with no racist intent. And perhaps that’s what Trump was doing when he applied it to Cohn. The problem is that this requires giving Donald Trump a benefit of the doubt that he forfeited long ago.
In his 1991 book, Trumped, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino President John R. O’Donnell quotes his former boss as saying, “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes.” (Trump has denied saying this.) In a December 2015 speech, Trump told members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.” He later asked, “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? Probably more than in any room I’ve ever spoken.” In July of 2016, he retweeted an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by dollar bills and a six pointed-star. (Trump claimed not to know that the six-pointed star is a Jewish symbol). And in its closing ad, the Trump campaign declared that “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election.” It warned of “those who control the levers of power in Washington” and the “global special interests” and the “global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth.” Besides Hillary Clinton, the ad featured images of only three recognizable Americans: the investor and philanthropist George Soros, Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein, and then-Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen, all Jews.
When Trump uses anti-Semitic language, his defenders often counter that his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren are Orthodox Jews. Sure, but even bigots contain multitudes. Trump may feel genuine affection for Jared Kushner, and likely Gary Cohn too. But that doesn’t change the fact that he employs anti-Semitic tropes in ways that make him almost unique among contemporary American politicians. After all, history is filled with politicians who fomented anti-Semitism yet enjoyed warm relationships with individual Jews.
For Cohn, there’s a sad irony here. He reportedly considered resigning after Trump’s equivocal response to last August’s outbreak of white supremacism in Charlottesville, but stuck it out, and instead resigned over Trump’s tariff policy. What thanks did he get? A presidential tribute using language that would have made the Charlottesville marchers smile.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/trump-globalist-cohn/555269/
related:
AIPAC's Struggle to Avoid the Fate of the NRA
The organization is desperately trying to maintain its bipartisan membership and avoid the pull of polarization—but it’s almost certain to fail.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/aipacs-struggle-to-avoid-becoming-the-nra/554999/

Meet the Trump trade adviser whose tariff policy is about to be tested
Peter Navarro is one of the key White House figures who has made a case for imposing stiff new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. What ideas and philosophy drive Navarro? Economics correspondent Paul Solman revisits his profile of Trump's right-hand man on trade to consider what President Trump’s tariff announcement means for the global economy.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/meet-the-trump-trade-adviser-whose-tariff-policy-is-about-to-be-tested

Steel tariffs bring vindication for Trump's feisty [sic - ignorant jackass] trade advisor Peter Navarro
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-navarro-comeback-20180311-story.html

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dNRLx4S6i4ZoLyMWIiDI4eE5eO5zM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

-- from my 'stashed' today -- true colors, shining through (not that there was any possible reaonable remaining doubt)