Let Them Call You Racist

Former editor of Breibart and former Special Adviser to the President, Steve Bannon is taking American style racism international. “Let them call you racists,” Bannon said to the French National Front Party. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.” The French National Front Party was founded in 1972 to unify a variety of French nationalist movements of the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen was the party’s first leader and the undisputed center of the party from its start until his resignation in 2011. Le Pen is the author of many controversial remarks concerning race, politics and religion.

• In February 1997, Le Pen accused Chirac of being “on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the B’nai B’rith”
• On many occasions, before and after the FIFA World Cup, he claimed that the French World Cup squad contained too many non-white players, and was not an accurate reflection of French society. He went on to scold players for not singing La Marseillaise, saying they were not “French.”

Bannon’s appearance in France was part of a European tour as he seeks an international platform for his closed-borders, anti-foreigner message that helped Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency. The National Front has never won the French presidency, and the congress in Lille is aimed at remaking its image after Le Pen’s crushing defeat to independent, pro-globalization Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential election. Bannon said he came to Europe not to teach but to learn. “And what I’ve learned is you are part of a worldwide movement that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary, bigger than all of it,” evoking Europe’s rise of right-wing parties. “The opposition media — the running dogs of the global corporate elite called Trump and Bannon white supremacists,” he said to jeers from the crowd. “But President Trumps economic nationalism does not care about your race, your religion, your ethnicity. … It cares about one thing: Are you a citizen of the United States of America?”

Mr. Bannon was fired by President Trump after his interview in “Fire and Fury written by Michael Wolff. Bannon came directly after the President children saying, “Donald Trump Jr. had been “treasonous” in meeting with Russians and calling Ivanka Trump “dumb as a brick.” The President responded saying,”Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.” Breitbart News Network, in the wake of the furor over quotes he made in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, asked for and received his resignation.