Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Populism? Or "Revolutionary-era elitism drawn along racist lines"?

Image result for bannon imagesThe first thing that struck me when I read the article that I am about to drop on you is this:

Looking at Steve Bannon, how could he even think that he is genetically superior to anybody? I mean just look at him. He is the before guy in a before and after gym membership commercial.

So now to the aforementioned article written by Laurel Raymond for Think Progress.

" Former Breitbart head Steve Bannon has been a national lightning rod ever since he was appointed CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At-issue: Bannon’s deep ties to the growing white nationalist movement, which provided some of Trump’s earliest and most fervent supporters.

On Sunday the New York Times published a profile on Bannon, casting him as a “combative populist.” Buried deep within the profile is an account of Bannon talking about his belief in the “genetic superiority” of certain people and his support for restricting voting rights to only property owners.

A former colleague of Bannon’s, Julia Jones, recounted her interactions with Bannon to reporter Scott Shane:
Ms. Jones, the film colleague, said that in their years working together, Mr. Bannon occasionally talked about the genetic superiority of some people and once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners.
“I said, ‘That would exclude a lot of African-Americans,’” Ms. Jones recalled. “He said, ‘Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.’ I said, ‘But what about Wendy?’” referring to Mr. Bannon’s executive assistant. “He said, ‘She’s different. She’s family.’”
Jones also previously described Bannon’s comments about voting to The Daily Beast.
Restricting voting to only property holders would take the country back centuries to its founding — when only white, male property holders could vote in most states. Today, such a restriction would disenfranchise huge swaths of people, including students, people of color, young Americans, many city dwellers, and low-income populations.

Far from populism, this is Revolutionary-era elitism drawn along racist lines. And for white nationalists, it’s a familiar goal.

Former KKK wizard David Duke, for example, has been proclaiming on Twitter that Trump’s election and cabinet picks are the first steps toward “taking America back” — that is, taking America “back” from anyone who isn’t descended from fair-skinned Europeans. In white nationalist ideology, only white Americans have a true right to the country — and the rights that go along with citizenship, like voting.

Bannon’s musings on voting restrictions are a dog-whistle to white nationalists. The same goes for his reference to “genetic superiority,” a view that Donald Trump also has said he shares.
Trump has repeatedly connected his success to his “good genes,” as ThinkProgress previously reported. He’s said that his children “don’t need adversity” to build character or skills, because they share his good genetics. In an interview once, he went so far as to compare himself to a “racehorse” and discussing his “breeding” at length.

The belief in the genetic predisposition of qualities like intelligence are a hallmark of white nationalism.

Bannon’s musings on white nationalists are a dog-whistle to white nationalists. The same goes for his reference to “genetic superiority,” a view that Donald Trump also has said he shares.

Trump has repeatedly connected his success to his “good genes,” as ThinkProgress previously reported. He’s said that his children “don’t need adversity” to build character or skills, because they share his good genetics. In an interview once, he went so far as to compare himself to a “racehorse” and discussing his “breeding” at length.

The belief in the genetic predisposition of qualities like intelligence are a hallmark of white nationalism." [More here]

Hmmm, "intelligence". I am looking at some of the picks for his administration, and all I can say is that Donald trump is giving intelligence a bad name.  

*Pic from Wonkette.com

33 comments:

Skeeter Darwin said...

"The belief in the genetic predisposition of qualities like intelligence are a hallmark of white nationalism."

That's note white nationalism, that's science.

Of course there is a genetic basis to every human quality, including intelligence.

In case you haven't noticed, some people are smarter than other people.

Do you not believe in evolution?

Skeeter Darwin said...

Genetic superiority is a fact.

Some people's genes mean they can run faster. Some people's genes mean they can understand high level particle physics. It's not just training or studying harder.

Different groups of people will exhibit different distributions of human qualities like athleticism or intelligence.

This doesn't make one group "superior" to the other, just that they will likely exhibit more individuals with high levels of a particular talent than other groups.

Different distributions among groups don't apply to individuals, who are unique.

The Ministry of Truth said...

"Looking at Steve Bannon, how could he even think that he is genetically superior to anybody? I mean just look at him. He is the before guy in a before and after gym membership commercial."

That's the great part about being "genetically superior": No need to stay physically fit. Or, you know, bathe. :-D

So now that Bannon will be in the White House, I'm expecting he'll want to update our national symbols, to reflect the glorious moment that the election of Trump represents. Say, he could update our flag! Maybe something nice and patriotic, and work the American eagle into it.

The Ministry of Truth said...

Hmmm, 'intelligence'. I am looking at some of the picks for his administration, and all I can say is that Donald trump is giving intelligence a bad name.

But Trump is super-smart! He says so himself, so it must be true: "I have a very good brain." Much like murderous African dictator Idi Amin. (H/T Trevor Noah. Never gets old.)

Anonymous said...

"Looking at Steve Bannon, how could he even think that he is genetically superior to anybody?"

Mr. Bannon (allegedly) said to some woman that some people were genetically superior. He did not say he himself was superior. You can infer that, but he didn't say it.

Anonymous said...

Hillary Clinton will never be President.

Leftism, The Religion that Failed said...

Both the ascendancy of the Left over the traditional order and its failure to to supply functionally adequate substitutes for traditional institutions point to a set of long-standing and underlying pathogenic social processes the Trump administration will be quite powerless (and in any case, will not even seriously try) to ameliorate:

• An internally-divided and depersonalized, but morbidly bloated and totalitarian public power rules the whole national territory with no limiting case in the form of self-sufficiently independent authority and jurisdiction on the part of the Church and the family. Legal obedience has replaced the moral sense in Man, and utility-maximizing rational economic action as allowed by law taken the place of ethical self-government, viz. liberty. The State accordingly domineers private life in all its aspects. Institutional capture of the State apparatus, in turn, becomes the supreme prize for all sorts of actors with ends other than the public interest in view.

• Women are deemed morally superior to men, divorce is permitted, and wives quit, and children are taken from, the household; everybody becomes totally independent of the family bond, and totally dependent on the pseudopaternalist State. Public obligation is owed to juridical abstractions and not actual people (“the rule of law not men”), and society reduced to a theoretical fiction. Individuals become sociopathically callous towards one another, to the point of cheering violence and murder in the news, although at once far too effete and pusillanimous to dish it out personally.

• A vast and centuries-long project of social leveling, homogenization, and standardization that attempts to obliterate the different types and Natures of Man and force-fit the farmer, the warrior, and the priest into a single social mould, that of the middle-of-the-road bourgeois. Exaltation of the mediocre, the pedestrian, and the Philistine against the exceptional as classically described by Nietzsche.

• Materialist monism that recognizes no reality other than the temporal, that finds Man’s last end in bodily health and economic prosperity in this life, and sees the spiritual life and highest values of Man as a by-product of unconscious physiological processes and/or the physical properties of the physical environment. Redemption is recast in terms of public-health and economic-growth targets, and modern medicine and the police power of the State attributed with salvific efficacy.

All of this defines the very contours of the totalizing power of the modern State, and is thus anterior to any particular partisan ideology of which it comprises the substrate. What we know as “the Left” is a symptom, not an etiological first cause.

https://dissentingsociologist.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/leftism-the-religion-that-failed-a-study-in-insecure-power-and-social-disorganization/

dinthebeast said...

Yeah, watch out for that fake-ass rich white celebrity populism. We shot ourselves in the foot with it here in California when we let Arnie recall his way into the governorship. (It was clever on his part, I'll give him that much, as recall elections are notoriously low turnout, just the kind of things Republicans can sometimes win.) He turned our budgeting process into a national laughingstock, fucked up the reconstruction of the Bay Bridge, and bled our schools past dry.
The state economy (the largest in the US and sixth largest on the planet) has since recovered under Jerry Brown, and with a couple of tax initiatives that managed to work their way around prop 13, our schools are recovering. We still don't have much water, but at least governor Brown has made us the leader in the national effort to rein in carbon emissions, which, by the way, doesn't seem to be slowing our economy down any.
And didn't I hear that Arnie was going to replace Trump on Celebrity Apprentice?
We tried to tell you, you wouldn't listen, so I hope you have a good time getting repeatedly buggered by the decidedly not populist Trump administration. We pretty much take care of ourselves here, so aside from losing some of my health insurance (thank the FSM I had my cataract surgeries last year!) I probably won't suffer much. Not like those coal miners, who will not only not be getting their jobs back, but will lose their legal protections against the companies they worked for in disputes over disability due to black lung when the ACA gets repealed.
Yeah,populism, go white working class!

-Doug in Oakland

Anonymous said...

"Brown has made us the leader in the national effort to rein in carbon emissions, which, by the way, doesn't seem to be slowing our economy down any."

Onnly because you haven't been paying attention. Californina is awash in long term debt with 100's of billions in infunded liabilities. Major companies are fleeing California in droves. The middle class is disappearing between a coastal white/jewish/asian elite and mestizo proletariat. Thinkgs will go on being ok for a while because the state is rich in resources and because of the high value of the wealth created by the tech industry, but long term vast disparity in wealth between the two populations is bound to cause problems. Conceits like fighting the weather won't survive the day the public pension funds go broke.

Hasta la vista, baby.

Unknown said...

The "gotcha" isn't in the claim of genetic superiority. "superiority" is conveniently vague. The "gotcha" is in the therefore clause of the claim of genetic superiority. I'm genetically superior, therefore I may take whatever I want. I'm genetically superior, therefore when I rape, it isn't technically rape. I'm genetically superior, therefore, (insert whatever horrific behavior)

Fabienne said...

However we may perceive it now, in its own wake the French Revolution was no more considered defensible than the Third Reich is today.

dinthebeast said...

Anon@11:36: $125 billion doesn't amount to that much in an economy of $2.496 trillion growing at 4.1%. Your collapse hysteria isn't much more credible than the doomsday preppers' version.

-Doug in Oakland

PilotX said...

Bannon is just Trump's shout out to the racists in his party. Just like Pence was a shout to the snake handlers that populate the GOP.

Anonymous said...

"$125 billion doesn't amount to that much in an economy of $2.496 trillion growing at 4.1%. Your collapse hysteria isn't much more credible than the doomsday preppers' version"

California officially has an unfunded pension liability of approximately $300 billion. Yet this is not a true reflection of the amount taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for, as it assumes unrealistic rates of return on pension investments. When accounting for more realistic rates of return, California’s unfunded pension liability is closer to $1 trillion. The national debt is approximately five times the size of the federal budget. California’s unfunded pension liability is nearly ten times the size of the state general fund. That’s just the unfunded pension liability; the state also has significant unfunded liabilities for retired government worker health benefits.

----

Some of the highest taxes and costliest housing in the U.S. has made California a difficult place for middle and working class families to survive and thrive. As a result, many are voting with their feet by uprooting themselves and their families for greener pastures. In the decade from 2000-2010, California experienced domestic net outmigration of over 1.2 million people, who took more than $29 billion in income with them to low-tax, red states like North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2016/11/23/calexit-means-american-taxpayers-wont-have-to-bailout-californias-ticking-pension-time-bomb/#5ece60845a9c

Anonymous said...

Anybody see that black Somali kid chop up all those white kids yesterday?

Pretty fucked up, huh? All across the world, blacks have one thing in common: violence.

Anonymous said...

@ 12:40 anon -

You can take the Somali out of Somalia, but you can't take the Somali out of the Somali.

:D

Anonymous said...

Trump is filling his cabinet with generals - hallelujah!

The hammer will be coming down soon. Attacks like in Ohio and Seattle and San Bernardino and Orlando won't be happening anymore. It will be a new day in America. Affirmative Action hires in government are going to get cut, too - that means your aunt La'Wanda who been working at the post office for the last 34 years might be out of a job soon, Field. :}

AMERICA UBER ALLES! EIN REICH, EIN VOLK, EIN GOD EMPEROR!!

Anonymous said...

:-}
;-{
:-]
(oo)
-^-

dinthebeast said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dinthebeast said...

Anon: And yet we still have roughly twice the population of New York, and the rental markets are so unaffordable because so many people want to live here. I know one person who is moving out of state, and she is hating it badly. You can keep Texas and Kansas and Louisiana; if I can live in the third highest priced rental market in the US on $1242.00 a month for two people and still have enough money for the phone bills and car insurance and the occasional rock concert then probably anyone can do it if they want. Forbes just hates the idea of pensions in general and CalPers in particular because they don't like a bunch of Forbes' favorite businesses and divested from them to the tune of billions of dollars.

Oh yeah, there's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qROQ0XYP4Ck

-Doug in Oakland

Josh said...

So, for one lone guy, you have hearsay to make a case that -- what? White people generally believe in racial superiority and wish to restrict voting rights? Even if this guy said such--which, let's be honest here, is a pretty big if, given the landscape of liars*--it has no bearing whatever on any of the other 200,000 whites.

By the logic behind the implication here, of Trump's white support, all of you blacks are just like Black Hitler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aufoq95VdA

But you're creating a straw-man while simultaneously reducing benign comments to sheer absurdity. Charlie Sheen, pre-AIDS, boasted of his genetic prowess, claiming he had "tiger blood" and God-like genes. White nationalist? LOL It's absurd. Generally speaking, things like intelligence and drive and determination are genetic traits (would anyone like to see why?), which can be--though aren't always--passed down. Why the fuck is it always an issue every time a white person is proud of their heritage? The world isn't demanding DNA swabs every time a black person claims to be the African descendants of kings and queens.

"Dog whistle." LMAO. Trump references his genes, which is just a way of accrediting his parentage, and here's this other guy who, according to a second-hand account--pure hearsay--has supposed beliefs that Trump has never espoused.

"I believe in inherent genetic superiority."
"I credit my genes for my success."

Anyone who thinks they're identical statements, or even similar sentiments, deserves to live in a state of perpetual butthurt. This is reaching far beyond anything; it basically has to be the brainchild of ThinkProgress, copy-pasted verbatim to get a rise from the faithful.

Talk about hypocrisy! I hear that dog whistle loud and clear. LOL

*When 100% of the "in Trump's America" stories have been wholly untrue, why does this one get credence? Besides, of course, that it fell right into your lap with its Trump-and-whites-are-evil narrative.

Josh said...

"It's not just training or studying harder."

Exactly! How many kids and young adults, over the course of the NBA's history, have trained harder than Michael Jordan because they wanted to make the big league and earn life-changing money? Jordan was genetically superior in a multitude of ways: Speed, agility, jumping, hand-eye coordination, determination, that mythical "zone" button he could push, on-court intelligence that rivaled that of any coach. His genes were hard-coded to display traits that 99.9% of people, perhaps even including his offspring, don't have. LeBron is probably the better example, a physical freak by the time he was in 10th grade. Oh, wait -- that's just because he practiced hard! LMFAO

Progressive "science" is now, has been, and will always be purely political. Natural selection and heredity and commingling of genes for better-suited offspring cannot be true, because there might be white people who use that to say blacks are inferior. Therefore, the science of evolution is roundly rejected, unless progressives are trying to stomp on white Christian creationists. Then, suddenly, they're all gung-ho about evolution. But not when it comes to genes.

Anonymous said...

Watch the debate between Tucker Carlson and so-called "race expert" Tariq Nasheed .... hilarious. Talk about a dumb educated nigger!

Field, you held the position of "Dumbest Educated Nigger Ever" for a long time, but I'm afraid we have a new champion.

Adam Lanza said...

Anybody see that black Somali kid chop up all those white kids yesterday?

Pretty fucked up, huh? All across the world, blacks have one thing in common: violence.
------------
Anybody remember the white guy who shot up the classroom full of 5 year olds? Pretty fucked up huh? All across the world white boys have one thing in common, killing babies.

Fucker Carlson said...

Watch the debate between Tucker Carlson and so-called "race expert" Tariq Nasheed
------------
This imbecile thinks this was a "debate". Sorry anon but you need not comment on anyone's intelligence. I guess to the typical third grade educated trailer park dweller Fox news hosts "debates" every night. Jeezus, you are almost as dumb as James and that's saying something. Tucker Carlson is what stupid people think smart people sound like.

Anonymous said...

Bannon is exactly what I picture Doug in Oakland looking like.

Yīshēng said...

Today is World AIDS Day!!

So, I want to thank all the people living with HIV/AIDS for inspiring me to become the best Physician/Scientist ever!!!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said...

You are the best Physician/Scientist ever, Yīshēng. That's why we are going to proactively award you every Nobel Prize for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine for the rest of your life. We already promised the prizes for Peace, Literature and Economics to Barack Obama, Maya Angelou, and Paul Krugman, or we'd give you those too.

Congratulations on this the greatest scientific achievement of all time. You've earned it.

Anonymous said...

dinthebeast said...
"And yet we still have roughly twice the population of New York, and the rental markets are so unaffordable because so many people want to live here."

And because of very restrictive development policies.

People want to live there because is pretty much the greatest piece of land with the nicest climate on earth. It is blessed with oil, gold, timber, fisheries and incredibly productive farmland. Previous generations built up a world class infrastructure of ports, highways, industries and universities. Which is why liberal fuckheads can get away with so much nonsense before they ruin it completely. There is a limit to everything, however.

I've never lived in California, but have been there many times over the past few decades. I love it, but it sure has changed. Now that the population is 40% Mexican, much of the state is a lot more like Mexico. I've been to Mexico a lot, and I don't love it. As the middle class continues to get pushed out of the state and gets replaced with a peasant class, it's going to even more like Mexico. There may still be 40 million Californians, but they won't be the same people. I really don't think the future of California stacks up very well against its past.

Yīshēng said...

In celebration of the release of the film Hidden Figures, Vanity Fair releases an issue featuring women in STEM, including many women of color, 2 of whom I know professionally:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/saluting-a-new-guard-of-stem-stars

Women of color SLAY in STEM!!!!

Yassssssssss!!!!!!!!!

dinthebeast said...

I've been here almost 56 years (Californian by birth, by nature, and by choice) and the biggest changes I'm seeing are the undoing of the damage Republicans did here back when we still occasionally elected them.

-Doug in Oakland

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