Bannon in Speech to France’s Far Right Party: ‘Let Them Call You Racist…Wear it as a Badge of Honor’
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon speaking to the crowd attending the party congress for France’s far-right National Front party: “Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes… wear it as a badge of honor.” https://t.co/veWU4gawYf pic.twitter.com/KnovkuDZXJ
— ABC News (@ABC) March 10, 2018
Steve Bannon, since getting knocked from his perch atop the populist movement propelling President Donald Trump that he claims to have architected, has packed up and taken his bluster to Europe.
The former White House chief strategist was dumped from Trump’s administration last year, and then fired from his website Breitbart in January — after his harsh criticisms of Trump’s family were published in a book.
Politically isolated in the United States, Bannon has embarked on a whirlwind tour of Europe, seeking to lead, in his words, the “global populist movement.”
Bannon has already spoken in Zurich, Switzerland at an event organized by a conservative publication, and on Saturday headlined the annual conference for France’s National Front.
The far-right party held its conference in Lille, where Bannon was reportedly introduced by leader Marine Le Pen, and made some eyebrow raising remarks.
“Let them call you racist,” he told the crowd. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativist. Wear it as a badge of honor. Because everyday we get stronger and they get weaker.”
A fresh New York Times profile gives some insight into Bannon’s plans for taking over Europe, which range from training “an army of populist foot soldiers in the language and tools of social media,” to spreading “populist websites in the image of Breitbart News.”
And his musings on a potential media outlet are ambitious:
But Mr. Bannon, who said he was paying for the trip, said he was weighing whether to buy a name-brand outlet, like Newsweek or United Press International, or to start a new one, or to connect entrepreneurs with capital or invest himself.
He imagined a scoop-driven and high-metabolism outlet “like Axios,” he said, referring to the buzzy Washington newsletter, but with a populist bent that would devour Europe’s sleepy legacy papers.
Axios is, of course, the website founded by former Politicos Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei just last year that has become a go-to source for bite-sized, insidery D.C. political news.
Watch a clip of Bannon’s speech in Lille above, via ABC News.
[image via screengrab]
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