Inside the Emerging Trumpian Alt-Right Snuff Novel - by Josh Marshall

By JOSH MARSHALL Published APRIL 7, 2017, 11:27 PM EDT

All signs suggest we're now in the "President Trump has full confidence in Michael Flynn" phase of Steve Bannon's tenure in the Trump White House. I don't know whether this is some moron genius dialectic on Bannon's part or just Karma. But can we miss that the man who gave coherence and verve to Trump's campaign against the 'globalists' and unrooted cosmopolitan elites is about to be booted by the President's Jewish tycoon son-in-law and a group of bankers (yes, Jewish bankers) from Goldman Sachs? These are I confess uncomfortable observations, but consider this ...

It is always important to remember that Steve Bannon came late to Trump's campaign. As pro-Trump as Breitbart News may have been, it was still seen - understandably - as a wild, suicidal and entirely unexpected development when Bannon was put in charge of the campaign on August 17th, 2016, almost a month after the Republican convention.

Before then, Trump had run a thoroughly jingoistic and xenophobic campaign, with protestor beatings and various shades of crypto- and non-crypto racism. All on his own he drew around himself that coterie of "alt-right" white nationalists and neo-Nazis who will likely be his greatest and most lethal contribution to the American political scene. But it was only with Bannon's arrival that Trump took on the much more coherent and consistent language of Europe-derived rightist nationalism, anti-"globalism" and the thinly covert language of anti-Semitism.

Let's be clear. This is no defense of Trump. It was all there all along from rage and intuition and impulse. But Bannon packaged it together and tailored the suit. It was pure Bannon, remember, who was behind the speech that became this notorious anti-Semitic closing ad, released on November 5th, 2016.

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