As I write this entry, I am watching the scenes unfolding at Congress with dismay and heartache. How is it that a mob have stormed the ‘People’s House’ and rampaged through the halls of the US Capitol? But as the dust settled, I found myself asking a question? How were the crowd inspired to rampage through the halls of Congress? Was this something that was the culmination of 4 years of a presidency that bought out the worse in people, or was this motivated by the online forums that Angela Nagle, wrote about?
The answer in my mind is that it is hard. But, to answer the question of whether this is the culmination of the Trump presidency, the answer is almost certainly that this is the case. When Trump named his original cabinet back in 2016, Steve Bannon, the Breitbart head editor was appointed as the chief strategist to oversee the Trump Administration’s first 100 days. Many commentators, especially those on the left were horrified. The alt right that had endorsed, parroted and supported Donald Trump’s campaign had been elevated into the corridors of American power, and were ultimately blamed for the border wall, the Muslim travel ban and failure to condemn racism by the alt right.
Into the corridors of power
Members of the White House press corps were suddenly dismayed to see Breitbart staff like Milo Yiannapoulis gain unprecedented access to the White House. However, Nagle suggests that Mr Yiannapoulis (who called Trump daddy) during the 2016 presidential campaign, was not motivated by Trump’s brand of politics, but rather the culture wars that came with it. In fact, in the same Bloomberg piece, Heidi Berich at the Southern Law Poverty Centre which tracks US hate groups stated that Mr Yiannapoulis was the mouthpiece for the alt right once Bannon was hired to run the Trump campaign.
Similarities
I could not bring myself to watch any videos, nor read anything that Mr Yiannapoulis has written or spoken in public, but Angela Nagle has compared speeches that was mentioned on his ‘Dangerous F****t” of university campuses in the UK and the US to those of Pat Buchannan, a Republican commentator and strategist to several Republican presidents. Both Mr Yiannapoulis and Mr Buchannan spoke about what they saw to be the downfall of traditional Western civilisation at the hands of political and media figures that lean to the left.
Both believe that traditions such as Christmas are under attack from figures determined to appease a minority (for the record, the US does not spend a lot of time on Christmas as we do in Britain, and in the UK, happy holidays and Merry Christmas are used interchangeably). Also, both believe that the left is out to expand the role of government to the point that we all live under some kind of overbearing government that controls every aspect of our lives.
Differences
However, there is one significant difference between Buchannan and Yianopoulis. When Buchannan was fighting his culture wars, the mass medium at the time was television and conservative talk radio. Today, forums such as 4chan, Tumblr and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. That afforded a larger audience, which given that social media is and remains unfiltered (despite attempts to regulate such services). As a result of this, outrageous comments that do not reflect the situation in reality are often amplified, shared in online groups and then eventually, if they are repeated by those that hold political authority reach the mainstream of society.
In my next entry, I will look at how these culture warriors are making themselves known in the mainstream, and why this is poisonous to the way that western civilisation conducts politics. But in the meantime:
