It’s been amply established that Donald Trump’s chief strategist and chief brownshirt, Steve Bannon, is a stone-cold racist at bottom. He has documented ties to white nationalists and white supremacists, and had no qualms about promoting them while at the helm of Breitbart News. He also has no problem with suppressing the black vote, and once mused that only property owners should have the right to vote.
Well, Huffington Post recently got wind of what drives the mindset of the man who is essentially Trump’s right hand–a very obscure and very racist book called “The Camp of the Saints.” Watch here for more details.
It was published in 1975 by archconservative French writer Jean Raspail, and purports to describe France being overrun and destroyed by a mass influx of immigrants from India. As it turns out, France is the first domino to fall in the ultimate destruction of Western civilization.
Raspail didn’t even try to hide his agenda. Only white Europeans are portrayed as being truly good and human. The nonwhite immigrants are seen as “wretched creatures” and sexually debauched. His white protagonists are seen as defenders of white supremacy, while the whites who side with the immigrants are described as “cuckolded.” Sound familiar?
In Raspail’s eyes, Western civilization has pushed itself to the brink because it no longer accepted white supremacy as gospel. As a result, nonwhites have simply overwhelmed them. He saw his book as a call for the white Christian world to fight to the death not only against the nonwhite world, but whites who dare to think multiculturalism is a good idea. Indeed, the book’s main character, Calgues, sees many of his actions as a modern portrayal of past battles between civilizations.
The book was first published in the United States in 1975, but its red-meat racism brought scathing reviews. It was republished in 1983 with funding from Cordelia Scaife May, the younger sister of right-wing tycoon Richard Scaife. A decade letter, May funded a third run of the book, through anti-immigration maven John Tanton’s Social Contract Press. Tanton published it a fourth time in 2001.
It’s not surprising that this book has gone absolutely nowhere in the mainstream market. But Bannon and his friends at Breitbart see it as gospel. For the better part of two years, Bannon sprinkled his interviews on “Breitbart News Daily” with references to the book whenever the subject of immigration came up. For instance, in October 2015, he claimed the refugee crisis in Europe was “a ‘Camp of the Saints’-type invasion.” It’s one of many instances in which he has argued that emigration is simply invasion in sheep’s clothing.
He has also echoed the book’s criticism of white liberals who support diversity. As late as 2016, he asked then-Senator Jeff Sessions if the nation’s elites really believe in “the underlying principles of the Judeo-Christian West.”
This sort of talk unnerves Linda Chavez, the highest-ranking Latina in the Reagan administration. She reviewed the book in 1983, and told HuffPo that her assessment back then still stands–“it’s shockingly racist.” She actually resigned from the board of U. S. English, a group seeking to make English the official language, after finding out that its founder, Tanton, had gotten a substantial amount of funding from May. Chavez knew that May had helped fund two editions of “The Camp of the Saints,” and was stunned to see a number of Tanton’s advisers toting the book around the office.
In a colossal understatement, Chavez says that the fact that one of Trump’s most senior advisers draws inspiration from such an outrageous book “speaks volumes about his attitude.” I’d go further than that. It represents a total failure of the press to dig deeper into what made Bannon tick. Had someone delved more into Bannon’s quotes, and saw what this book actually represented, it’s pretty hard to believe that Trump would have been able to keep Bannon on his payroll and stay in the race.
There was already a laundry list of reasons why Bannon has no business cleaning the White House, let alone serve in it. Well, add another to the list. A man who wrote dozens of executive orders that Trump didn’t read and actually believed that he was the one calling the shots in the White House is inspired by one of the most racist books ever published.
Imagine if an adviser to a President Hillary Clinton drew inspiration from the writings of Elijah Muhammad or Louis Farrakhan. No one would tolerate someone who found such racist bilge acceptable being on the nation’s payroll. This is no different. I know it sounds like a broken record, but it’s long past time for Trump to get Bannon out of here.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
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