The @NewYorker does lasting and important work, but giving Steve Bannon a platform at their "festival" is terribly misguided, and rooted in a naive belief that public exposure will somehow allow Bannon to be "bested."/thread nytimes.com/2018/09/03/art…
David Remnick is one of the great editors of our time, but he holds a Boomer-age blindspots. He thinks that his pointed questioning of Bannon will somehow expose Bannon in a way which will discredit Bannon and do him damage. It's the opposite though.
There is no terrible belief or action or prediction that David Remnick could elicit from Steve Bannon that Bannon will not only gladly admit to, but go on to expound upon. He is a white nationalist, a proud one, and exposing this only plays to Bannon's advantage.
No doubt a New Yorker festival audience will be hostile to Bannon, but this also plays to Bannon's advantage. Amongst a hostile elite, he will convey his "truths" without anger or violence and he will be de facto legitimized.
David Remnick's career as a journalist makes him believe that he will be debating or even interrogating Bannon in a way that will elicit "truth," which will discredit Bannon, but believing this to be possible is beyond naive and betrays a very poor understanding of Bannon.
Obviously, the New Yorker can do what they want, but I hope people will think twice before buying tickets and attending the Bannon event. The most appropriate response to it is for it to be ignored. It's spectacle. Enlightenment is unlikely to the point of impossible.
I'd also hope that the other participants in the New Yorker festival take the time to consider what it means for them to appear at an event which is featuring Steve Bannon and make a choice consistent with their conscience.
No matter what happens, by virtue of the invite, Bannon has won. If the New Yorker disinvites or other attendees boycott, he gets to crow about how "afraid" we are of his ideas. The solution is to not legitimize white supremacists in the first place.
Now that Bannon is invited, I think the ideal course is for other attendees to cancel and audiences to stay away from not just Bannon, but all events. Let that speak for the public's opinion on the New Yorker legitimizing Bannon.
I'm not cancelling my @NewYorker subscription, though. I really enjoy the magazine, and my guess is a significant proportion of the writers and editors have similar objections to Bannon's inclusion. This is an act of hubris on upper management's part.
Also read @rgay on this with very similar sentiments, well-expressed.
I've said it a few times #onhere, White Supremacy is on the ballot in November, and doing things like hosting Steve Bannon for a debate legitimizes White Supremacy as something other than what it is, something to be utterly rejected and defeated. There's no debate to be had.
