Donald Trump Family Research Councilã¢â‚¬â„¢s Values Voter Summit

Screen grab of Steven Bannon speaking at the Family Inquiry Council Summit on Oct. 14 in Washington, DC. (C-Span)

Equally the first sitting president to have the podium at Family unit Enquiry Quango's Values Voter Summit, President Trump may take offered history a footnote with his October. xiii voice communication, but past the post-obit twenty-four hours his remarks were all but forgotten, as Steve Bannon's stemwinder, a steaming stew of vitriol, splashed across mainstream media. On the Sunday shows, Bannon was the focus.

The old White Business firm strategist, ousted from the Due west Wing in the days following the president's mixed-messaging on the violence perpetrated by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in Charlottesville, remains unrepentant.

Before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon courted some of those very aforementioned people at Breitbart to expand the accomplish of the site beyond more traditional conservative circles, according to a report by Joseph Bernstein of BuzzFeed. At present back at Breitbart, Bannon has free rein to push the night worldview he'southward peddled for years in the over-the-top, fearfulness-mongering propaganda movies he's produced, and the Christian right is lapping it up, all in the service of Bannon's power-grab for command of the Republican Party.

Commencement with Trump, conference speakers lauded attendees at this weekend's gathering every bit the keepers of "Judeo-Christian values," which were described as being under threat. Several, including former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) described Europe equally having been lost to Islam, warning that the U.s.a. could exist next. Despite the fact that the US takes in few refugees from Syria and other Muslim-majority countries, Frank Gaffney, a titan of the right's anti-Islam cottage manufacture, dragged out a far-right hashtag for those few who make it in: "refujihadis." Author Brigitte Gabriel, a Christian built-in in Lebanon, as well railed confronting refugees from the war-torn nations of Africa and the Middle East, claiming they carried disease to the U.s.a. and raped American women. They "hate America," she said, and she gave a shout-out to Bannon, echoing his call for an end to Senate delay rules, which she said were stalling the implementation of Trump'due south agenda.

While the purported threat posed past Islam has been preached to the "values voters" in years by, gone this year was the veneration of so-called "free-market" commercialism as a core notion of right-wing Christian ideology, leaving Bannon's rallying cry for economical nationalism to flood the zone. And in Bannon marry Sebastian Gorka, another erstwhile White House adviser to Trump, the Values Voter Summit for the offset time featured a speaker known to proudly wear the emblem of a group sympathetic to the Nazi crusade in Europe. Neither Bannon nor Gorka are regarded as being particularly religious.

Neither is Trump. Just before the 2016 ballot, Christian pollster George Barna surveyed a grouping he calls "SAGE cons" — spiritually active, governance-engaged conservatives — and said found that a mere i percent described Trump as an exemplar of "Godly character." Barna said his polling too found that 77 percent described Trump every bit "big-headed," 61 per centum as "rude," 52 percent as "a bully." Yet 91 of them percent voted for him anyway, Barna said in a breakout session. And at the summit, the assembled SAGE cons gave Trump gave a hero'due south welcome.

Trump, subsequently all, represents the ultimate smack-downwards of the cultural changes wrought by civil rights and feminism, the forces the Christian correct organized to oppose over 40 years ago. The applause lines in his speech told the tale of a people motivated not by such traditionally Christian values equally charity and acceptance, merely past talismans of identity laced with tacit prejudices, such every bit the implicit anti-Semitism of the and so-called "war on Christmas" theme revived past Trump. Speaking of department-store workers, Trump claimed, "They don't use the word 'Christmas' because information technology's not politically right…Well, guess what? We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

"We stand united behind the customs, beliefs and traditions that define who we are equally a nation and as a people," he added.

The president suggested that "religion and prayer" could replace "federal regulation," without specifying regulation of what.

Trump didn't need to spell out too much; he never specifically mentioned the NFL players whose firing he urged just weeks ago. He never mentioned the words "ballgame" or "nascency control." He had learned the SAGE-con lawmaking: "America'southward heritage," "sanctity of life," "religious freedom." (Just in case anyone should miss his greater indicate, he did, however, boldly state that he would protect the world from "radical Islamic terrorism.") As president, he could leave to others the specifics of the fearful, nationalist worldview that holds his base together.

For that base of operations, Trump is delivering, and he reminded them of all he has done — especially his naming of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Plus, he's undoing the legacy of the nation's get-go black president. To sweeten the pot just ahead of his speech, he revoked the subsidies to depression-income subscribers to Obamacare, and when he noted this, the crowd roared its blessing. And from the looks of the audience in the room, I'd venture to say that a plurality, if not a majority, were on Medicare.

At every Values Voter Tiptop since the showtime held in 2006, there is usually an overarching narrative theme, an action theme, and several threads that serve as a glimmering subtext. This year's big, sprawling narrative was the threat to Western civilization posed past Islam in detail, and non-Western and nonwhite nations in general. The activeness theme was "war" on the Republican establishment in full general, and Senate Bulk Leader Mitch McConnell in detail. The decorative threads included the supposed threat posed by transgender people, various descriptions of feminism as either a "criminalization of masculinity" (Todd Starnes of Play a joke on News) or a dead move (Dana Loesch of the National Rifle Association), and a sustained attack by several speakers on the Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil-rights organization which, in 2010, famously added FRC to its listing of hate groups "for knowingly spread faux and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people," co-ordinate to SPLC Senior Boyfriend Mark Potok.

Preceding a console led by retired Gen. Jerry Boykin of FRC, conference-goers were treated to an anti-SPLC video produced by Prager University. Throughout the briefing, different narrative strands were often woven together, as when Gaffney defendant SPLC of working with the Muslim Brotherhood, presenting a slide featuring the two organizations' logos side past side and naming it the "reddish-green centrality" (after the colors of the respective logos).

Gorka urged conference-goers not to fret over his and Bannon's ouster from the White Business firm. "The left has no idea how much more impairment nosotros can practise to them as private citizens," he said with a cartoon-villain inflection.

And indeed, it was Bannon who brought the burn. He opened with a famous quotation from the Old Attestation book of Ecclesiastes. "To everything, at that place is a flavour, and a time for every purpose under Sky… A time of war and a time of peace." He and then alleged the present moment to exist a time of war — "confronting the Republican institution."

"This is not my war," he added. "This is our war."

That institution, he said, is "personified by Mitch McConnell." Only the Senate bulk leader, who was bashed by speakers throughout the conference, wasn't the just one on Bannon'south enemies listing, which includes Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), despite Corker's declaration that he will not run again. Corker'south criminal offence, according to Bannon, is the fact that he dared to criticize "the commander-in-chief of the military" while "nosotros take young men and women in harm's way." Meta-message: Criticize Trump and Bannon will force you from role with the threat of a master challenge.

Bannon rattled off the names of sitting senators currently in his sights: Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Dean Heller of Nevada and John Barrasso of Wyoming. The problem with them, by Bannon's lights, isn't that they don't vote with for the president's priorities — they do. It's that they haven't come to the microphones to defend the commander-in-chief.

1 of the Meridian's star speakers was Roy Moore, the former master justice of the Alabama Supreme Courtroom who, with Bannon's support, unseated incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in the Sept. 26 Republican master.

Moore, of class, is famous for having placed a monument to the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, refusing to stand down when the religious display was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. When the Supreme Court declared aforementioned-sexual activity marriage a legal correct, Moore instructed county clerks non to issue spousal relationship licenses to same-sex couples. He was ultimately ousted from the demote for refusing to uphold the The states Constitution — merely non until years subsequently he led the charge, according to Talking Points Memo, against the removal of a mandate for racial segregation in public instruction from Alabama's state constitution. Moore's speech at Values Voter was a hash of misused literary citations, a undiscriminating joke and a poem he wrote about his vengeful deity: "Yous think that God's non aroused that our country's a moral slum? How much longer will it exist before his judgment comes?" (Well, it nigh rhymes.)

Roy Moore, GOP Senate candidate and former chief justice on the Alabama Supreme Court speaks during the annual Family Research Quango'southward Values Voter Tiptop on October. 13, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo past Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The incoherence of Moore's speech mattered non, as he is the walking, talking apotheosis of Bannon'south formula for seizing power within the GOP: A dark, hypernationalist, racialized identitarian ideology dressed in the language of Christianity, contempt for the United states of america Constitution and the promise of violence to come.

Moore is besides the gauntlet thrown by Bannon at Trump's anxiety. The president endorsed Strange in the master matchup, indelible an embarrassing loss. Soon after Moore won the master, Trump deleted his tweeted endorsements of Foreign. For Trump, few epithets pack more punch than "loser." Bannon likely thinks he's found the formula to keep Trump doing his bidding. And perhaps he has.

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Source: https://billmoyers.com/story/white-nationalism-values-voter-summit/

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