Ex-Trump aide Bannon tells protest-delayed debate populists ‘anti-fascist’
TORONTO — Ordinary people have long been shut out by political and capitalist elites who have done them immense harm, the former strategist who helped Donald Trump win the White House told a protest-delayed debate in Toronto on Friday.
Denying Trump or his supporters are racist, Steve Bannon called populists the true anti-fascists because, he said, fascism looks to worship the state.
Bannon slammed what he called the “great elites of the permanent political class” for causing the devastating financial crisis in 2008 and waging endless wars like the one in Afghanistan. Those same elites consider the populist movement to be made up of racist, nativist xenophobes, he said.
“Well, it’s not. They’re the backbone of our country, the most decent people on Earth,” Bannon said during the 90-minute debate.