The excitement of Stephen K. Bannon’s salute was similar to a Nazi gesture for many, sparking protests not only from liberal critics of President Trump, but also from European rights leaders on Friday. Ta.
It came a month after Elon Musk gave a similar salute. And then there’s an acceptable moment when Trump’s administration, which has long been chased on the charge of encouraging far-right extremism, appears to be leaning more aggressively towards far-right alliances. all over the world.
Bannon, a former White House strategist and longtime ideological leader of Trump’s populist movement, made Thursday at a conservative political action conference outside Washington, was a Nazi “Sieg Heil.” I denied that it was a salute. In his text message, he explained, “I waved to the Magazine movement, as I always do in my motivational speech.”
However, Jordan Bardera, president of France’s far-right national rally, said he cancelled plans to speak at the meeting on Friday morning after “one of the speakers provocatively gestured Nazi ideology.” It has been announced.
The gesture was repeated by Musk, the billionaire leading Trump’s cost-cutting efforts on inauguration.
Trump and his allies have long drawn anger over his refusal to blame white nationalists. In 2017, Trump was criticized by even prominent Republicans for referring to “very great people on both sides” of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
But Bannon and Musk’s gestures came as Trump reached out to previously marginalized political movements that had links to white nationalism overseas.
Through Vice President JD Vance, the White House openly bridged this month for an alternative to the AFD, a German right-wing party that has been marginalized in the country for several of its members revealed by Nazi slogans. Although it has built the vote suggests it could become the second-largest party in Germany’s parliament in Sunday’s election.
Bannon, who left Trump’s first administration seven months later, but who maintained an influential figure on the right through the “War Room” podcast and movement building efforts, made a gesture near the end of his speech at CPAC. I made it.
Again suggesting that President Trump will pursue a constitutionally banned third term, Bannon cited Trump after surviving an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania last year, saying, “Fight, fight, fight, “The battle” gathered a crowded ballroom. The crowd then cheered and applauded, and Bannon extended his right arm to his side, saluteing his palm downwards.
In his text message Friday, Bannon had withdrawn Bardella from the CPAC, attacked him with vulgar language, calling him a “cute boy” and “too weak to rule France.”
“Baldera is nothing,” he said in an interview Friday. “Maga is useless to this guy.”
Bannon’s gesture pushed to eliminate institutions funding overseas aid development programs, including many who ranked European right-wing parties, at a similar salute at Trump’s inauguration rally by Musk. I followed.
Musk has been supporting AFDs loudly for months, writing to X, “Only AFD can save Germany.” He has also been warning for many years of the threat of “white genocide” in South Africa’s home country. Trump nodded to such claims in an executive order he signed this month, halting all US aid to South Africa and prioritizing resettlement of white “African refugees” to the United States.
The gesture comes as Trump and his allies work to build relationships across the dominant class of right-wing political movements around the world. Many of them were represented by the CPAC.
But Bardella’s decision highlighted some tensions within the project, especially in Europe. In Europe, even far-right parties are shaking with relations with Nazism. Salutes like those created by Bannon and Musk are illegal in Germany, where intelligence agency classifies and monitors elements of the AFD as extremists.
While the German alternative enjoys support from Musk and Vance, Bardera’s national rally has found that connections with Trump’s allies could also be held responsible. The party, founded by Jean Marie Le Pen, attempts to reshape its image and distance from its reputation of racism and anti-Semitism, a normalization strategy that was rewarded with widespread appeals to French voters. It took a year too.
Bannon’s gesture also caused a headache for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who will be providing a video address at CPAC on Saturday. Like Bardera and his party, Meloni, a career supported by Bannon, has eased the stances of many Italian party brothers who have roots in the Italian fascist past in recent years.
Her opponent grabbed Bannon’s salute. Italian Democratic leader Ellie Shrine said Meloni should have the decency to free herself from this neo-fascist gathering.
A spokesperson for Meloni said she was unaware of plans to cancel the video’s appearance. Antonio Giordano, executive director of Meloni’s European Conservative Party and Reformed Groups of the European Parliament, disputed Bannon’s gesture was a Nazi salute.
At least one CPAC speaker appeared to reflect Bannon’s gesture rebelliously on Friday. Mexican actor and conservative activist Eduardo Verastegui raised his hands with heart in a similar salute, raising his heart out as if some of the crowd applauded. He then pumped his fist and repeated the word “fight.”
