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Steve Bannon has it spot on, Martin Luther King and Trump are birds of a feather

Friday 25 May 2018

The Independent

 

Voices

Steve Bannon has it spot on, Martin Luther King and Trump are birds of a feather

The good Reverend’s non-violent direct action puts him very much in line with the president’s support for the NRA. Is that what Bannon meant?
(Getty)

Wasn’t it sweet to see Trump’s old “chief strategist” Steve Bannon say that Martin Luther King would have been a proud supporter of the American President’s policies?

Bannon explained: “Martin Luther King would have said ‘you’ve finally stopped the illegal alien labour forces coming in and destroying the schools and destroying the healthcare’.” And he’s right, because although everyone remembers the bit in the Reverend’s speech about “I have a dream”, it’s often forgotten the next bit went, “mind you, they come over here, taking our bleeding jobs, the parasites, millions of them there is, don’t even speak fucking English”.

In any case, the full sentence in the famous speech went “I have a dream, of a world in which people are judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin”, and any psychotherapist knows the way to interpret this dream, is he was expressing his subconscious desire to start a trade war with China.

Also, King’s insistence on non-violent direct action puts him very much in line with Trump’s support for the National Rifle Association. Trump enthusiastically backs the right of everyone in America to hold a sideboard full of guns, and Reverend King also backed people’s rights, even calling his movement a demand for civil rights. We could be pedantic and quibble about which rights they were, but where does that get us?

And Steve Bannon himself told supporters of the Le Front National in France to “wear accusations of racism as a badge of honour”. This is entirely in the spirit of the civil rights movement, such as James Brown’s iconic song that became an anthem for the cause: “Say it out loud, I’m racist and I’m proud.”

Some people complained about Bannon’s remarks, such as the Reverend’s daughter Bernice King, who said Bannon “dangerously and erroneously co-opted my father’s name, work and words. His assertion that my father would be proud of Donald Trump wholly ignores daddy’s commitment to people of all races, nationalities, etc. being treated with dignity and respect”.

What a way to react when someone tries to pay a compliment. Thankfully of the two, it’s Steve Bannon who has influenced the actions of a world superpower, otherwise things could be worrying. Everyone now loves Martin Luther King, which makes you wonder what he was on about when he said “we face a mountainous struggle”, needing “all our strength” and so on.

Politicians who said in 1965 that he was “a monster threatening our American way of life because it is against the laws of nature to allow a black man to look in your direction, so he must be attached to a giant firework and sent into space”, now claim “We may have disagreed on some issues, but he always said he enjoyed getting battered by the cops after an order from me, as we’d have a clean contest and later on when he regained consciousness, we’d have a good laugh with no hard feelings.”

Next, Bannon should declare that Trump is a hero of feminists, because women’s pussies were shamefully ignored by most politicians

Jeremy Clarkson will say he’s inspired by Martin Luther King’s famous boycott of the buses that refused to allow black people to sit near the front, because it proves the Reverend hated buses, and really wanted to whizz around Alabama in a three-litre Jaguar. And the bloke who shot him will say: “He was a unique and wonderful soul, and as a professional assassin it was an honour and privilege to murder someone with as much integrity as Doctor King.”

Characters such as the Reverend King, Muhammad Ali and Rosa Parks are now seen as great figures in the same way we revere inventors or explorers. In a similar way to Louis Pasteur and his penicillin, Martin Luther King once announced: “I have marvellous news, I’ve discovered a cure for racism.” And from then on if anyone felt a bit of prejudice they took a tablet and it was all sorted.

In a way this is cheery, because it shows in the end he won. Almost everyone has to accept the legacy of the civil rights movement and claim they’re acting in the tradition of its leaders. Few people do this the other way round, and say “The marvellous thing about our policy on cucumber tariffs is I’m sure it would have been enthusiastically supported by Enoch Powell”.

So next, Steve Bannon should declare that Trump is a hero of feminists, because women’s pussies were shamefully ignored by most politicians, rarely brought up as an issue in an election campaign, but Donald Trump changed that and not only raised them, but positively identified himself as proud to grab them. And that is exactly what the Suffragettes were demanding.

Also, feminists are always moaning about wanting equal pay, and this president paid $130,000 to one woman porn star to keep schtum, so he’s done more to close the gender pay gap than any other world leader. But does he get the recognition he deserves as a crusader for women’s rights?

And look how much he’s doing for the environment. His bans on immigration from a variety of countries will greatly reduce the carbon footprint of many people, who would otherwise have travelled miles to flee some dictator or other. But now they’ll stay where they are to get tortured instead of dangerously puffing exhaust into the air.

At last we have an environmental-oriented, feminist president who would be adored by Martin Luther King, and yet still these liberal types aren’t happy. It makes you wonder how sometimes he doesn’t become irrationally angry.