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Comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell noted that while Steve Bannon may have been “playing footsie with Nazism” with his straight-armed salute at CPAC, the former Trump strategist didn’t need to because “we already knew Steve Bannon was on the side of Nazis.”
During last week’s CPAC event, Bannon appeared to replicate the “Roman salute” that “first buddy” Elon Musk – whom Bannon has been intensely feuding with – emphatically threw out during his Inauguration Day speech. While Musk provoked fierce outrage over accusations that he’d made a “Sieg Heil” gesture, Bannon’s salute has been met with equal parts backlash and mockery.
With another CPAC speaker also mimicking Musk’s salute, which has sparked additional copycats across the right-wing ecosphere, a far-right French political leader canceled his speech at the right-wing confab “one of the speakers provocatively made a gesture referring to Nazi ideology.” At the same time, actual neo-Nazis felt that Bannon’s attempt at provocation was a “little excessive” and just an attempt to draw a reaction.
“This was some sick s***,” white supremacist activist Nick Fuentes said. “It’s getting a little uncomfortable, even for a guy like me! Even I’m starting to feel like that guy in that picture who wouldn’t Heil Hitler!”
Bell, who hosts the CNN series United Shades of America, was asked on Monday to weigh in on Bannon’s CPAC gesture and the growing trend of conservative figures seemingly embracing Nazi salutes and rhetoric.
“There‘s been a lot of, um, can we say, beating around the bush about the hand gestures we are seeing from those with huge influence in Trump world. Of course, Elon Musk. And then we saw Bannon this weekend… what would you call what you saw him do on that stage at CPAC?” CNN anchor Sara Sidner wondered.
“He‘s playing footsie with Nazism is what he‘s doing,” Bell responded. “He‘s sort of trying to – like the way he did it at the end of his speech, he threw out the Nazi salute. But he sort of did in a way that was sort of plausible deniability.”Noting that “intelligent humans” know “there are words we don‘t say in front of mixed company because they sound like slurs” and “because we know we shouldn’t,” Bell said that Bannon just dispensed with any subtext during his CPAC speech.
“So the fact that he’s not being careful about his actions prove that he is actually trying to signal to actual neo-Nazis and Nazis that I’m on your side,” the comic stated. “But you don’t have to do that because we already knew Steve Bannon was on the side of Nazis.”
Bannon, for his part, has denied that he intentionally made a fascist salute at the end of his appearance, claiming instead that he merely “waved to the MAGA movement as I always do in my motivational speeches.”
Pointing out that even prominent white nationalists are saying this recent trend of salutes at conservative events is “going too far,” Sidner asked Bell what the end goal is for the MAGA figures engaging in this behavior.
“What are they playing at? Because Musk also did this, and there‘s always this huge response when someone accuses them of using either Nazi rhetoric or doing a Nazi salute,” she declared.
“It’s clear that even when far-right people who agree with your ideology don’t want to be caught next to you because you’re doing too much, that proves that they were actually doing the thing that people are trying to pretend they weren’t doing,” Bell reacted. “It proves that they are actually out there really trying to sort of gaslight us into sort of thinking that they‘re not doing that, while at the same time signaling to the Nazis and the neo-Nazis, ‘I’m on your side.’”
He added that the controversy surrounding Musk is one reason the far-right Alternative for Germany party didn’t place first in the latest German elections despite a recent surge of support in the country.
“It was a rejection of Elon Musk. It was like they were – the people of Germany were like, we’re not doing that again. And Elon Musk had spoken at an AfD event. So I think it’s very clear,” Bell concluded. “I don’t know why we have to argue about this. I don‘t know. I think they‘re trying to make us crazy by making us argue about this. If you can‘t call a Nazi a Nazi, you can’t do the bare minimum of fighting for democracy.”
