CPAC: To be or not to be alt-right. (It is.)

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday February 23, 2017 · 9:11 AM PST

2017/02/23 · 09:11

Trump campaign CEP Stephen Bannon watches as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump addresses the final rally of his 2016 presidential campaign at Devos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 7, 2016. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) — Steve Bannon

This year’s CPAC roster includes Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s white supremacist aide who, as head of Breitbart News, bragged that “We're the platform for the alt-right.” It included Milo Yiannopoulos until he was booted for saying gross things about something other than women and non-white people—everything Yiannopoulos said up to the moment he advocated for pedophilia was fine by CPAC. So this smells like an entire stockyard full of bulls:

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference began Thursday morning outside Washington, DC, with a strange denunciation of the movement by the executive director of the organization behind the event. In a speech titled "The Alt Right Ain't Right at All," American Conservative Union executive director Dan Schneider said that the alt-right isn't really a conservative movement at all. Instead, he said, "a hate-filled, left-wing fascist group hijacked the very term 'alt-right.'" Schneider called the alt-right anti-Semitic, racist, and sexist.

That CPAC would take the trouble of trying to distance itself from the alt-right shows that the brand has become toxic—people noticed that “alt-right” translates to “white supremacist.” But saying “that’s not us” while featuring Bannon and seven current Breitbart staffers on your program is really not even trying.

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