Stephen Bannon speaks to nationalists in France: 'Let them call you racists'


Former White House strategist Stephen Bannon spoke to France's far-right National Front party Saturday in Lille, France. "Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor," he told party members. "You're part of a worldwide movement bigger than France," Bannon said, arguing that history will side with the nationalists.
National Front is the party of Marine Le Pen, who lost last year's election to French President Emmanuel Macron. She was re-elected as party president at the meeting Bannon attended, while her father, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, was removed from his role as party president for life. He was previously expelled from the party for anti-Semitic comments but had retained the honorary title.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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