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Breitbart,
baluarte da “alt-right” norte-americana, planeia expansão
europeia
MARIA JOÃO
GUIMARÃES 20/11/2016 – 18:19
Site
que apela a supremacistas brancos e outros extremistas quer
aproveitar subida do populismo anti-imigração em França e na
Alemanha.
O site
norte-americano Breitbart, onde há artigos questionando se o
feminismo torna as mulheres feias e que tem uma secção de “crime
negro”, está a planear uma expansão para a Europa, para dois
países que terão eleições em breve: França e Alemanha.
O site ganhou
popularidade sob liderança de Stephen Bannon, que assumiu que era
uma espécie de plataforma da chamada alt-right, definido por
especialistas em extrema-direita como Cas Mudde como nada mais do que
uma palavra diferente para um movimento muito antigo, o de
supremacistas brancos, com laivos anti-semitas e juntando-lhe também
misoginia.
Bannon saiu do site
para a campanha de Donald Trump. Durante a corrida presidencial, o
Breitbart registou visitas ao nível de jornais estabelecidos como o
Wall Street Journal, e a sua popularidade nas redes sociais foi
comparável aos sites da CNN ou do New York Times.
Stephen Bannon
ganhou ainda mais destaque ao ser escolhido para um dos principais
conselheiros de Donald Trump.
O site e a política
populista são inseparáveis: a sua insistência em temas europeus –
um dos seus alvos preferidos de críticas é a chanceler alemã,
Angela Merkel, e a sua política de portas abertas para os refugiados
– nota-se em pesquisas no motor de busca Google News: procurando
pelas palavras chave "Merkel" e "refugiados", é
certo que um artigo do Breitbart vai surgir nos resultados cimeiros;
o mesmo por buscas por "Le Pen" e "eleições".
Exploração do
"medo racial"
Estes sites na
Alemanha e em França seguir-se-ão a um Breitbart britânico, que
começou em 2013 e se focou na discussão da campanha para o
referendo da saída do Reino Unido da União Europeia ("Brexit").
O director do
Breitbart London, Raheem Kassan, tirou a dada altura uma licença sem
vencimento do site para aconselhar o lider do populista Partido da
Independência do Reino Unido (Ukip) Nigel Farage, uma das vozes
pró-"Brexit". O dia do referendo britânico, 23 de Julho,
marcou um pico de tráfego no site.
Apesar de não ter
notícias falsas, o Breitbart não faz jornalismo, sublinhou Jeff
Jarvis, professor na City University of New York (CUNY). Trata-se “de
um movimento político a fazer-se passar por um meio de comunicação
social”, escreveu Jarvis no seu blogue.
“Não têm
estatuto editorial nem práticas jornalísticas”, notou Angelo
Carusone, do observatório Media Matters for America, citado pela
agência francesa AFP.
Uma amostra de
alguns dos artigos mais populares do site mostra histórias
comparando “vítimas de planeamento familiar” com o número de
vítimas do Holocausto (desde 2006 são metade, diz o artigo), ou
outra sobre as “raízes fascistas” da organização de
planeamento familiar dos EUA.
As mulheres são
também um tema comum, com artigos defendendo que há uma solução
simples para o assédio de mulheres online: “as mulheres deveriam
fazer log off”, sugere o site, enquanto outro título explica que
não há discriminação de mulheres na área da tecnologia, “elas
são simplesmente más nas entrevistas”.
Homossexuais e
transexuais também são vistos com desdém, e o site rejeita tudo o
que entende ser “politicamente correcto”.
Os crimes
perpetrados por muçulmanos ou por negros são valorizados (há mesmo
a secção de “crime negro”). E duas semanas após um ataque a
uma igreja de uma comunidade negra da Carolina do Sul o site tinha um
artigo sobre a herança da bandeira da Confederação (face às
propostas de esta ser retirada por ser um símbolo de ódio).
Angelo Carussone
sublinha que o mais grave é este uso de “medos raciais”.
Algo que poderá
servir bem os seus objectivos em França, onde Marine Le Pen tem, com
a sua retórica anti-imigração, passagem assegurada à segunda
volta das presidenciais do próximo ano, ou ainda na Alemanha, onde
um movimento islamófobo surgiu abertamente em manifestações,
criticando os media tradicionais, a “imprensa mentirosa”.
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Trump’s
UK allies put Remain MPs in their sights
A
new populist, anti-establishment movement will launch early next
year.
By CHARLIE
COOPER 11/20/16, 10:43 PM CET
LONDON — Allies of
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, plotting a new populist movement
in Britain, have a plan to target the least popular, pro-EU MPs and
take their seats.
The new
anti-establishment, Trump-inspired movement will launch in early
2017, possibly as soon as January, the millionaire UKIP donor Arron
Banks said.
Banks, who is close
to Nigel Farage, currently UKIP’s interim leader, told POLITICO
that the movement would draw on lessons from U.S. political
consultant Gerry Gunster, who has advised Banks to “micro-target”
constituencies where the majority voted Leave in the EU referendum,
but the incumbent MP backed Remain.
Calling the plan a
form of “direct democracy,” Banks said he wanted to put
candidates in constituencies where polling indicates high levels of
voter dissatisfaction with the elected representative. “The idea is
you ask people in the actual constituency to rate their MP… It’s
up to people to decide what we do,” he said.
Farage, Gunster and
Banks, along with communications advisor Andy Wigmore and Breitbart
London editor Raheem Kassam, were the quintet photographed with Trump
in front of a pair of golden doors in Trump Tower last week.
Arron Banks said his
new movement would be “a one-off attempt to drain the swamp,”
with candidates elected on a pledge of systemic change.
Banks’
declaration, after meeting Trump, that he wanted to “drain the
swamp” of the House of Commons by standing 200 candidates against
200 of “the worst, most corrupt MPs,” has led to speculation that
the next U.K.-wide election could see another populist, anti-politics
earthquake.
Revealing more about
the new movement, Banks told POLITICO that he wanted to build on
methods used by Gunster, who was previously hired to support
Leave.EU, the pro-Brexit campaign group Banks funded.
Gunster’s
consultancy, the Washington D.C. based Goddard Gunster, claims to
have a 95 percent success rate in referendums. Its website promises
clients “campaigns that have visceral effects on audiences” and
combine “logic and emotion” in their appeals to voters.
Gunster told
POLITICO: “I am intrigued by what it is that Arron’s trying to
accomplish and would be open to having a discussion with him about
how Goddard Gunster can help him.
“There’s still a
lot that could happen with the Brexit movement,” he said. “As
time goes on, people are going to see that life continues and a lot
of the things that some of the folks from the Remain camp said would
happen aren’t going to happen. When constituents see that the
country is actually doing quite well, I think Arron’s movement has
a lot of opportunity.”
Gunster said that
Banks had a “pretty impressive” database of Leave voters, thought
to number around 1 million, that he could call upon and should
“solidify the base” by urging them to lobby their local MP on the
issue of Brexit.
Post-truth politics
Leave.EU was
credited with appealing to blue-collar voters but was criticized by
many for its hardline anti-immigration message. Gunster Goddard has
been criticized for promoting “post-truth politics,” with Banks
claiming Gunster advised him “facts don’t matter.”
Gunster said his
firm used fact-based campaigning, but “backed up with emotion.”
Banks’ faith in
Gunster was sealed when Leave.EU’s poll on the eve of the
referendum accurately predicted the result within 0.2 percent.
“We understood the
polling better because we got Gerry to do it and we used social
media,” Banks said. “The traditional polling methods basically
say: ‘did you vote at the last election?’ and if you say no, they
discount you down to almost nothing.”
Banks told the Times
newspaper last week that his new movement would be “a one-off
attempt to drain the swamp,” with candidates elected on a pledge of
systemic change, which he told POLITICO would include abolishing the
House of Lords in its current form and reducing the number of MPs to
300.
The party would also
appeal to English national identity, he said, adding there was “every
chance” that this would be reflected in its name, and joking that
he wanted to build “a big beautiful wall” on the Scottish border.
Banks declined to comment on speculation that Farage, who will hand
over the UKIP leadership at the end of November, would lead the new
movement.
However, many remain
skeptical that an electoral breakthrough is possible in a Westminster
election, where the choice facing voters will not be as binary as in
the EU referendum and the U.S. presidential election.
“The electoral
system does make life difficult, nor do you have a primary system
where you can take over a party like Trump did,” said John Curtice,
professor of politics at Strathclyde University — and the man whose
2015 general election exit poll bucked the polling trend and
accurately predicted the outcome.
“I would be
surprised if it proved to be that successful an enterprise. There is
clearly a risk that the broader leave movement just falls apart.
Nigel Farage continues to prosper, but who is going to overtake UKIP
and keep it going?”
Frank Field, the
veteran Labour MP for Birkenhead, who has warned that his party risks
losing swathes of voters to UKIP because of its failure to address
voters’ concerns about immigration, said that Banks’ movement
could end up helping UKIP, by luring “extreme right-wingers” away
from the party.
“Arron Banks will
actually find he’s clearing the swamp of UKIP. It will actually
create a much stronger UKIP,” Field predicted. “The party Banks
wants to set up with Nigel Farage — I’m sure that’s the plan —
will quickly become a Le Pen party,” he added, referring to the
French National Front. “The worry is then that UKIP, drained of the
swamp, will naturally become the English party.”
UKIP’s leadership
election — its second this year — will end on November 28, with
MEP Paul Nuttall the bookmakers’ favorite.
Authors:
Charlie Cooper
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