SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to enlist Stephen Bannon as a key member of the White House leadership team drew protests from civil rights advocates across the nation. In his role, Bannon will serve as the cabinet’s “Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President.” Bannon also remains the head of Breitbart News, a self-described “platform for the alt-right.” His allegiance with this coalition of proud nativists and proponents for eugenics could portend a return to racially charged doctrines of the past, or policies that would strip targeted groups of their existing liberties. Trump officials glossed over the concerns and assured Americans that the administration will promote the equality of every “legitimate” citizen. To demonstrate this commitment, Bannon announced his first task as Trump’s adviser -- launching a comprehensive study to determine which lives matter, clarifying that the term “racist” has become misused and misunderstood.

Alt-Lives Matter

What, precisely, is the alt-right and why does it worry progressives? Members of the alt-right, by Breitbart‘s own definition, are apologists for “scientific race differences.” They are people who seek “the preservation of their own tribe and its culture,” and “believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved.”

Bannon made an important distinction in explaining the movement: the tenets apply to any group, regardless of race.

“When Steve talks about tribes, cultures and racial disparities, he’s not saying ‘white,’” observed Janus Heuchler, head sociologist at San Narciso’s Poeslaw Institute for Social Research and Development (PISRAD). “We don’t call negroes racists because they celebrate Kwanzaa or establish organizations to protect their heritage or develop entirely new languages from street slang -- like hiphop or jive. On an instinctual level, they know that alt-right principles apply.”

Heuchler further noted that interracial couplings among members of the black community can be just as frowned upon, citing the alt-right philosophy of keeping a tribe’s culture pure.

According to Heuchler, Bannon tapped PISRAD three weeks ago to lead the study into which lives matter.

“I believe that all lives matter,” Heuchler said. “But you must understand that from a sociological perspective, a particular tribe’s lives matter more to them. So it becomes a subjective exploration. Jap lives matter. Beaner lives matter. White lives matter. Within groups, other lives just matter less. But we’re working to examine these economies of scale on a more empirical level.”

Heuchler said that Bannon’s first recommendation was to remove the word “lives” from the various racial movements.

“Mr. Bannon feels that use of the word ‘lives’ limits tribal members; it objectifies them as just sentient carbon-based hominids. By removing this term, we arrive at the true identity of the tribe. So Blacks Matter, for example. Or BM for short.”

The study will begin with the two most visible tribes, which Heuchler chose based on media exposure, emotional demonstrations, protests and even riots.

“Our initial test subjects will fall into the WM and BM categories,” Heuchler explained. “We’ve already witnessed the heroic stance taken by the Bundy family to promote the message of Whites Matter. And of course, there’s no denying the extreme showing we’ve seen from the BMs. They’re smeared all over the camera lens. The nightly news has brought a lot of messy BMs into our homes each evening. Whenever a rural or inner city police officer does his duty, a trail of messy and steaming BMs isn’t far behind.”

As Heuchler and his team carry out their research, they plan to introduce experiment subjects into the control groups.

“The emerging wigger identity fascinates me,” Heuchler said. “It’s this unique and almost organic manifestation that bridges the divide between the WM and BM tribes. Racially, these individuals fall into the WM spectrum, but they’ve embraced the cultural and dialectical idioms of BM people. I don’t want to speculate before gathering data, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the wiggers rose to matter more, on a holistic scale, than WM and BM members independently.”

In order for the study to proceed successfully, Heuchler emphasized a need to redefine or totally ignore what people consider racist.

Racists Aren’t Racist, According to Trump’s Chief Racists

“Racists aren’t actually racist,” said Bannon and new Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, two prominent racists in Trump’s fold. Both have been embroiled in controversies over comments about people of varying ethnic and racial backgrounds. And yet, neither has landed at the epicenter of a scandal involving allegations of hate speech beyond the ideological rhetoric found in Republican politics or party sponsored publications.

In some ways, Bannon shares similarities with Richard Cohen, the reliably gauche and humorless columnist for The Washington Post. Cohen boldly championed George Zimmerman’s acquittal and Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which allows terrified suburbanites to kill unarmed black youths. He also candidly explored the “conventional” American’s vomitous reaction to miscegenation, which he believes endures in this century as a sort of societal emetic.

Despite colorful turns of phrase, racial epithets and other apparent vitriol, Bannon and Priebus, like nearly all other branded racists, have vehemently denied that they are hateful bigots. Heuchler agrees.

“Before we judge a Priebus or a Bannon, we as scientific people must look past words,” Heuchler said. “For a person such as Priebus, racism springs from a deep and abiding love of his African American colleagues. To a man like Bannon, racism is a slanderous label applied by Democrats to anyone deeply troubled by big government, immigration, the liberal attacks on the free exercise of religion and avant-garde attitudes in general.”

Using vulgar, inappropriate, discriminatory epithets with close friends and colleagues is an evolutionary trait, according to Heuchler. It’s employed by a tribe’s outsiders to bond through the transformation of hate speech into a language of familiarity.

“By calling an African American friend a darkie or spear-chucker or porch monkey or even the N-word, you’re telling that individual you feel close enough to them to understand their plight, because you’re using words that have become a part of their tribal culture,” Heuchler said. “You wouldn’t say that to a black stranger on the street, even though you may be thinking it. That’s offensive. That’s racist.”

“But when you say it to a comrade who’s already using that word in his own interactions with people in his tribe, you’re demonstrating that you’re comfortable enough to say intimate things like that,” he added. “It’s just like when a man hits his woman in a fit of jealousy or passion -- to show how much he loves her. There’s a beauty in that.”

Representatives for Stephen Bannon said that he fully endorsed the attitudes expressed by Heuchler and the PISRAD team. Bannon reiterated that he has never considered his views racist, by the traditionally accepted meaning. He also expressed a deep concern for the black community, saying that his alleged racism springs from a place of deep love -- of worry about how the myopic will treat people of color. Interestingly, Bannon pointed out, pure racism often comes from within the minority groups themselves.

A groundbreaking study conducted by Columbia University in February 2012 found that only nine percent of black women were likely to consider interracial marriage. One of the greatest concerns expressed by women in the study was how mixed-race children would be treated.

“It’s not whites discriminating against blacks; it’s blacks,” Bannon reportedly told fellow journalists at the time. “But to be fair, whites have done the blacks no favors since the latter part of the 19th century, when we displaced them from the comfort of their jobs and their communities and their homes -- homes that were maintained and paid for by their employers on the plantations. Instead, we imposed upon them the burden of liberation, the shackles of freedom. Metal fetters can be removed, but the spiritual bonds of freedom -- with their absence of security, shelter, food and work -- are much harder to destroy. And this is why conventional people worry themselves sick -- to the point of throwing up, in fact -- when they must deal with blacks.”

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