In the Trumpnited States of MAGAmerica, a president who makes a white supremacist one of his top advisers is not divisive. Noting that the white supremacist advising the president is in fact a white supremacist is divisive and irresponsible. So everyone should shut up.Trump spoke not only to a dying demographic of elderly whites. Through his social media enabled bullying and vulgarity, Trump also spoke the language of young enraged white men. Like neo-Nazis and Klansmen, they may have not have voted in the past, but they turned out last week.
That there were no longer norms of behavior was obvious throughout this, the first Twitter election. But I hadn't made the connection between likely Trump voters and the last few years of reports about the behavior of young male gamers. Some have immersed themselves in social media campaigns to terrorize women; others joined a chorus that cheered on threats of rape and death.
I wonder if anything will ever come out about Bannon's previous gaming business ventures, immediately prior to his taking over Breitbart. If he wasn't directly involved in encouraging online terror, he was positioned to see marketing opportunity. Mother Jones noted this in September—
... he took over at Breitbart News in 2012. Bannon may have applied his web knowledge gained from his time at IGE and Affinity to Breitbart News, which he transformed into the preeminent destination for the internet-savvy, meme-centric alt-right—in part by stoking the anger behind Gamergate, which saw harassment of female gamers by their male peers.How could they not have been thrilled to turn out for President Sexual Predator.
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