No, Ms Templeton, Steve Bannon does not speak ‘for the rest of us’

Gubernatorial candidate Catherine Templeton calls Steve Bannon “a patriot, a fighter, and a conservative who speaks for the rest of us” (Nov 10).

Really? Bannon is on record as wanting to “blow things up,” to instigate a civil war in the Republican party, and comparing himself to Hitler’s favored propagandists filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. He has expressed appreciation for the work of 20th-century Nazi-linked writer Julius Evola, who was influential in the rise of Benito Mussolini’s fascism. He supports right-wing extremist parties in Holland, Austria, France and Germany. He supported the president’s refusal to lay the blame for the deadly violence in Charlottesville on its neo-Nazi-white-supremacist demonstrators — who, by the way, menaced the local synagogue during Saturday services with worshippers inside.

Is the alt-right now “conservative”? Must all politicians who want to carry the “conservative” moniker now bow and scrape at the feet of this man? Do the Republican candidates for S.C. governor think their adulation of such a “conservative” person will help them get elected? Apparently, conservative now means “blow things up.”

And black is white, and day is night.

Ms. Templeton et al should be ashamed of themselves.

This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 8:00 PM with the headline "No, Ms Templeton, Steve Bannon does not speak ‘for the rest of us’."