When Andrew Breitbart, the bellicose founder of Breitbart News, died, in
2012, he left behind a lot of memorable footage. There’s the clip of him
hijacking one of Anthony Weiner’s press conferences, in 2011; there’s
the appearance on Fox News, from that same year, in which he predicted
Donald Trump’s viability as a Presidential candidate (“Celebrity is
everything in this country”); there are several spontaneous
confrontations with protesters and journalists, filmed at close range.
But the six-second clip in which Andrew Breitbart most fully embodies
the role of Andrew Breitbart comes from “Hating Breitbart,” a
documentary released in 2012, a few months after its subject’s death. In
it, Breitbart sits in front of a black background. Slowly and clearly,
glaring directly at the camera, he pronounces two words: “Fuck. You.” He
pauses for four seconds, his jaw set, his pale eyes sparkling with rage.
And then, in a near-whisper, as if blowing the seeds off a dandelion, he
adds one more: “War.”
The object of that “fuck you” was clear enough: the liberals, the media,
political correctness, and on and on. The “war”—or, as it’s inevitably
rendered these days, “#WAR”—is a conflict of the spirit, not of the
flesh. Breitbart saw evil everywhere—public universities, Disney movies,
the evening news—and he considered it his job, as a cultural
revolutionary, to eradicate it. Thus: #WAR.
Revolutionaries don’t always leave behind succession plans, and
Breitbart’s unexpected death created a power vacuum at the Web site he
founded. Steve Bannon, a formerly obscure Tea Party propagandist, became
Breitbart News’s executive chairman. But was Bannon the rightful
inheritor of Andrew Breitbart’s legacy? Apart from aggression, what
was Breitbart’s legacy, exactly? Dave Weigel, at Slate,
compared the site’s remaining editors to “a school of piranhas” that “flits
around quickly, randomly, until a hunk of meat hoves into view.” McKay
Coppins, writing for BuzzFeed, called
them “a disorganized, downtrodden army of conservative foot soldiers eager to
carry out their fallen leader’s mission, but deeply divided over how to
interpret his battle plan.”
In truth, there was no specific plan except to continue the battle. In a
sense, this made Bannon an ideal general. He was a big-tent reactionary:
he made common cause with both anti-Semites and hard-line Zionists; he
called journalists “the opposition party” while inviting them to
chronicle his every meal, plane ride, and half-baked theory about
Robespierre; he has likened himself to Lenin, Dick Cheney, Darth Vader,
and Satan. In the past, as an investor and movie producer, he was no
great shakes. But he had a talent for annoying and intimidating both the
left and the right, and he employed this talent first at Breitbart News,
then as the C.E.O. of the Trump Presidential campaign, and then as
President Trump’s chief strategist. And yet, within the first year of
the Trump Administration, Bannon was gone from the White House and, as
of this week, he is gone from Breitbart News as well.
In “Fire and Fury,” the new book by Michael Wolff, Bannon is quoted as
saying that the Trump campaign attempted to collude with representatives
of the Russian government; that Donald Trump, Jr., must have escorted
those representatives to meet with his father; and that these actions
were “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” Why Bannon might have said these
things to Wolff remains unclear. But, last Wednesday, shortly after
Bannon’s comments were reported in the press, the President turned on
him, quickly and viciously, saying in a statement that his former
adviser had “lost his mind.” Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted, “Andrew
Breitbart would be ashamed of the division and lies Steve Bannon is
spreading!” Bannon always said that the best way to gauge the opinion of
the base was to read the comments section of Breitbart News, so he was
surely following, last week, as the base sided against him and with the
President. (“I didn’t vote for Bannon. I’ll stick with Trump, thanks.”
“Bannon is really thinking that his carp does not stink and that HE is
the KING of it ALL! What is wrong with this guy?”) Bannon later
apologized, to no avail. Rebekah Mercer—who, along with her father, the
hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer, has been a major
backer of Breitbart News—put out a statement saying, “My family and I have not
communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no
financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent
actions and statements.”
On Tuesday, Breitbart News published a four-sentence article announcing
Bannon’s departure. “Steve is a valued part of our legacy, and we will
always be grateful for his contributions,” Larry Solov, Breitbart’s
C.E.O., said in the story, which had no byline. Bannon spent six years
doing his best to live by Andrew Breitbart’s two maxims: “Fuck you,” and
“War.” And then he left.