Steve Bannon, a sentient shitpost that magically inhabited a biohazard disposal facility so as to teach the world about alcoholism, lost his job yesterday, ousted unceremoniously from his perch atop the angry boys’ club at Breitbart News. The last time Bannon lost his job, when he was booted from the Trump administration, it seemed like a mixed blessing; analysts at the time surmised that he might successfully wage #WAR on the Republican establishment, lobbying his merry band of trolls to place even more apocalyptic reactionaries into office. With yesterday’s departure, that seems a lot less likely. He’s probably fielding offers from InfoWars today, which does not bode well for his particular personal brand.
The reaction to it was, thus, one of unchecked, unanimous joy. Bannon’s the rare figure that pretty much everyone abhors at this point, a politically toxic, and probably literally toxic, individual whose acolytes, like Stephen Miller, are at least getting better at kowtowing to Trump’s unique managerial demands. And sure, you can read measured analyses of what his downfall means elsewhere, or hop over to Twitter to see the still-unfurling parlor game of Dunking On Bannon playing out. But the real action is happening in the Breitbart comments section, where an 87-word word article announced Bannon’s departure to the roiling hordes of 2018’s Trump coalition.
Currently at north of 40,000 comments, it is a Disqus-fueled descent into the madness of the Republican base. The top comment and its response set a fitting tone:
Well, Matt, there’s not a lot to say, but there were a lot of people who said things nonetheless. From there, things devolve into the various warring camps fighting for power within what’s left of the Trump coalition, from exclamation-point-happy MAGA faithful:
To amused armchair analysts:
And loyal soldiers bidding Bannon a fond farewell, mixed with a truly astonishing amount of speculation about his alcoholism:
Seriously, there is a lot of concerned speculation about the drinking thing.
Still, the commenters remain united in their common enemies: “Javanka” (sometimes styled “Jarvanka”), Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and the supposed pedophile cabal pulling the strings in a global conspiracy. But the Breitbart commentariat is much more concerned with slap-fighting each other about which faction within the Trump regime best fits its own style of racist nihilism. Maybe this infighting is the fate of all comments sections that go on long enough, but there’s something uniquely compelling about the grandiloquence of trolls role-playing as Star Trek villains while doing so. Take, for example, a guy named Shrodinger’s Cat, who plays, like, an android from the past, or something:
Other commenters are fighting in a blissfully atomized, context-free state of pure antipathy:
Eventually, things evolve, with people settling into one of two camps: either a blanket sense of despair or an unerring faith that this is just another feint in Bannon’s ongoing game of four-dimensional chess.
It’s worth a visit if you’d like to puncture your filter bubble with a look into another one, and also if you’d like to find out, per the algorithmically recommended articles on Breitbart News, that—Helen Hunt died? Wait, when did that happen?
It’s good there’s a place out there where you can get information like this, as well as measured debate about the future of the political right.