Why Steve Bannon's racist bluster makes my life so much harder

THE New Yorker’s Festival of Ideas, having now disinvited Steve Bannon, is facing his ire – despite the fact that he knows he’s won either way. If he’s invited, he gets to peddle his half-truths and dog whistles. If he’s uninvited, he’s the victim of PC culture.

A recent Newsnight segment featuring, of all people, Laurie Penny and Ella Whelan highlights the problem of Bannon’s influence.

Whelan is determined that Bannon’s “bad politics” be heard in the name of free speech, while throwing millions of minorities under the bus just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate.

She has fallen hook, line and sinker for the belief that lives like mine can be criticised and be the subject of debate yet has the audacity to pretend to posit it that Bannon’s views represent ‘‘balance’’ despite the fact that he is a well-known white supremacist who encourages others to wear accusations of racism as a badge of honour.

He has for decades peddled the myth that compared to white people most ethnic minorities are savages with inferior intellect, giving even the dumbest of racists delusions of grandeur.

Minorities are overly familiar with this game, but while we see through it, the media seem to keep falling at the first hurdle, unable to differentiate between free speech and hate speech. Inciting genocide or a civil war is not a right.

Steve Bannon doesn’t even have to work that hard because the news outlets do all the work for him. When he is invited on TV or radio he is never adequately challenged, allowing him to spout his nonsense with minimal intervention.

His dog whistles are heard loud and clear by folk who have already made their minds up, while we are force-fed this idea that fascists should be heard so that they can be put in their place (which is in the White House, apparently).

We will undoubtedly see repercussions of his “bad politics” again when he appears at The Open Future festival run by The Economist.

The reaction to Bannon being disinvited as a speaker by the New Yorker for its festival has been utterly predictable and embarrassing.

Instead of giving him the Milo Yiannopoulos treatment, simply watching as his events are cancelled, we’re meant to believe that he still has something worthwhile to say, therefore we must not drive him underground like the troll he is.

The minorities he criticises are suddenly invisible and we have white people being asked to discuss issues that don’t even affect them. It’s easy for them to claim that it’s only fair that good ole Steve gets to say his bit when they aren’t in the firing line.

I say this while knowing full well that I could be invited on television or radio and elegantly explain why his presence is unnecessary but it would need to be amplified by a white voice for anyone to actually take it seriously.

It’s a catch-22 situation, but I’d still much prefer if white women such as Ella Whelan didn’t get to use their time on TV to discuss bigotry as if it has the same importance as not liking pineapple on pizza.

The right to say as you please is balanced by the right of people to dislike what you have to say but that doesn’t mean it’s free from repercussions. It doesn’t mean that you automatically deserve to have your voice amplified.

Bannon, however, goes one further. He simultaneously plays the master manipulator and the victim effortlessly. He cries about being denied his right to free speech while shouting from an incredibly large platform. And the media falls for it. Every. Single. Time.

The Steve Bannons of the world have always existed in one form or another and their tedious rhetoric is the reason I have to prove myself to be overly competent for a job a white person can just walk into. It’s why you tend to only see one minority at a time on TV shows.

Sure, Bannon isn’t directly responsible for the fact that it took Friends nine seasons to feature a member of an ethnic minority, but he is responsible for ‘othering’ minorities to such an extent that we are dehumanised en masse.

He encourages a hostile environment which places ordinary Muslims under intense scrutiny. You can see his attitude in Brexit. You can see it in the attempt to suppress black voters in the US.

It’s in the way that people compliment my mother on her excellent English despite the fact that she was born here. It’s when people consume and espouse the views expressed by the Daily Mail while buying it from my immigrant father. It’s when people ask me where I’m really, really from. It’s when my ability to speak another language is used to question my Britishness. It’s when the US can create a law and casually refer to it as the Muslim ban.

I have a clearly Muslim name and every time I travel to the US, my boarding card has the dreaded SSSS – Secondary Security Screening Selection – on it.

This ominous sequence of letters is why I’m stopped and searched at every port of security for clearance. It’s why sniffer dogs nose through my colourful sun dresses and why I’m aggressively manhandled multiple times as the pat downs become increasingly humiliating.

I factor this into my holiday plans the way most people factor in sunscreen. I calculate the time I will need and set my alarm so I’m at the airport obscenely early to avoid the risk that extensive security checks might make me miss my flight.

Like Steve Bannon, I, too, attract attention. While he cries out for a race war, I mostly ask people not to send me racist death threats for informing them that “naan bread” means “bread bread” so saying naan alone will suffice. It’s controversial stuff.

My existence and that of others like me is constantly tainted by the influence of the alt-right in a myriad of ways, although I am lucky enough to experience the milder ones.

Regardless of the topic, like most women of colour I can’t tweet, write an article or appear on TV without receiving racial abuse, whether that be someone taking umbrage with my skintone, referring to me as a terrorist or accusing me of trying to implement Sharia law.

In order to pursue my career, I have to accept racism, fuelled by the likes of Bannon, as a consequence of my ambitions. It’s especially strange when you take into account the fact that I’m just a young working-class Muslim woman from a small town in Scotland who spends most of her time discussing pop culture and writing comedy.

That’s the crux of the matter. Most minorities, including Muslims, are incredibly ordinary people busy binge-watching Netflix.

But Steve Bannon is set on turning the western world against us with the suggestion that we’re all secretly nefarious beings who need to be ousted from society – that same society we helped build and now defend.