Stephen Bannon: White House role for right-wing media chief

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Stephen Bannon, the driving force behind the right-wing Breitbart News website, has been chosen by Donald Trump as one of his key advisers.

Mr Bannon will serve as chief strategist, a role that puts him at the heart of the White House.

His appointment, criticised by the Democrats, will also concern the Republican mainstream, which has been the subject of repeated attacks by Breitbart in recent months.

The combative site serves up an anti-establishment agenda that critics accuse of xenophobia and misogyny. Under Mr Bannon, it has become one of the most-read conservative news and opinion sites in the US.

'Not warm and fuzzy'

Born in Virginia in 1953, Mr Bannon spent four years in the navy before completing an MBA at Harvard. He then went into investment banking and, after a spell with Goldman Sachs, moved successfully into media financing.

He shifted into film production, working in Hollywood before branching out into independent political documentary making, paying homage to former US President Ronald Reagan, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement.

Through this work he met Andrew Breitbart, a staunchly conservative media entrepreneur who wanted to create a site that challenged what he saw as liberal-dominated mainstream media.

When Andrew Breitbart died of a heart attack in 2012, Mr Bannon took over as head of Breitbart News and drove it forward.

The site positioned itself as a populist, bellicose, conspiracy-tinged outlet for right-wing Americans disillusioned with mainstream politicians.

"We call ourselves 'the Fight Club.' You don't come to us for warm and fuzzy," the Washington Post quoted Mr Bannon as saying in January 2016.

"We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class. We say [Republican House Speaker] Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation [a conservative think-tank]."

Some of Breitbart's headlines have attracted controversy. A conservative commentator was called a "renegade Jew", and the work of reproductive rights organisation Planned Parenthood was likened to the Holocaust.

One headline read "Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy", while another asked students "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?".

During the election campaign the site unashamedly promoted Donald Trump. One piece in November 2015 called him the "John Wayne" of politics, saying "we should thank God that Trump is in this race... He will set back the destruction of America".

It has also been accused of becoming the mouthpiece of the alternative right (or alt-right), a loose online grouping of mainly young people who embrace "white identity" while rejecting progressive views on immigration, race, LGBT issues and gender equality.

Breitbart, in a column in March, said the movement had "a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric". The Southern Poverty Law Centre called it "a loose set of far-right ideologies" with the preservation of "white identity" at its core.

Readership has risen and the site received 17 million unique visitors in July, according to digital research firm Comscore. But internally there have been ructions.

Ben Shapiro, who resigned as the site's editor-at-large in March over the treatment of a reporter allegedly manhandled by a member of Mr Trump's team, said Andrew Breitbart's "life mission" to fight bullies had been betrayed.

"In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump," he wrote.

'Unprecedented'

Mr Trump appointed Mr Bannon as campaign CEO in August and, following last week's election victory, has handed him a key White House role.

Democrats have slammed the appointment.

"It is easy to see why the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide,'' Adam Jentleson, spokesman for top Senate Democrat Harry Reid, said in a statement.

Mr Bannon's appointment has also been criticised by civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which campaigns against anti-Semitism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading advocacy group against hate crimes.

The ADL's chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, described Mr Bannon as "a man who presided over the premier website of the 'alt-right' - a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists".

It is not clear how much influence Mr Bannon will wield. A statement from Mr Trump said Mr Bannon would work "as equal partners" with Reince Priebus, his newly-appointed chief of staff.

Washington insider Mr Priebus is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a friend of Paul Ryan.

Eli Lake, a columnist for Bloomberg View in Washington, told the BBC the choice of Mr Priebus over Mr Bannon for chief of staff sent a signal that a Trump administration was "willing to work within the Republican Party as opposed to trying to burn it down, which is the kind of thing Steve Bannon was saying in the final weeks of the campaign".

But, he said, clearly Steve Bannon was part of the inner circle - a situation he called unprecedented.

"It is very much a new thing that someone like this will be in the White House and having the ear of the leader of the free world."