NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — The New Yorker has pulled controversial conservative political strategist Steve Bannon from the lineup to its annual festival after several other high profile guests threatened to pull out of the event.
It took just twelve hours of backlash on social media for the New Yorker to drop Bannon from the event after he was announced on Monday. Bannon had been scheduled to sit down for an interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick.
After Bannon was announced as a participant at the festival, a number headliners, including Judd Apatow, Jimmy Fallon, Jim Carrey, Patton Oswalt, and John Mulaney threatened to cancel their appearances in the event.
Bannon? And me? On the same program?
Could never happen.
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) September 3, 2018
If Steve Bannon is at the New Yorker festival I am out. I will not take part in an event that normalizes hate. I hope the @NewYorker will do the right thing and cancel the Steve Bannon event. Maybe they should read their own reporting about his ideology.
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) September 3, 2018
“The reaction on social media was critical and a lot of the dismay and anger was directed at me and my decision to engage him,” Remnick wrote Monday night, announcing Bannon had been dropped from the festival’s lineup.
Bannon, a former investment banker and movie producer and senior executive at Britebart News, played a key role in the election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump and later served as a senior strategist in the Trump White House.
Since then, he’s been accused of using racism and white nationalism to help galvanize political support for far right candidates, including France’s National Front.
“The main argument for not engaging with someone like Bannon is that we are giving him a platform and that he will use it, unfiltered, to propel further the ‘ideas’ of white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, and illiberalism,” Remnick wrote in a statement explaining his decision to interview Bannon. “But to interview Bannon is not to endorse him. By conducting an interview with one of Trumpism’s leading creators and organizers, we are hardly pulling him out of obscurity.”
The festival is scheduled to take place in New York from Oct. 5-7.
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