Twitter Bans Steve Bannon Account After Talk Of A Beheaded Anthony Fauci, Wray

Umm, is this really the way to get ahead in life? Or even ahead of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Steve Bannon, former Chief Strategist for President Donald Trump’s administration, recently talked on his podcast, the War Room, about what should be done to Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, and Anthony Fauci, MD, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). And spoiler alert, it wasn’t to shake their hands or watch some cat videos together with them.

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. No, I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” explained Bannon. “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the program or you’re gone.”

In the word of Owen Wilson, wow. Just wow. Putting people’s head on pikes to force other people to “get with the program?” There are words for such strategies and they aren’t “negotiate” or “listen to different points of views” or “democracy.”

By pikes, Bannon presumably meant a sharp point, spike, or tip of a spear rather than “a large elongate long-snouted freshwater bony fish (Esox lucius) valued for food and sport and widely distributed in cooler parts of the northern hemisphere.” Either way, what the heck? Did Bannon seriously suggest putting the heads of Wray and Fauci on pikes?

Well, listen to what he said in the video accompanying this tweet:

Yeah, that didn’t sound too warm and fuzzy. Saying “heads on pikes” rarely is. It’s on the list of “no-no” or “oh heck no,” statements for a date, even when said with the sweetest of smiles and over the best of wines. Of course, if you ever think that you heard such words on a date, you may want to first clarify whether your date didn’t actually say, “I want some really hot cheesy breads, yikes” or “I read Wanda Sykes.” The words “heads on pikes” should not make their way into a job interview either. For example, “oh, working here is great, except for perhaps all the heads on pikes,” does not bode well.

Such words apparently are problematic on Twitter too, which banned Bannon’s War Room account permanently as a result. As Peter Beaumont reported for The Guardian, such statements violated Twitter’s policy on the “glorification of violence.” That’s not the only social media outlet to react in such a way. According to CBS News, Facebook took down Bannon’s videos for similar reasons. Again saying that you are going to threaten federal employees by putting some of their heads on pikes is not exactly showing a video of hedgehogs knocking over bowling pins, which incidentally adorable.

Bannon is already embroiled in legal troubles. Earlier this year, he was arrested and charged with pocketing money from “We Build the Wall.” This was supposedly a campaign to raise funds for President Trump’s so called “Wall” to be built along the U.S. border with Mexico, you know the one that Trump said Mexico would pay for back in 2016. Well, Bannon along with Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea are facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. After all, the campaign was called “We Build the Wall” rather than “We Line Our Pockets.” While Bannon awaits his trial, it’s not clear whether his legal counsel had told him, “hey, in the meantime try to avoid talking about putting people’s heads on pikes.”

Such statements certainly won’t make things easier for Fauci, who has been among the many infectious disease experts trying to warn the public about the surging number of Covid-19 coronavirus cases around the country. As this CBS News video from April showed, Fauci has long been receiving death threats during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic to the point that he’s had to have had a security detail follow him:

Yep, this is American 2020, folks, where someone trying to help save the public from a potentially deadly virus is getting death threats. Despite Fauci’s efforts to keep partisanship separate from public health and science, others have been trying to mix them like mud and peanut butter. As you may have seen, “Fire Fauci” has become a common chant among Trump supporters. Although this Lincoln Project video did provide a “Solo” response to such chants:

If you are wondering who was narrating that video, laugh it up, fuzzball. That’s Harrison Ford, the actor who played Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones in the Indiana Jones series, and Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games. Ford has long been a well-known celebrity. Fauci before this year has not.

Scientists typically don’t get the fame and press that many other professions may get. You don’t tend to see shows entitled Keeping Up with the Gastroenterologists or a post of a scientific paper on Instagram get thousands of likes unless Ariana Grande is somehow involved. That may be a reflection of how little our society values science compared to other things. However, ultimately science is the only thing that will solve many of our society’s problems. So regardless of who occupies the White House in late January or who may need to be escorted out, one of the things that needs to restored in government and eventually the rest of society is a respect for and appreciation of science and scientists.