Ben Shapiro, who worked at Breitbart for four years, wrote in The Washington Post that Bannon had turned the website “into a cesspool of the alt-right,” a political movement he describes as “shot through with racism and anti-Semitism.”

Republican consultant Rick Wilson, an ardent Trump foe, told the Post, “Bannon will pivot you in a dark, racist and divisive direction. It’ll be a nationalist, hateful campaign. Republicans should run away.” Just to confirm Wilson’s point, self-described “racialist” Jared Taylor expressed elation: “Bannon is making me hope again, making Trump Trump again.”

Peter Wehner, a veteran Republican strategist, said of the “alt-right” championed by Bannon: “Movements like this, with toxic and nasty stuff, have existed in one form or another, but they’ve been kept on the outer fringes of American political life. Now it’s command and control at headquarters.”

Trump is a very American figure. The “toxic and nasty stuff” he spouts is painfully familiar. As Steve wrote in his book, “From Every End of This Earth,” “throughout American history, immigrants have been demonized for despoiling or diluting the country’s ethnic heritage.” And that nativism tends to flourish in times of economic dislocation and anxiety — like now.