The announcement that Steve Bannon would headline the New Yorker Festival in October caused a storm of controversy on Monday, leading a Pulitzer-winning writer to complain, guests to pull out and the invitation to be swiftly withdrawn.
The magazine’s editor, David Remnick, first told the New York Times he would interview the former Trump aide and chief White House strategist in front of a live audience, with “every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation”.
The audience, Remnick said, would “by its presence, [put] a certain pressure on a conversation that an interview alone doesn’t do. You can’t jump on and off the record.”
But Bannon’s espousal of far-right views and ties to white nationalist and alt-right groups have made him a polarising figure.
After the Times piece was published, the New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz triggered a tide of outrage on social media when she tweeted: “I love working for [the New Yorker] but I’m beyond appalled by this … I have already made that very clear to David Remnick. You can, too.”
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She then provided a New Yorker email address.
Schulz won a Pulitzer prize in 2016 for The Really Big One, a piece about the likelihood of a huge earthquake hitting the US west coast.
She added: “I dearly love the magazine and I’m daily grateful to be a part of it. But I also believe that we owe those things we love the gift of honest criticism. (Also that we owe our own conscience obedience.)”
The Hollywood names Jim Carrey, John Mulaney, Patton Oswalt and Judd Apatow were among scheduled guests who said on social media that they would withdraw from the 19th festival, which will run from 5 to 7 October.
Late on Monday, in a note announcing the cancellation of the interview that was immediately tweeted by staff writers, Remnick justified the invitation. It would not have provided an “unfiltered” platform for Bannon’s “‘ideas’ of white nationalism, racism, anti-semitism and illiberalism”, he said, adding that “to interview Bannon is not to endorse him”.
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