Steve Bannon had a Toronto crowd that was shocked and laughing. But did he say truths? – National

Stephen K. Bannon, the man believed to be the architect behind Donald Trump 's election victory, has thrilled the Toronto audience and exclaimed as saying that he was the only one in the world. He was incredulous as he was hearing with David Frum, former member of the George W. Bush administration, in a debate at Munk Roy Thomson Hall on Friday night.

Bannon and Frum remained mainly civilians in their debate, in which the former Trump strategist was interrupted early by a protester who unfurled a banner saying: "No hate, no fanaticism, no room for the white supremacy of Bannon. "

WATCH: Protesters shout against people entering Munk Debate in Toronto with Steve Bannon

The two men agreed on the following resolution: "That it be resolved, the future of Western politics is populist and not liberal."

At first, 28% of viewers agreed with Bannon, who considers him as populist, and 72%, with Frum, who feels the opposite.

From there, a debate that remained largely tempered, but that was revealed controversial in at least one section.

Throughout his career, Bannon has attracted many of the most remarkable reactions of the crowd, be it applause, laughter, hiccups or gasps at his badertions.

He also formulated a number of statements that do not exactly resist criticism.

Here are a number of statements from Bannon that merited further consideration:

"There is no correlation, no, there is no correlation between the rhetoric of our movement and what happened"

Bannon said this after moderator Rudyard Griffiths asked him if he had attended rallies where opponents had been labeled "non-American" and where political violence had taken place.

Bannon did not let Griffiths finish, denying immediately that there was a correlation between his movement and political violence.

That happened a few days after Florida man and Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc was arrested and charged with five federal bomb-related crimes that were sent to a number of Trump critics, including ex-president Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and elected Democrats.

Sayoc was "obviously mentally ill for many decades," said Bannon.

Frum challenged him on this point, claiming that everyone who was getting a bomb is a "named Donald Trump target."

Bannon then said, "Trump has never designated them as targets, perhaps in speeches. He has never sat there and said that they are targets. You can not equate both. "

"The violence of the democratic left is much worse than that of our movement"

Bannon then explained what he called the violence of the "democratic left" as part of this exchange.

He talked about a video showing members of the militant group Antifa hitting Trump supporters.

"The rhetoric on the left is just as bad, the opposition media will not let it know," he said.

Bannon may have simply broached the subject of rhetoric, but there is ample evidence to suggest that right wing members have been involved in more violent incidents than those on the left.

Just this week, Don Lemon, host of CNN, said that "the biggest terrorist threat in this country is made up of white men, most of them radicalized right".

He cited reports such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) showing that 106 people had been killed by extreme right-wing extremists in 62 incidents from 12 September 2001 to 31 December 2016.

This same report did not reveal any deaths among extremist groups of the far left at that time.

Lemon also discussed anti-defamation League statistics that found that right-wing extremists were responsible for 74% of incidents in which local officials killed people.

Left-wing extremists were responsible only in 2% of cases.

Look at the results today. Lowest black unemployment rate in history, lowest Hispanic unemployment rate in years

"Trump's economic nationalism does not care about your race, your ethnicity, your religion, your color," said Bannon.

When he spoke of economic nationalism, he seemed to link it to the state of unemployment in the United States, which indeed showed a low unemployment rate for African Americans and Hispanics.

It's a topic of discussion that Trump has used to lobby for the African-American vote.

But the badysis showed that it was problematic for him to take credit for the low unemployment rate of this demographic group.

The US Census Bureau has indicated that black unemployment was 6.2% last month, its lowest rate in 10 years.

But that has decreased since 2011, when Barack Obama was president. And it remains close to double the rate recorded by Caucasian Americans (3.3%) and higher than that of Asians (3.2%) and Hispanics (4.4%).

"Why is the nation-state that is with us since the Treaty of Westphalia so despised?"

Bannon said that while he spoke of nationalist movements in Europe and that Trump claimed to be nationalist.

Trump's use of the term "nation state" is controversial, especially when he used it in a speech to the United Nations in September 2017.

"The nation-state remains the best vehicle to elevate the human condition," he said.

UNESCO defines a nation-state as a place where cultural boundaries accord with political boundaries – in which the state "integrates people of one ethnic group and unique cultural traditions." ".

And the specific use of the term "nation-state" was noted by Paul Miller, a professor of national security at the University of Texas at Austin, in an article published in January in Foreign Policy.

Miller pointed out that the United States "has never been a nation-state" and that it hardly existed in the world at the present time.

Perhaps Bannon was simply talking about sovereignty, a notion dating back to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1684, and the ability of a state to make decisions free from outside interference about its fate.

In any case, the notion that the nation-state is "with us" is debatable.