We're a long way from racists buring crosses and lynching people. Today's racists are just people with private thoughts and opinions. They have a magazine, a website? So what? 

The colleges are filled with social justice warriors who, having abandoned the hard issues with major consequences have been squandering their energy on easy issues of minor consequence. Expect them to double down on that, pursuing an agenda of opposing thought crimes and policing free speech. They've become completely unmoored from logic, reason, and real issues of consequence. They don't even bother to teach logic or reason to children anymore. By adulthood these kids don't know how to think. Unsurprisingly the public at large, also unable to reason or use logic, can't understand why such a thing might be important. 

So putting the issue of Bannon in the White  House in perspective: Here's a guy with a bunch of counterfactual opinions. A perfect representation of much of the country, an intellectual vacuum.