In-Depth Analysis: What Steve Bannon really wants

[GliderGuider]

Here's a very thorough assessment of the man who is driving Trump's agenda. As the author says, "The president’s leadership hangs from the scaffolding of Bannon’s worldview."

It looks like he is pulling us toward war - specifically against liberalism and Islam. Bannon's worldview meshes very closely with that of Aleksandr Dugin, who seems to be fulfilling the same role for Vladimir Putin that Bannon does for Trump. With Trump/Bannon pulling and Putin/Dugin pushing helpfully, we are careening down the slope toward what Bannon calls a "Fourth Turning" - and the war that, in his view, must necessarily accompany it.

Although it is terrifying to have Trump as a president, Bannon is truly the stuff of nightmares.

What Steve Bannon really wants

The three tenets of Bannonism

Bannon’s political philosophy boils down to three things that a Western country, and America in particular, needs to be successful: Capitalism, nationalism, and “Judeo-Christian values.” These are all deeply related, and essential.

America, says Bannon, is suffering a “crisis of capitalism.” (He uses the word “crisis” a lot—more on that later.) Capitalism used to be all about moderation, an entrepreneurial American spirit, and respect for one’s fellow Christian man. In fact, in remarks delivered to the Vatican in 2014, Bannon says that this “enlightened capitalism” was the “underlying principle” that allowed the US to escape the “barbarism” of the 20th century.

“We don’t really believe there is a functional conservative party in this country and we certainly don’t think the Republican Party is that,” says Bannon in a 2013 panel in which he discusses Breitbart’s vision. “We tend to look at this imperial city of Washington, this boomtown, as they have two groups, or two parties, that represent the insiders’ commercial party, and that is a collection of insider deals, insider transactions and a budding aristocracy that has made this the wealthiest city in the country.”

Judeo-Christian values

To restore the health of America’s economy and patch its shredded social fabric, Bannon wants capitalism to be re-anchored by the Judeo-Christian values he believes made the country great throughout its history. This shared morality ensures that businesses invest not just for their own benefit, but also for the good of native workers and future generations.

As in Burke’s view, human rights and civil society do not come from anything abstract, but from tradition. For Bannon, this tradition is God; nation-states that establish people as the arbiters of truth and justice will ultimately give way to tyranny. The “ultimate check on the power of the state is God’s teaching,” says Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson in Torchbearer, the 2016 documentary that Bannon co-wrote, directed and produced. The film is full of Robertson offering similar aphorisms about how society falls apart without a religious foundation.

Nationalism

In addition to enriching themselves and encouraging dependency among the poor, global elites also encourage immigrants to flood the US and drag down wages. Immigrant labor boosts the corporate profits of globalists and their cronies, who leave it to middle-class natives to educate, feed, and care for these foreigners. The atheistic, pluralist social order that has been allowed to flourish recoils at nationalism and patriotism, viewing them as intolerant and bigoted. Without the moral compass of our forefathers, the system is so adrift in relativism that it champions the “rights” of police-hating deadbeats, criminal aliens, and potential terrorists over ordinary Americans, turning cities into hotbeds of violence and undermining national security. As one interviewee declares in Border War: The Battle over Illegal Immigration, another of Bannon’s documentaries, “The right sees [undocumented immigrants] as cheap labor, the left sees this as cheap votes.”

The liberal elite’s pervasive emphasis on pluralism and minority rights—and its financial and political support of these groups—constrains shared American-ness. This erosion of Judeo-Christian nationalism weakens the country. Again, this applies not just to America, but also to other Western countries. As Bannon declares at a 2016 South Carolina Tea Party convention, the “swells, the investment bankers, the guys from the EU” are the “same guys who have allowed the complete collapse of the Judeo-Christian West in Europe.”

A theory of generations

The crisis of capitalism and the undermining of the Judeo-Christian West that Bannon proclaims in his Vatican lecture is not an isolated event. It is, in his view, one of a repeated cycle of crises that occurs periodically, each of which inevitably culminates in war and conflict on a grand scale.

The fourth great civilizational showdown—a “global existential war,” as Bannon describes it in July 2016—pits the “Judeo-Christian West” against “Islamic fascism”—especially ISIL. But the threat isn’t necessarily limited to ISIL.
Bannon’s remarks and his affiliations with anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer leave the impression that the enemy might well be Islam in general. As Breitbart notes in 2014, the “erudite Bannon” entertains the argument that Islam’s “war” against Christianity “originated almost from (Islam’s) inception.” He endorses the view that, in the lead-up to World War II, Islam was a “much darker” force facing Europe than fascism. Other ideas he has supported include: a US nonprofit focused on promoting a favorable image of Muslims is a terrorist front; the Islamic Society of Boston mosque was behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Muslim-Americans are trying to supplant the US constitution with Shariah law.

[elehhhhna]

1. I think this is an outline of techniques that he's exploiting versus his real motivation

I do not believe that he is the American Christian messianic type ideologue. I think he's been compromised and this is the way he can leverage himself into the global 1%. There is no US 1% - it is a global group.

Great fortunes are made when civilizations are built, and when they are destroyed. The latter can be pulled off quicker and easier if you were nasty enough to do it

[Ilsa]

2. I think he needs a blood transfusion from Vladimir Kara-Murza. nt

[billfmsd]

3. Fourth Turning

I read The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe, but I didn't get the same thing out of that book that he got. The book seems to be somewhat accurate in identifying the cyclical pattern of generation archetypes, but I wouldn't trust anyone's analysis (not even the authors of that book) of what the future conflicts are. I would trust Bruce Bueno de Mesquita before trusting anyone else.

I think the war on terror should be the war on terrorism, but is still pretty stupid because you can't declare war on a tactic. If you want to blame a religion for terrorism just because some terrorist claim that religion, you'd have to blame Christianity for some acts of domestic terrorism.

[susanna]

8. I, too, read the book and agree with much of what you say.

It was a compelling read, but I never even entertained the thought that someone would use it as a blueprint. Bannon is using it as a point from which to foment a unnecessary crisis, not at all like the more natural progression of tensions which the book discusses.

Strange times we live in.

[Quixote1818]

4. So basically the exact opposite of American values and our constitution. nt

[white_wolf]

5. Does anyone else think Bannon sounds like someone who read a bit of Marxism...

and understood NONE of it, but thought it made him sound edgy and cool? Like his rhetoric is peppered with Marxist sounding buzzwords like "crisis of capitalism" but he doesn't seem to be using the way Marxists use the term. He calls himself a "Leninist" but he clearly doesn't adhere to any variant of Marxism-Leninism.

[susanna]

9. Excellent analogy.

This post just brought to mind the bar scene in Good Will Hunting.

[AlexSFCA]

6. great analysis

I think Bannon suffers from clinical maniac depression. He is the definition of uhappy person who wants to make everybody else unhappy, especially 'liberals'. Unfortunately, he is dangerously smart and that's why it's so scary. Think of it - he's never been a politician, never held public office, and yet he made his way into WH though trump who is just a host to this virus.

[GliderGuider]

7. "a host to this virus" - what an exquisite metaphor! nt