Bannon's reckless pursuit of ethno-nationalist greatness
By Michael Gerson Opinion writer February 27 at 7:14 PM
Two sets of remarks, a day apart, by two men more accustomed to being behind the scenes.
Stephen K. Bannon, appearing Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, made the case for “economic nationalism” and called President Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership “one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.” The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the defeat of the Soviet Union finally have some company.
As the ideologist in Trump’s inner circle, Bannon is a practitioner of Newt Gingrich’s mystic arts. Take some partially valid insight at the crossroads of pop economics, pop history and pop psychology; declare it an inexorable world-historic force; and, by implication, take credit for being the only one who sees the inner workings of reality.
For Bannon, it has something to do with “the fourth turning,” or maybe the fifth progression, or the third cataclysm. At any rate, it apparently involves cycles of discontent and disruption. Lots of disruption. Across the West, as he sees it, the victims of globalization — the victims of immigration, free trade and internationalism in general — are rising against their cosmopolitan oppressors. Institutions will crash and rise in new forms. And this restless world spirit takes human form in . . . Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.
Like many philosophies that can be derived entirely from an airport bookstore, this one has an element of truth. The beneficiaries of the liberal international order have not paid sufficient attention to the human costs of rapid economic change. (Just as the critics of internationalism have not paid sufficient attention to the nearly 1 billion people who have left extreme poverty during the past two decades.) But there is a problem with the response of economic nationalism and ethno-nationalism. It is morally degraded and dangerous to the country.
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