Steve Bannon, modern American fascist

In Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism” he writes about a ghost stalking Europe, the ghost of the fascist movements of World War II — cultural habits and dangerous ideologies that die in one form only to grow into another. These ghosts have no “quintessence” according to Eco, “Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.”

It is this “beehive of contradictions” which makes identifying and defining fascism so difficult, especially in America. As Americans, we identify fiercely with our founding spirit — a sort of defensive independence that on the surface is against collectivism. Fascism, alternatively, demands subservience to the collective and violates our unique American individuality.

Enter Steve Bannon; an impassioned “patriot”, dedicated to fighting what he sees as cancer and corruption that has plagued the political machine in Washington D.C. for decades.

At Bannon’s disposal are monetary resources, intelligence, and a vast network to make his goal of a more “traditional” American nation-state a reality. In order to accomplish his goal, he has, much like the Italian fascists, created a counterculture movement of like-minded individuals who fully support his particular scorched-earth brand of patriotism: the Tea Party movement.

The man behind much of Donald Trump’s narrative is a self-described ‘economic nationalist.’ Many of his views are a confusing mess of contradictions and pseudo-intellectualism, but he is very clearly a part of the cult of traditionalism that pervades fascist thought.

It is entirely possible that Bannon’s ultimate goal is to create a perfect storm of instability for executive power. However, this isn’t the type of instability that most classical liberals and libertarians would favor — he is no free market advocate or small government champion. Banon is obsessed with the righteousness of the Judeo-Christian West and his own brand of “enlightened form of capitalism.”

While American originalists were intellectuals, rebels, thinkers, and philosophers, our modern President hosted a reality television show in which his contribution to the modern American zeitgeist was “you’re fired.” As America has become obsessed with popular culture — and perhaps the corporatist culture personified by Martin Scorsese’s film Wolf of Wall Street — it has shifted away from seeking philosophical and pragmatic political thinkers as our leaders. Bannon has recognized and capitalized on this.

Bannon has recognized and capitalized on this. Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, and now Donald Trump, his chosen figureheads are always more in line with populist notions of American patriotism than they are with the collection of individual greatness and innovation that actually makes America great.

Some have argued that Trump is not all that unique of a figure in the American presidency. Andrew Jackson similarly rose to power on the back of a vast grassroots populist movement. Ronald Reagan, the great communicator, had deep connections to Hollywood, he and his wife were both actors and distinct in their political gamesmanship.

The comparisons, however, end there. Reagan was the governor of California, at least that was some semblance of executive experience. Jackson was a war hero, a senator, and served in state legislatures; he was also a racist and a xenophobe, responsible for some of the worst atrocities in American history.

Trump is, by comparison, a complete political novice. Perhaps recognizing his own shortcomings as a political thinker, the president brought with him to the White House Steve Bannon. Unfortunately, Bannon’s position of influence may help fuel the flames of an American brand of fascism.

David Von Drehle’s excellent editorial in Time describes the White House Chief Strategist as the second most powerful man in the world. Reports indicate this moniker, and credit for much of Trump’s initial policy framework irked the president. President Trump is not one willing to share the immense spotlight of his newly won prominence.

However, Bannon has, or at least he had, walk-in rights to the oval office — coveted currency in the District of Columbia. Bannon’s initial ability to influence the ebb and flow of Trump’s policy seems to have been his way of initiating his apocalyptic visions for America and constructing a government comprised of hyper-nationalism.

Bannon predicted years ago that the catalyst for change in our nation would be: “an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment, and it’s going to continue to hammer this city [D.C.], both the progressive left and the institutional Republican Party.” Trump became the face of Bannon’s prediction.

Ironically, Bannon has become an integral part of the establishment he sought to dismantle. He would certainly disagree with that observation; but an investigation into Bannon’s political philosophy reveals that he is at best a fair weather acolyte of his own doctrine and a political profiteer, at worst he is the principle proponent of American fascism.

According to Eco’s metric, there are at least 11 reasons to believe that Bannon is a fascist:

1. He subscribes to a cult of tradition and appears adverse to progressing his ideas beyond this tradition.

2. He irrationally rejects modern advances in thought and enlightenment.

3. He pushes forward actions for the sake of action — shamelessly promoting it as patriotic.

4. To him, disagreement is treason and discouraged with threats and anger.

5. He fears diversity and has created enemies of those he views as intruders to his traditionalism.

6. He has shaped an appeal to a frustrated and shrinking middle-class — the “silent majority.” They fuel his movement but misunderstand his intentions.

7. He has helped encourage the most important social identity to his supporters, the privilege of being born in the same country. These followers feel besieged by a plot from within and without, xenophobia is encouraged by his policy.

8. He has encouraged a state of permanent warfare, this war is one with radical Islam and immigration from nations at our southern borders.

9. He has encouraged contempt not only against the liberal elite, but also anyone different or diverse from the preferred social identity (natural born Christian American). In a sense, he encourages modern elitism as patriotic nationalism.

10. He has created an atmosphere of humiliation among those who feel a lost identity (rural white conservatives), but those humiliated feel a victory (Trump) has created the ability to overwhelm their political enemies.

11. The military industrial complex and the militarization of our police force encourages an idea of heroism within the patriotic identity. It is good to live and die for the country, a hero’s death is worshiped as the ultimate form of patriotism.

Connecting Bannon & Lenin

Much has been written about who Bannon is and what exactly he wants. One allegation is that Bannon is a ‘Leninist’ who seeks the destruction of the state, according to a column by Ronald Radosh. There are only two people — Bannon and Radosh — with direct knowledge of Bannon’s admission.

I assume that Radosh’s story is accurate. He was able to provide a time, a place, and specific information about the context of the conversation, no doubt this is why Bannon has not sought to discredit the claim. Moreover, Bannon himself has used the language of Lenin in his various critiques of Washington politics. Consider Bannon’s comments about the media and wanting to deconstruct the ‘administrative state.’

Lenin was a student of Marx and Engel and while in exile he wrote a significant amount on how to implement and apply communist philosophy to both government and social structure. One of his works, State and Revolution, details his critiques of the capitalist state and a need for the liberation of the oppressed classes of society.

Lenin writes: “The point at issue is neither opposition nor political struggle in general, but revolution. Revolution consists of the proletariat destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it with a new one, made up of the armed workers.”

As we know, Lenin was arguing for a violent revolution and he says as much early in his work: “… it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power, which was created by the ruling class and in which this ‘separation’ is embodied.”

Compare Lenin’s writing to Bannon’s views on the state apparatus, ruling elites, and establishment types, and we see how closely the men mirror each other in language. In the Washington Post piece, linked above, Bannon is quoted as saying: “If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken… every day, it is going to be a fight.” He also states that in order to accomplish the goals of taking the country back from the ‘globalist and corporatist media’ requires the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Bannon’s anti-elitist views are almost always directed towards the state’s establishment. He once famously declared, “What we need to do is bitch-slap the Republican Party.” His “center-right” populist insurgency is only the beginning. In order to accomplish the total deconstruction of the state requires ‘armed workers.’ For Bannon this might mean a coalition of the “church militant” he has mentioned in reference to his views on the modern Judeo-Christian West.

The Nationalist Connection (but really Fascism)

Bannon’s political motivations were perhaps made most clear in the Buzzfeed transcription of a talk he gave in 2014 to the “Human Dignity Institute” in the Vatican City.

Bannon describes himself as a “very practical, and pragmatic capitalist” who considers the state sponsored forms of capitalism found in Russia and China to be crony. He criticizes libertarian capitalism as being a selfish form out of the “Ayn Rand or Objectivist School.”

Further, he rails against the tools of capitalism which have provided the ability for ISIS and other “Islamic fascists” to recruit and grow. For Bannon capitalism should be an “enlightened form” which serves to advance the goals of the Judeo-Christian West — quite plainly, white American Christians and their allies.

I found Bannon’s use of the term “Islamic fascists” a bit ironic because Bannon, as part of Trump’s administration, has engaged in a form of Jacksonian populism that has a lot in common with Italian fascism. At the start of the year, this picture from the U.S. Holocaust Museum went viral. The theory goes that there are 14 defining characteristics of fascism and these are attributed to Lawrence Britt, who wrote this theory for an article he published in Free Inquiry magazine.

However, a more accurate summation of fascism comes from the essay previously linked by Umberto Eco. Eco describes fascism as a “cult of traditionalism” which is always seeking to re-establish a past preferred way of life. This traditionalism rejects, by necessity, the modernism of the world — while proud of their industrial achievements, traditionalists view anything global as a threat to their homely way of life (Bannon has extensively criticized globalism). Traditionalists are often irrational and prefer action for the sake of action.

As the Trump administration has demonstrated time and again, an action for the sake of action is preferred to methodic and well-rounded strategy. Multiple failed travel bans, the first failure of the AHCA legislation, and a national budget that mirrors an Obama budget, are clear indicators that this administration is about immediate optics.

Modernists and some intellectuals view disagreement as a way of progressing ideas and moving humanity forward through debate and pragmatism. Traditionalists view disagreement as a form of treason. Consider that when Bannon was lobbying for the passage of Trump’s health care legislation he reportedly said to members of the Republican Liberty Caucus, “Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.”

Another of Trump’s crony’s, Stephen Miller, told the media that Trump’s decisions, “will not be questioned.” To both Bannon and Miller, and obviously Trump, disagreement is unpatriotic and, in fact, a threat to the traditionalist nation-state.

Eco outlines that any disagreement with the fascists is a form of treason. In order for fascist thought to thrive the controlling party creates a narrative of besiegement, “The easiest way to solve the plot [of besiegement] is the appeal to xenophobia.”

Fascism is also derived from a frustrated and suffering middle-class. The leaders of this middle-class leech onto those sentiments and sense of frustration as a way to fan the flames of political growth; often engorging their own political authority as a way of, as Trump claims, giving voice to the “silent majority.”

In our modern society, these leaders are two-fold and separated by generational divides. The older leaders are the proponents of the Tea Party movement, members of Steve Bannon’s cultural Breitbart revolution.

The younger leaders are the internet trolls, the people who satirize and tease every aspect of progressive politics, normalizing the actions of Donald Trump through their meme creation and laissez-faire attitude toward political correctness. As we know, Bannon and his lackeys, such as Milo Yiannopoulos at Breitbart, gave the young leaders of the Alt-Right a platform for their views.

If we study Eco’s fascism, and I encourage you to read through his essay in detail, the similarities between Italian Fascism and Bannon’s ethnocentric-nationalism are obvious. Bannon often rejects modernism because of his disdain for elitists and globalists, even attacking academics and institutions of higher learning. He sings the praises of the Judeo-Christian West and his own personal brand of “enlightened form of capitalism” as a method for advancing those views. He even went so far as to call for a creation of “the church militant” to help fight what he views as the oncoming tide of Islamic fascism (which sounds a lot like Lenin arming the workers, or the black shirts of Italy).

Bannon despises anyone who doesn’t agree with his guiding philosophy, he stated in his Vatican City speech that he thinks “strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States.”

Does ISIS encourage academic debate and modernism or are they a “traditionalist” culture? We should consider this question from their point-of-view and not from the perspective of “what is Islam” at large — ISIS does not represent the majority of Muslims, just as Bannon and Trump do not represent the majority of Americans.

Doesn’t ISIS convince its followers that America has humiliated them and their culture? Is this the same type of traditionalism that Bannon and Trump have delineated to America’s “silent majority”?

American patriotism glorifies the hero, the soldier, as being one willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our country. This is something that Bannon and Trump have made a central part of their policy — glorifying the American military apparatus. ISIS fighters are, from their own perspective, also viewed as heroes of Islam, holy warriors against the constant besiegement of western invaders and culture.

If we consider the connections made by Eco in his observations on fascism and compare the ideologies of Bannon’s form of nationalism and ISIS’s form of Islam, the similarities are striking.

Spreading fascism through policy

While Bannon himself has very strong nationalist views, this is personified further by the people he’s encouraged Trump to bring to the White House. Perhaps none embodies this nationalism more than policy advisor Stephen Miller.

As a young man Stephen Miller grew up in Santa Monica, California and went to school in a very diverse community. Given every opportunity to embrace the cultural differences which make up a diverse community, Miller instead gravitated towards Bannon’s form of ethnocentric nationalism.

One of the chief architects of Donald Trump’s failed Muslim travel ban, Miller rose to national prominence by defending the fallout and chaos which ensued. Miller cannot be construed as having no bias when it comes to this policy. Several of his former high school classmates have come out against him with shocking details about his apparent racism. One former classmate provided details that Miller made “disparaging remarks about the African American, Latino and Asian students at our school.”

A Univision report detailed that Miller told one of his former classmates, “I can’t be your friend anymore because you are Latino.” Miller is also reported as having complained about an LGBT club at his school, a Muslim speaker, and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Another classmate went so far as to say that Miller had an “intense hatred of people of color.”

Miller’s connection to Jeff Sessions probably signals his positions on drug prohibition and criminal justice reform. Jeff Sessions has said that marijuana is only “slightly less awful” than heroin, and has signaled a willingness to fan the flames of the failed war on drugs, and encourages harsher sentences for drug crimes. Miller was working for Sessions as he sought to expand upon the highly debated processes of civil asset forfeiture.

The policies of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s Attorney General, will be disastrous for the same minority communities that Miller has been against most of his young life.

Miller’s position within the administration signals as strongly as Bannon’s position the inability of Trump’s White House to play well with others. Miller’s appointment to Policy Advisor, although he had no policy experience, signals to all ‘untraditional’ Americans that they matter little to this administration.

If a POTUS can appoint a bigot like Miller to a prominent position in the 21st century, it is impossible for him to unite a politically torn nation. In actuality, Trump probably knew very little about Miller and simply accepted him into the administration based on Bannon’s recommendation. However, with Miller in a position of national prominence, Bannon is able to add another voice to his ethno-nationalist desires.

A “beehive” of contradictions hidden in fragility

According to Politico one of the books that Bannon is known to have read and provided to his aides is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Described as, “reading like a user’s guide to the Trump insurgency,” there is a lot to learn from Antifragile (I do not believe it is user’s guide for Trump’s administration). Note: Nassim Taleb outlined that he is against the two-party system, did not vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and probably has more in common with libertarians than any other political party.

It’s easy to see why Steve Bannon is a fan of Antifragile, the philosophy embraces uncertainty, randomness, chaos, and mistake making. The central idea behind the concept is that the opposite of fragility is not robustness, resiliency or solidness. The exact opposite of fragility is antifragility. Whereas something fragile can fall and shatter, something antifragile can fall and become stronger than what it once was before. The antifragile is something that benefits from trauma and mistakes because those blunders vaccinate it from future errors.

Taleb writes, “you want to be the fire and wish for the wind” which might appear on the surface to mirror some of the apocalyptic overtones of Bannon’s previous statements; although Taleb is writing more on the surface of how to improve upon the individual as opposed to deconstructing the state.

Taleb writes that human beings are better at “doing than we are at thinking” because of antifragility. It is in making mistakes, or at least a certain class of mistakes, small ones which can easily be learned from, that progress is made. Unfortunately, and as we’ve learned with Bannon and Stephen Miller, mistakes within a centralized government spread like wildfire. The mistakes made with healthcare and travel bans are not easily fixable.

On the surface, Bannon is striving for antifragility within the Trump administration. However, he consistently violates the ethical foundations of the concept. Taleb outlines in his book, “the chief ethical rule is the following: Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others.”

While Bannon might embrace the practice of manageable error-making, he completely ignores the concept of Taleb’s chief ethical rule (just as all fascist do). By encouraging the failed Muslim ban, and implementing it with little to no policy delineation among the many affected national departments, Bannon bastardized his apparent personal guiding philosophy — antifragility.

Countless individuals, part of an obviously fragile system in the United States, should we apply the metrics of Taleb, were harmed because of Bannon, Miller, and Trump’s engagement in a philosophy they understand only superficially.

The Muslim ban is only one example of Bannon’s fragility. Consider the chief campaign promise of Donald Trump’s administration: he plans to build a wall along our border with Mexico. This wall doesn’t benefit the United State of America, tariffs used to pay for its construction will just get passed onto American consumers. The cost of policing the wall will get passed onto taxpayers, so will the cost of maintaining the wall once it is built. The land required to build the wall will be seized through eminent domain laws. All of these issues are examples of the fragility of the American political processes required for building Trump and Bannon’s big beautiful wall.

We might also consider that Bannon has a history of viciously attacking those who disagree with his own political ideology, in a sense seeking to take advantage of the fragility of his political opponents. During a radio interview in 2011 Bannon said:

“That’s why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that’s why they hate these women…”

If Bannon truly believes in the concept of antifragility, he cannot engage in anything which violates the chief ethical rule. But it’s more complicated than just the contradictions in Bannon’s philosophical motivations and his politics. Another of Taleb’s ethical rules is: “If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

According to the White House financial disclosures for Steve Bannon, he was once the chairman of the “Government Accountability Institute” (GAI). On their website, the mission of the GAI is “to investigate and expose crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption or malfeasance.” Bannon’s position as the former chairman of GAI indicates that he had a hand in crafting this mission statement or at the very least identifies with it.

Bannon is a fraud and his position at GAI juxtaposed with his support of the American Healthcare Act (AHCA) is all the proof needed to objectively identify him as such. For a person who so staunchly opposes crony capitalism and the mechanisms which have drastically harmed the middle and lower classes of American society, his support of AHCA is outrageously indefensible, and a symptom of his own fragility.

Whereas Obamacare had an individual mandate which required all citizens to have insurance or pay an end-of-year tax, the AHCA’s individual mandate requires all individuals who go without coverage for a long period of time to pay a 30% surcharge directly to the insurance company. I previously outlined Bannon’s veiled threat toward lawmakers who refused to support the AHCA, indicating his loyalty to an obvious piece of crony capitalist legislation.

The Obamacare mandate was just as bad, it seems almost inconceivable to accept that Bannon, Trump, and Paul Ryan truly believe that their lazy and crony legislation will be any better. Bannon especially demonstrates a crack in the foundation of his personal beliefs with his support and lobbying efforts on behalf of the AHCA.

Another of Taleb’s poignant observations is, “being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.” Donald Trump has committed more than his fair share of nefarious acts during his time as a real estate developer and venture capitalist, Bannon has at every point accommodated or ignored those acts. A partial list includes Trump Magazine, Trump Airlines, Trump in Atlantic City, Trump in Scotland, Trump’s D.C. Hotel, Hiring undocumented workers, Trump University, and of course Trump’s history of eminent domain abuse.

It is unclear how much, if any, of Taleb’s book that Bannon actually identifies with. What we know is that Bannon appreciated the concept of antifragility so much that he disseminated it amongst his staff — this would indicate that he has a fair amount of respect for the philosophy. As I have demonstrated, however, that respect is purely skin-level superficial. He regularly violates the most important pillars of antifragile conceptions in order to advance his personal agenda.

If Bannon is not a fraud then he is simply, as a stated previously, a fair weather acolyte of political dogma and philosophy which he only embraces when he can conform it to his own worldview.

Who is Steve Bannon?

Donald Trump seems desperate for people to like him, Bannon has never indicated that is an important quality in his own life. Because most will view Trump’s young presidency negatively, and because Trump is terrified of being viewed as anything other than a charismatic and wealthy showman, he has begun to distance himself from Bannon, stating that “he’s a guy that works for me.”

Trump only offered a lukewarm response when asked whether or not he still had confidence in his chief strategist (in regards to reports of conflicts between Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Bannon), “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.” However, with the recent controversies surrounding Jared Kushner and Russia, it might be that Bannon is returning to his former prominence.

New York Magazine describes Bannon’s decline within the Trump administration as “Biblical.” Only a couple of months ago some wondered whether or not he was the second most powerful man in the world. Whether this fall is Bannon’s fault or an orchestrated coup d’etat from the dreaded “globalist” faction of the White House, it has been shocking to see. For two months there was hardly a more feared man among progressives in America.

Perhaps this is all a well-coordinated deception on Bannon’s part; he is, after all, a fan of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. The reality, however, feels much less complicated than what Bannon might have us believe. Trump is unwilling to share the spotlight of his massive soapbox. Bannon sought to focus the narrative on his preferred policies, but Trump’s narrative has always been and will always be Trump.

If we are witnessing the last gasp of Bannon as a real administrative policy influence, we should consider who he is. I won’t sugar coat my thoughts, Bannon is an ethnocentric-nationalist, pseudo-intellectual, political hack. He is a hypocrite who sold out his own beliefs to lift up the figurehead of Trump as anti-establishment.

In reality, Trump is the establishment. He drained the Washington swamp and built a golf course, bringing back all of the alligators and snakes who inhabited the ecosystem before he arrived. Trump has put the same Wall Street executives into his administration that Bannon rallied against; the same people they said owned Hillary Clinton now have office space in the White House.

Bannon sold himself out in an attempt to use a fleeting populist revolt to reshape American politics to suit his warped dystopian visions. In the process, he demonstrated that in practice his politics eerily mirror fascism. He demonstrated that his superficial understanding of antifragility was little more than a red herring, and he demonstrated that his true intentions were simply to advance his narrow understanding of the American theater to suit his ethnocentric nationalist views.

Steve Bannon and those in his circle are threats to American civil discourse because they don’t believe a diverse country is a strong country. They have helped create an environment which prioritizes the identity of an American through traditionalism, and the creation and identification of enemies from within our own borders. Bannon thrives on conflict for conflict’s sake, as opposed to peace for the benefit of all.

American politics is in desperate need of a vaccination against the slowly waking virus of Bannon’s fascist influence. Perhaps we will get lucky he will remain on the outside of Trump’s good graces, or be forced to resign at some point.

However, we should all take a page out of Nassim Taleb’s book — recognize that Bannon is a fraud, call him a fraud, and delegitimize his fascist influence whenever possible.