The Secret Life of Stephen Bannon

The other day, I saw yet another article about the books you need to read to understand Stephen Bannon, the current White House’s ideologist-in-chief and resident Jabba The Hut impressionist. Specifically, the piece was an excerpt from an upcoming book by Joshua Green, and ran under the title “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steven Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia.” I saw it in the online version of Vanity Fair.

In the excerpt, the author, Joshua Green, makes the compelling argument that Bannon may be considered a radical traditionalist, and that his thinking can be traced back through authoritarian political Catholicism, through the Italian national-racialist, Julius Evola (1898–1974), and finally to “René Guénon, an early-20th-​­century French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Shari.”

I’d heard of Evola, but Guénon (1886–1951) was completely new to me. According to Green, Guénon, like Evola, believed the West has been sickened by materialism and modernism. Thus, we need to return to a purer, more simple age, when spirituality was a living thing among us.

I rather enjoyed Mr. Green’s writing. It was informative and interesting. But, it struck me that the excerpt is actually part of a larger genre—that is, texts which try to figure out Bannon by looking at his reading. I’ve seen a good many such pieces in the last few months. In February, Neil Howe wrote in the Washington Post, “Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.” Howe says that Bannon is “enthralled” by The Fourth Turning, the book Howe wrote along with the late William Stauss proposing that American history runs in roughly 80-year cycles spanning prosperity and crisis, with us very much due for a crisis in the near future.

Meanwhile, last March in the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal  and J.M. Rieger, say that you can’t make sense of Bannon without reading The Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail. This, they say, is key to understanding Bannon’s conception of race. It is a dystopian tale in which Europe (and white people) are overwhelmed by hordes of economic migrants from the Third World.

And, I could go on, naming article after article. I’m sure, too, that such works are useful things, and that they really do help us understand what is happening in Washington, and the world, at this particular moment. After all, if we are to understand and oppose our adversaries, it is necessary to get into their heads...know what they are thinking, what ideas they hold dear, and what ideologies. Given that Bannon seems to be the closest thing to an official ideologist that the Trump cabal has, it is therefore important to understand him and his intellectual underpinnings.

Still...

Sometimes I wonder if all of that is quite as useful as we think. People on the Left tend to be....not exactly bookish, but at least reflective and self-aware. We tend to take ideas seriously. So, we assume that other people do so as well.

However, in the case of Bannon...or, rather, in the case of Trump’s inner circle...

Consider the Great White Shark. From one perspective, it could be considered the supremely philosophical beast. It is perfectly attuned to its world, it knows neither guilt nor shame, it suffers not from self-doubt, it never feels ennui, is never neurotic or maladjusted...always lives life to the fullest, always seizes the day.

Yet, were it somehow possible to enter its brain, I doubt you would find there thoughts of Nietzsche or Adorno...or even of Evola and Guénon...but something rather less. Say, something more like elemental passions—hunger, fear, rage, the siren scent of blood in the water.

I draw no parallels. However, should you wish to do so, you would have my truest encouragement and fullest consent.


Addendum

In the piece above, I (entirely unoriginally) use the metaphor of the shark. It’s amazing how much things have changed with that particular animal. When I was young, it was regarded as the quintessential apex predator, to be feared and hated and perhaps destroyed. Now, forty-something years on, the shark is very much under siege. Overfishing and shark fin soup have begun to seriously endanger its populations and men and women of good will are now working to protect them.
But, of course, “good will” is not a term I would use for the Trump administration. Which worries me.
I wonder, do they...those genuine apex predators, those suits and ties at the top...have any idea what they’re doing? And how grim and sad and empty a world it would be, should we not learn to practice restraint?

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Sources:

“Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” an excerpt from Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green . Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

“Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book,” Neil Howe, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.f1c725a4baf5

“This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” by Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03


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