Steve Bannon is Trump’s Merchant of Violence
“I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace, and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.” (Much Ado About Nothing, 1.3.25-30)
Steve Bannon has frequently been called “Trump’s Brain.”[i] He has also been called Rasputin, Thomas Cromwell, and Joseph Goebbels.[ii] Bannon himself prefers comparisons with Lenin. Like Lenin, he claims he is “eager to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”[iii]
In a broader historical context, Bannon has the manners of a “Vice” character from a medieval morality play, an often mischievous “Machiavel” who does evil for the sheer pleasure of doing evil. Think Batman’s “Joker.” Is Bannon possibly playing a joke on friend and foe? Leading all into a “hilariously destructive political trap?”
From the beginning, Bannon’s central focus has been the “Deconstruction of the Administrative State.” In furtherance of that goal, he has used Trump as his “instrument.”[iv] His endgame is “remaking the United States as an ‘America First’ enclave where racism and xenophobia are normalized, and Trump and his minions utilize the authoritarian power of government to punish their enemies and reward themselves”[v]
Bannon’s desire to dismantle our constitutional republic has been informed by his embrace of “Traditionalism,”[vi] a theory that “the only good to be found in modern ‘progress’ is that it will eventually self-implode and return society to eternal values that we never improve upon, but merely regain. It is that faith, that the destruction of the modern world will necessarily lead to something good.”[vii] (The concept itself recalls the words of the American major in Vietnam who, during the Tet offensive stated, “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”)
Bannon is less clear about his desired outcomes. His end is less specific than the violent means to achieve it. “War Room” listeners, however, have deep faith that Bannon’s successful destruction of today’s establishment will “necessarily lead to something good.” They accept Bannon’s “eternal values” at face value, and trust that he will lead them to some Judeo-Christian Promised Land, where women, blacks, and liberals know their place, where voting for minorities and students is restricted, where Muslims and dark-skinned people are kept away from U.S. borders, where allies solve their own problems. And where abortion is outlawed.
Bannon laid down his markers in Trump’s “American Carnage”Address. Then, he helped shape Trump’s cabinet appointments and early executive orders.
“The nominations of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, Mick Mulvaney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — all were figures who had either expressed outright hostility to their agency’s existence or who aspired to dramatically reduce the agency’s operation and mandate. And recall the flurry of executive orders Trump issued during his first week in office — those bolstering private schools, weakening the Affordable Care Act and environmental protections, and prohibiting travel to the United States from a handful of Muslim-majority nations.”
As much as he shaped the content of Trump’s agenda, Bannon was responsible for strategy, a strategy he calls “flooding the zone with shit”— drowning progressive legislators, the media, and a bewildered liberal population with cascading waves of far-right agenda items. Too many to process.
However, when four years of “flooding” did not produce Trump’s hoped-for re-election, Bannon predicted (or suggested?) that Trump would not concede; instead, he announced that Trump would declare victory shortly after polls closed on Nov. 4 and refuse to accept defeat. When that ploy fizzled, Bannon met with fellow conspirators in the days before January 6th and gleefully predicted that “all hell would break loose”:
“You’re going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’” Moreover, Bannon claimed, the sitting president would then gut judicial oversight of himself by firing FBI Director Christopher Wray. “After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again. … He’s gonna say ‘Fuck you. How about that?’ Because … he’s done his last election. Oh, he’s going to be off the chain — he’s gonna be crazy.”[viii]
Bannon revels in bare knuckle political brawls, even among his allies. Former Breitbart editor, Ben Shapiro, said that Bannon is “legitimately one of the worst people I’ve ever dealt with. He regularly abuses people. He sees everything as war. [Italics mine.] Every time he feels crossed, he makes it his business to destroy his opponent.” Conservative commentator Dana Loesch called Bannon “one of the worst people on God’s green earth.”[ix]
Without a patron in the White House, Bannon’s strategy has changed from dismantling the pieces of our Constitution from within to overt declarations of war from without.
“We’re going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams, and all that nomenclature that they use, when President Trump wins in 2024 – or before.”[x]
Every day, “War Room” listeners across the country are persuaded by Bannon’s impassioned calls to the barricades to “purge” the Justice Department, “take apart” the FBI,” and punish political enemies. Bannon expertly foments violence from the comfort of his lavish D.C. townhouse, mobilizing others to do his dirty work while he cashes their checks. Much like he did with his bogus “Build the Wall Campaign.” He calls on his most zealous “listeners to step forward and say, ‘Hey, I want to be one of the 4000 shock troops.”[xi]
Bannon recruited one eager “shock trooper” in Moore County, N.C. -- Steve Woodward. Woodward is a former Republican Party official, right-wing blogger, current trustee of Sandhills Community College, and unrepentant Election Denier.
When news broke last October that Bannon would speak at a Republican function in Moore County, Woodward wrote that he became “giddy” at the prospect of “a nationally known Conservative standard-bearer [coming to] whip us into a frenzy.” Woodward warned faint-hearted Republicans, though, that Bannon “would not be a polite guest.” He was not coming to unite Moore County Republicans. He was “coming to inspire and unify the MAGA movement” while causing “a stirring of our ‘January 6’ souls.”
Woodward highlighted the conflict “within the Moore delegation” between traditional conservative Republicans and MAGA people, like him. The MAGA team called Senator Thom Tillis a traitor “for seeking to reach across the aisle,” and called Richard Hudson a coward for supporting Kevin McCarthy. Woodward threatened that “weak Republicans like Tillis and Democrats might need to see breathtaking images of decapitated bodies” on our city streets “to realize the consequences of their indifference, or worse, facilitation.”
Woodward said that Bannon’s speech would be going “down the path where no prisoners are taken,” echoing Bannon’s prediction that “the day is coming.”[xii] The fight, he said, “must be won. . .We’re going to take this back village by village. . .precinct by precinct.”
Ultimately, Bannon “is participating in a political process that democracy has constructed. . . He is participating in democracy in order to destroy it.”[xiii] Considering the breadth of his treachery, his malignant intelligence, and his single-minded villainy, Bannon has darkened Trump’s dark side, much as Roy Cohn had done years ago. Trump’s White House is currently the functioning laboratory of Bannon’s “War Room.” The annihilation of American democracy by violent means is its unequivocal intention.
[i] https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+bannon+as+trump%27s+brain&sca_esv=0ee0280be053867a&sxsrf=ADLYWIJzXdQxusQGWiRVClzScVt367dbtw%3A1715949102468&source=hp&ei=Lk5HZoCGGpyD0PEPp7K5gAQ&iflsig=AL9hbdgAAAAAZkdcPv4DwbA-t0KCO5WXXbB_PF-syAyr&oq=steve+bannon+as&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6Ig9zdGV2ZSBiYW5ub24gYXMqAggAMgQQIxgnMgUQABiABEjeOlAAWMIkcAF4AJABAJgBd6ABzAyqAQQxMC42uAEByAEA-AEBmAIQoAKQDMICChAjGIAEGCcYigXCAhEQLhiABBixAxjRAxiDARjHAcICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgIOEC4YgAQYsQMYgwEYigXCAhQQLhiABBixAxjRAxiDARjUAhjHAcICDhAAGIAEGLEDGIMBGIoFwgILEC4YgAQYsQMYgwHCAg4QLhiABBixAxjRAxjHAcICCBAuGIAEGLEDwgIIEAAYgAQYsQPCAgsQLhiABBjHARivAcICBRAuGIAEwgIOEC4YgAQYsQMYgwEYxwPCAg4QABiABBixAxiDARjHA5gDAJIHAzguOKAHsvMB&sclient=gws-wiz
[ii] David Smith. “He Believes in Chaos and Power: Alarm as Steve Bannon Plots to Propel Trump.” The Guardian, 3 March 2024.
[iii] David Von Drehle. “Is Bannon the Second Most Powerful Man in the World?” Time, 2 Feb. 2017.
[iv] (Isaac Arnsdorf, “We’re Gonna Smoke This F—ker Out: Inside Bannon’s MAGA Mutiny That Brought McCarthy Down, “Vanity Fair, 8 April 2024).
[v] John Nichols. “Steve Bannon’s Endgame: Despite Facing Legal Defeats, Trump’s Forever Adviser is Scheming Trump’s Return – and Trump’s Revenge.” The Nation, 9 August 2022.
[vi] “Traditionalism condemns ideas that most people celebrate, ideas like faith in progress and the hope that human reason can meaningfully advance society materially and morally; modern politics’ focus on economics and questions of property rights or wealth distribution; the value of individual freedom; and the prospect that certain facts and values are equally valid for all the world’s peoples. These are the ideas forming the often-unspoken political consensus that unites the left and right in liberal democracies, and Traditionalists want nothing to do with them. Returning to the past, rather than creating a new future, is their goal. They reject individualism and the possibility of universal secular truths. Instead, they believe that the only good to be found in modern “progress” is that it will eventually self-implode and return society to eternal values that we never improve upon, but merely regain. It is that faith, that the destruction of the modern world will necessarily lead to something good, where we find Traditionalism’s signature in politics, the core of its threat to liberal democracy, and the apparent playbook for Bannon’s recent actions.”
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. “Trumps’ Ally Steve Bannon Wants to Destroy U.S. Society as We Know It,” New Lines Magazine, 8 August 2022.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Teitelbaum.“The comments were recorded at the townhouse that evening, and in retrospect they appear prescient in their anticipation of Trump’s public statements on election night (the president eventually claimed, ‘Frankly, we did win this election’) and of the dramatic attempts to challenge the election results that followed.”
[ix] Von Drehle
[x] Nichols.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Steve Woodward. “Bannon’s Cannon,” Resolve, 9 October 2023. All his quotes are from this essay.
[xiii]https://ccs.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Alexander%20Articles/2017_Bannon_Culture.pdf