In my last post regarding Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s deep-thinker-in-chief, I forecast that he wouldn’t be fired from his White House position because the alt-right is an essential part of the Don’s political base. Last night (I’m writing this on 4/13/2017), Paul Begala made the same prediction on CNN – and even used some of the very same words that I used. Could he be reading this blog?
Of course, just because a course of action seems sensible, we’ve no guarantee the Don will do it. The buzz still is that Bannon’s tenure is shaky. I’d prefer his situation to be clarified before I continue with my dissection of his philosophy, but if I wait for the Trump administration to give clarity on this (or anything else) I may never get started. So I’ll proceed. If Bannon stays, we’ll know what he’s advising our so-called President to do; if he goes, we’ll know what we’ve missed.
Previously, I’ve labeled Bannon a Christian nationalist, on the basis of remarks he made to a Vatican conference in 2014. I’ve noted his affinity for the pre-World War I global order, dominated by Christian European empires, and scoffed at his quaint idea that Christian piety is the answer to exploitative forms of capitalism. Now I’ll pick up where I left off. There’s more Christianity ahead.
Bannon says “the world, particularly the Judeo-Christian West, is in a crisis.” He identifies three “converging tendencies” making up this crisis, the first being the advent of the un-Godly capitalistic ways discussed in my last Bannon post, the other two being the “immense secularization of the West” and the “outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism.” He doesn’t actually say a lot about secularization, except that it’s a product of “popular culture,” which stresses a “rubric of ‘personal freedom;’” it’s to blame for the fact that “millennials under 30” are attracted to the “Ayn Rand … School of libertarian capitalism;” and it disarms Westerners for the conflict against radicalized Islam – which is Bannon’s real concern.
On this topic, he holds the most apocalyptic views. He notes that ISIS “is now currently … having a military drive on Baghdad” and threatening to turn “the United States into a ‘river of blood’ if it … tries to defend the city.” He enumerates the most recent brutalities of Islamic fanatics – turning “kids … into bombers,” driving “50,000 Christians out of a town near the Kurdish border,” throwing “50 hostages … off a cliff in Iraq.” He bemoans “the sophistication” by which Islamic radicals have “taken the tools of capitalism” such as “Twitter and Facebook and modern ways to fundraise … besides all the access to weapons” including “weapons of mass destruction.” And this is just for openers – “we’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism” which is “expanding and metastasizing.” It’s “something that we’re going to have to face … very quickly,” Bannon declares.
Unfortunately, “secularism has sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals.” Anyone who attempts to advocate Christianity is “oftentimes … looked at as … quite odd.” Yet “if … the people in the church do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity” the result will be to “completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years” – high stakes, indeed.
And, according to Bannon, this conflict isn’t anything new. “If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing … whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places … It bequeathed to us the great institution that is the church of the West.” He advocates taking “a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam,” and he encourages his audience to see themselves as actors in a religious war extending across ages, to “ask yourself, 500 years from today, what are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about what I did at the beginning stages of this crisis?” Christians must “bind together as partners with others in other countries,” to turn back this threat, in the spirit of Charles Martel.
Obviously, I find this crusader mentality quite disturbing. I’m perfectly willing to enlist in a fight against Islamic radicalism – which is, indeed, a blight on humanity – but only in defense of those other Western values of religious freedom and pluralism. Bannon doesn’t say much about that, which is indicative, though he does say that “on the social conservative side, we’re the voice of the anti-abortion movement, the voice of the traditional marriage movement,” which doesn’t reassure me. Pagans would suffer if Sharia law were introduced into the United States, but history gives us little reason to trust in the tolerance of passionately devout Christians. If two equally fervent religious giants are going to clash, the best we can do is keep out of the way.
One further point has perhaps occurred to some readers. I’ve called Bannon a Christian nationalist and, so far, there’s been plenty of Christianity. But where’s the nationalism? That comes up next time.
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