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Bannon relishes mysterious outsider persona. He changed out of his suit & tie into black-on-black for #CPACwapo.st/2mqLnW8
He presumably meant that he wants to destroy the administrative state, not apply literary theory inspired by Jacques Derrida to it. Which would just be another way of saying that he’s a Republican Party political strategist who favors less regulation, just like all Republicans for the past 40 years.
But I guess he means that he’s more extreme and hard-core in his libertarian economic commitments. But back in his bombastic November 18 Wall Street Journal interview, Bannon explained he’s an “economic nationalist … an America First guy” so not at all a libertarian. But also not an ethnic nationalist. But back in July, he told Sarah Posner that his website was “a platform for the alt-right” — in other words, ethnic nationalism. But back in 2014, Bannon was making a pitch for an explicitly Christian conservatism, making the case that libertarianism and secularism had “sapped the strength of the Judeo-Christian West to defend its ideals.”
Then again, in another post-election interview, Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter that “Darkness is good … Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.”
Get it? Well I don’t get it either. And, frankly, I don’t think Bannon spends much time worrying about how he plans to implement an economic program of “America first” nationalism without an administrative state. Or why the Judeo-Christian West is good but Mexico is bad. And of course Bannon isn’t a Satanist. But he knows Satan gets the best lines in Paradise Lost and everyone knows that Darth Vader is a cool badass character and Luke is a lame weenie. But there’s no grand ideological vision here; it’s marketing and clickbait and sloganeering and self-puffery.
At one point, Holly McLane confronts Gruber, saying, “after all your posturing, all your little speeches, you’re nothing but a common thief.”
Gruber retorts, “I’m an exceptional thief.”
And by the same token, just because Bannon is talking nonsense doesn’t mean he isn’t good at it. Breitbart isn’t good journalism, but it’s certainly been successful at building an audience. Trump isn’t popular, but he won. And to say that Bannon is kind of a faker — it’s entirely vacuous to rant against “the establishment” while sitting in the West Wing of the White House celebrating a stock market book — isn’t to say that he can’t do harm.
Gruber was only a fake terrorist, but he did kill a lot of people along the way. But Bannon’s not the secret ideologist lurking behind Trump's policy-lite opportunism and demagoguery — they're two peas in a pod.
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