Hell is Other People: A Portrait of Steve Bannon, the Most Dangerous Man in America

​The most dangerous person in the United States is Steve Bannon, an unabashed international revolutionary who aims to upset world economies and change government structure and purpose.  Bannon has an essential populist appeal with a sloppy appearance and Midwestern demeanor.  Bannon is a seminal figure in the ongoing American revolution.

Steve Bannon in 2020

Bannon is a combined entertainer, political provocateur, and clickbait mercenary.  In writing and oratory skills, he is a poor man’s Pat Buchanan, translated to a later time with similar messages.  Bannon is disheveled, obese, given to a grumpy, irrational emotionality. 

Bannon was born in Virginia in 1953 of Irish and Germanic ancestry.  Bannon’s father worked as a middle manager and a telephone lineman while his mother was a stay-at-home spouse. His parents were strict Christians. He studied urban planning at Virginia Tech and then served in the United States Navy for seven years as a second lieutenant.  Bannon later got his MBA from Harvard Business School.
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Bannon’s later biography is complex:

• Bannon worked for two years at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker after Harvard.
• Later Bannon moved to Hollywood and worked as an executive producer for several films and documentaries.
• In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News with the Mercer family.
• Bannon served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
• In 2016, Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
• Trump-appointed Bannon the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term.
• Trump fired Bannon and he rejoined Breitbart.
• In January 2018, Trump blasted Bannon because of critical comments reported in the book Fire and Fury and he left Breitbart.
• In August 2020, the Department of Justice arrested Bannon and three others and charged them with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection to the We Build the Wall campaign. Bannon pleaded not guilty and Trump pardoned him before his trial date.
• The United States Congress held Bannon in contempt of Congress in October 2021 after he defied a subpoena by the House of Representatives committee investigating the 2021 United States Capitol attack.
• A federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two criminal contempt charges on November 12, 2021, and turned himself into authorities three days later.
• Bannon now operates as a right-wing personality and maintains a podcast as his current external platform.

Tribal media, formally known as Infotainment, in its liberal form, presents Bannon as irrational, racist, nefarious, narcissistic, and a thought leader of an international Caucasian movement intended to unite white people across the globe.  Infotainment loves to present Bannon’s reversals, particularly his two felony indictments.  Bannon is no Mr. Nice Guy for certain. 

Infotainment is by nature inclined to present parties in opposite roles as binary, one very good and the other villainous.  While Bannon is difficult to like, he’s much more nuanced, complex, and intelligent than the alcoholic, obese, racist figure some tribal media depict.  Bannon is the leader of a revolution and makes no bones about it.  

Steve Bannon Relaxing

Bannon aims to ‘deconstruct the administrative state.’  Understanding that word and Bannon’s use of it becomes critical to unraveling his philosophy.  Clifford Waldo was an American political scientist who developed the phrase and intended it to mean Waldo argues the bureaucracies in democratic governments. professional and political bureaucracies and its goal is service to the public, not to be particularly efficient.

Bannon’s speeches however belie a unique and far different definition of the administrative state.  Bannon defines the administrative state as an international conspiracy by wealthy liberal elites to manage sovereign governments.  According to Bannon, during the 2008 financial crisis, the international liberal elites did what Stalin and Hitler could not do, and that was to unite the world into one, shadowy world government.  Bannon refers to these liberal billionaires as the Party of Davos.

Bannon says the resultant debt load undertaken by governments was the socialization of the debts of the Party of Davos.  Bannon theorizes these corrupt and incompetent global elites manipulate governments to maximize shareholder value to get even more money.  The implementation of shareholder value mantras contributed to unfair trade agreements resulting in the deindustrialization of the United States.

According to Bannon, these international wealthy liberal elites suck the vitality of economies and suppress worker wages.  Bannon correlates the rise of Chinese manufacturing with lower wages and the opioid crisis in the United States.  The correlation is causation argument of course remains robust in analyzing that claim.

Bannon’s formal speeches tend to embrace race and ethnicity and unite working-class Americans.  Bannon’s revolution envisions a renaissance of American manufacturing with attendant increases in wages for the American working class. 

Woven throughout Bannon’s messages are elements of wishes to withdraw from international affairs.  Bannon discusses the waste of money and lives in the United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Bannon weaves populist messages throughout his presentations.  In this instance, he laments the wasted contributions of the working class in those futile efforts.

Bannon’s recommendations, largely implemented during the Trump administration, include immigration controls to regain American sovereignty from the unseen global governance by the wealthy.  Bannon maintains immigration undermines the wages of working-class Americans and such controls are explicitly are not racist as they protect the jobs and wages of Latin American workers in the southwest United States.

Bannon and Trump Have a Love-Hate Relationship

Contrary to his representations in formal addresses, Bannon’s statements in informal forums reveal a man who has disdain for the LBGTQ community.  Erik Prince, a right-wing political personality and professional mercenary, joined Bannon on his podcast on February 23, 2022, where they praised Vladimir Putting for repressing the LGBTQ population in Russia.
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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is an organization founded in 1913, intending to ‘stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.’  The ADL indicated they were not aware of any antisemitic statements made by Bannon.  Regardless, Bannon promotes conspiracy theories about George Soros, a liberal billionaire activist who is also Jewish.  Soros figures in antisemitic circles as the leader of an international Jewish conspiracy so such insinuations are antisemitic dog-whistling.

The Mercer Family. Rebekah, Robert, and Diana in 2014.

Robert Mercer, a billionaire, and his family are the big money behind Breitbart, a right-wing extremist Internet platform.  Mercer is a Christian conservative, gun enthusiast, a climate change denier, religious, small-government proponent, who aligns with Bannon’s goals.  During Bannon’s tenure at Breitbart, the Infotainment publication published an enormous number of Islamophobic articles.  The examination of Breitbart reveals editorial liberties with the truth laced with dog-whistling homophobia and racism.
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After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the Republican Party establishment and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primary elections. He also supports many national populist conservative political movements around the world, including creating a network of far-right groups in Europe.

Steve Bannon, Like Godzilla, Thrives on Negative Attention

Like Godzilla, a fictive movie villain who is an enormous, destructive, prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation, Bannon seems to thrive on toxicity.  Progressives revile him but he remains relevant, like his fellow right-wing shock jocks Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity if only through his foulness.  But more than that, Bannon has activist philosophy which his fellow peddlers of hatred lack.  He has combined being against progressive initiatives and proposes revolution.
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At age 68 and exhibiting no outward signs of good health and fitness, one might surmise has a finite limit on his days of relevance.  Even so, it doesn’t take a lot of vitality to talk on podcasts or make speeches at favorable venues.  And it’s clear while Bannon’s logic appears sound at first blush, the connections required to construe the same outcome are unlikely.  The solutions to the grievances Bannon inflame, however, take time and good governance to resolve.  The United States doesn’t appear to have a lot of either.