Almost all of the prominent US neocons have been madly snapping at everything and everybody who opposes the Western right-wing dogmas, be they Chinese or Russian leaders, local opposition figures, or, lately, even the Pope.
Individuals like Steve Bannon, often greatly influence leaders like President Donald Trump. Then they fall out of grace, sometimes because of some personal quarrels, and “get fired”. But, regularly, at least some of them, bounce back.
And, even if they do not return to the White House, do they disappear into thin air? Hardly. Their destructive legacy marches on.
Mr. Bannon cannot stand the Pontiff of the Catholic Church. Same as he hates the leadership of the People’s Republic of China, or the Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil.
It is clear that behind his emotions is a disease so common to all neocons: loathing for the poor, and admiration for wealth and brutal power.
Pope Francis is as far from the former darling of the Western right-wing establishment, the Polish Cold-War warrior Pope John Paul the Second, as one can get. An Argentinian, a former bouncer of a nightclub, and an outspoken defender of the “have nots”, Pope Francis is truly eccentric and human. As such he is continuously criticized, even insulted by Mr. Trump’s entourage, as well as by the President himself.
“Disgraceful,” fumed Mr. Trump, as early as 2016, when Pope Francis travelled to Mexico and declared that building walls between countries was not Christian.
The Pope’s statements about social justice and the evilness of capitalism turned both Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump, into his sworn enemies.
In 2019, it was reported by The Telegraph that Steve Bannon advised the far-right Italian leader, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister, to attack the Pope on immigration issues.
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Mr. Bannon was forced to leave the White House in August 2017 (where he served as President Trump’s strategist), but he never abandoned the struggle against progressive governments, movements and individuals, worldwide.
Now he is based outside Rome, in the Trisulti Monastery, working with the far-right Dignitatis Humanae Institute.
He was accused of aiding Ms. Le Pen in France, and various other right-wing leaders in Europe. On May 20, 2019, The Telegraph published a chilling analysis:
“Mr. Bannon has made no bones about wanting to unify European nationalist parties via his group, The Movement, and is known to be close to Miss Le Pen and Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini.
‘If sovereignist, populist and nationalist movements do well in European elections, it will help these movements around the world and that will also be useful for Trump in America’, he told RMC.”
One wonders whether Mr. Bannon, as well as Mr. Bolton, and others, truly left the White House, or whether they were reassigned to some concealed but more effective positions at home and abroad.
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In July 2018, Bannon declared:
“We are at war with China. We’re winning.”
Just a few days earlier, he spoke to CNBC and put it really bluntly:
“Trump knows he needs to unite the West against the rise of a totalitarian China… How it ends is in victory. Victory is when they give all full access to their markets.”
The usual Western dogma: full surrender, unconditional obedience, falling to the knees. Religious submission to capitalism, and to “Western values”. And all that hypocritical chatter about “totalitarianism”, “freedom” and “rights”.
China said “no”, by words and deeds. No surrender, no slavery.
What followed was predictable: direct, relentless propaganda attacks against Beijing, the triggering of a Western-sponsored ‘rebellion’ in Hong Kong, the further arming and radicalization of the Uyghurs, provocations in the South China Sea, and an assault on one of the flagships of China’s high-tech industry: Huawei.
Steve Bannon’s statements and actions had been monitored and analyzed by several media outlets, including RT, which reported on 22 May, 2019:
“Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon gave an impassioned account of what is driving the US war on Chinese tech firm Huawei… and trade has little to do with it. The US wants to destroy its competitor, for good.
Bannon, often credited with putting Trump in the White House, said that driving Huawei out of the US and Europe is far more critical than any trade deal with Beijing, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday.”
The report then concluded:
“Bannon’s threats went beyond Huawei. He called for Chinese companies to be restricted from accessing capital markets “until [they agree to] fundamental reform.” While his outlook of fundamentally clashing civilizations is often viewed as extreme, his comments are actually in keeping with Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission, who said that companies that want access to US markets need to first prove they “share Western values.”
Yes, ‘Western Values”. Read clearly between the lines: No other ‘values’ than Western ones should be allowed to govern the world. In fact, “there are no values but Western values”. Sounds familiar? Fundamentalism? Yes, precisely. And for years and decades, I have been warning my readers, that this is exactly what the West, its leaders and its propaganda, have been emitting.
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In Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden correctly analyzed true position of Steve Bannon:
“Despite Bannon has been cast away from the close circle of Trump advisors – at least for public consumption – Bannon is still the main puppet master in the White House.”
That is clearly evident.
And so, Bannon could be defined as a chief [shadow] US emissary to the world.
He is openly trying to unite extreme-right-wing forces in Europe, meddling in the internal affairs of, at least on paper independent countries of the “old continent”. He is so ruthless, that he is even proving to be ‘too much’, too aggressive, for some right-wing governments, like that of Austria.
He is insatiable; essentially operating everywhere, where dark, fascist forces are at work, or could be encouraged to re-emerge.
He helped to put an extreme right-winger, Jair Bolsonaro, onto the throne in Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro is so outrageous, so brutal, that his success in Brazil appeared to be, at first, unimaginable. But Steve Bannon made sure that impossible dream of the right-wing would come true.
In August, 2018, Telesur wrote:
“Political strategist Steve Bannon, a founding member of the far right-wing news website Breitbart News and former chief advisor to United States President Donald Trump, will be an advisor to Brazilian Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro for the upcoming elections in October.”
“Bannon said that Bolsonaro’s mission in Brazil” will be more “arduous” than Trump’s presidential campaign, said Eduardo Bolsonaro[Jair Bolsonaro’s son].”
“According to Bannon, his exit from the White House was pre-meditated. “I’d always planned on spending one year… I want to get back to Breitbart,” he said to the Weekly Standard.”
“Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons… I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a fucking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
He is smearing Pope Francis who has been departing from the conservative position of previous Popes, and openly criticizing capitalism and Western foreign policy.
And, he goes against China, in such an aggressive way that, if Donald Trump follows his advice, it would not only lead to a new Cold War, but to an unavoidable confrontation between two of the most powerful countries on earth: China and the United States.
No one elected him, and after Donald Trump officially fired him from the White House, no one from the political establishment of the United States has been employing him.
Yet, Steve Bannon is increasingly ‘influential’, in his destructive way. No one dares to charge him with meddling in the internal affairs of Italy, or the European Union. He appears to be ‘untouchable’.
He pushes the West into a suicidal confrontation with China. He insults and provokes China so openly and vulgarly, that Beijing is forced to react, resolutely and indignantly.
It is therefore time to ask, who Steve Bannon really is?
Yes, sure: a former naval officer, an investment banker, a Hollywood producer, a mass media policymaker, chief executive of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a man connected to the notorious Cambridge Analytica.
He not only scares the Left, but many inside the US establishment.
According to the Boston Globe:
“On November 15, 2016, U.S. Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island released a letter to Trump signed by 169 Democratic House Representatives urging the President-Elect to rescind his appointment of Bannon. The letter stated that appointing Bannon “sends a disturbing message about what kind of president Donald Trump wants to be”, because his “ties to the White Nationalist movement have been well documented”; it went on to present several examples of Breitbart News’ alleged xenophobia.”
Mr. Bannon, it was feared, belonged to a white nationalist movement. He denied it, but the allegations never vanished.
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In summary: is Steve Bannon an apparatchik of the US? Yes. A propagandist of the extreme right-wing? Definitely. A white supremacist? Most likely. A promoter of Western exceptionalism? No doubt about it. But it appears that he is much more than all that. Much more! As Bolton is more than he appears to be, and even Mike Pompeo.
What do these neocons really want? Of course, they want absolute victory for the West. They want to be able to dictate to all the continents of the world how to think, how to live, how to behave, even how to produce and consume. They do not know how to stop, or how to compromise. They can only go in one direction; never looking back.
The most terrifying thing about them is that they are willing to easily sacrifice anything and everything, for the implementation of their dogma: millions of human lives, or even entire economies, world peace, prosperity, anything.
As far as they are concerned, if the West cannot compete, if it is losing in competition (ideologically, economically, culturally or socially), then it has to fight militarily, or through sanctions, plus propaganda. It clearly stinks of fanaticism: either victory or death. Not unlike ISIS.
Steve Bannon is not the only one of the ‘elite’ ideological warriors of the West. But he is one of the most dangerous, determined, capable and a shady ones.
Steven Bannon is a talented propagandist and promoter of Western supremacy and imperialist “culture”. He is extremely dangerous, mainly because he knows precisely what he is doing and what he wants to achieve: total control over the world. He has been operating in business, media, entertainment and politics. He wears many hats. He is in possession of what he calls, ‘many weapons’.
The damage he has been causing to the world is enormous.
Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”