Steve Bannon's War on Democracy, Christianity, and You
Steve Bannon is a familiar figure by now. One of the super villains from the Trump administration, he is still a force in right-wing politics in the USA and across the globe. He reportedly pushed Trump to overturn the election by any means possible. He is often referred to as a White nationalist whose misogyny and racism need no further explanation. But what if Bannon's worldview is more complex, more sinister, and more weird than you ever expected?
Brad speaks to Dr. Benjamin Teitelbaum about his new book, War for Eterinity: Inside Bannon's Far Right Circle of Global Power Brokers: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/war-for-eternity-benjamin-r-teitelbaum?variant=32123408941090
Inspired by a radical twentieth-century ideology called Traditionalism, Bannon and a small group of right-wing powerbrokers are planning new political mobilizations on a global scale—discussed and debated in secret meetings organized by Bannon in hotel suites and private apartments in DC, Europe and South America. Their goal? To upend the world order and reorganize geopolitics on the basis of archaic values rather than modern ideals of democracy, freedom, social progress, and human rights. Their strenuous efforts are already producing results, from the fortification of borders throughout the world and the targeting of immigrants, to the undermining of the European Union and United States governments, and the expansion of Russian influence.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I am faculty at the University of San Francisco.
I have an incredible guest tonight who has written an incredible book, and so we're going to jump into that in a second.
But for now, I'll just say, Dr. Benjamin Teitelbaum, thanks for joining me.
It's a pleasure to be with you, Brad.
So you are an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder, a true Renaissance man, a performer of Scandinavian music, and an author and a scholar.
We're going to talk tonight about your most recent book, which is War for Eternity, the return of traditionalism and the rise of the populist right outwith Penguin, HarperCollins, et cetera.
And I just got to embarrass you a little bit.
It's definitely an international bestseller and has been covered everywhere from the Financial Times to all over the place.
I think my favorite-- In a way, I thought it was kind of brave of him.
at Spiked who says, Bannon has been called far right, a fascist, a white supremacist, but according to a gripping new book by academic Benjamin R. Tidalbaum, Bannon's philosophy is actually a lot weirder, if perhaps no less alarming.
Fascinating insight.
And that kind of really, to me, sums up what I found in the book.
Yes.
And I liked it.
In a way, I thought it was kind of brave of him when a lot of people ask me, well, why don't you just call Bannon the fascist?
And if I'm in the midst of calling him something other than a fascist, the implication is, well, I must be saying that he's not that bad.
Um, And that's that the fascism is like the utmost measure of evil.
And if you're something different than that, then you're less evil.
And that's, that's a not true, just in terms of that, that sort of spectrum and scale.
But we also miss, we miss a lot of the the details and the important details of someone here.
It's, it's, it's, it could be more scary, it could be more interesting, also than fascism, all those things are possible.
Well, and I'll admit, you know, it's interesting, as I thought about your book, over the course of the Trump presidency, I feel like I had deep dives on a lot of the figures.
I feel like there was just this sort of pantheon of Bond villains that we were introduced to, and some of them got a lot more sort of deeper coverage, as I would call it, than others.
Bannon always seemed to me, and I think he was presented to the American public this way, A classic white nationalist misogynist, the guy who was on your TV screen with a scowl.
He looked like he had probably just drank seven or eight whiskeys, was angry about something.
And I'll admit that that's kind of for a long time how far I got with him.
Your book opens us up to something that is No less good.
There's no good surprises here, but there's a lot of complexity and a lot of weird philosophical underpinnings and ideology behind Bannon.
Yes.
I almost think if it's the attention span of mass media or the Let's say the expertise of political reporters.
I don't think that they're well prepared for someone like Bannon.
I'm not sure who really would be, but this is a guy who's so strange.
I don't know who to compare him to.
Some people say Karl Rove, but I don't know.
Some people will say Rasputin.
You need someone who will take the time to actually understand everything and not simply just to call him a white nationalist.
It communicates some of the threat and some of the identity politics edge that he has.
But it's also kind of exasperated.
It's just kind of a last, it's just a gasp.
Okay, I don't know what to make of this guy.
So we're going to just, I'm going to use the most familiar term that I have to describe someone who's dangerous in this particular way and call it a day and go on with it.
That's fine for journalists to do.
It's fine for political activists to do, perhaps, if I'm being generous, charitable.
But I think for a scholar, there's an imperative to understand exactly what's going on, especially if these actors are influential.
Well, it does speak to it does speak to the I mean, I think there's a lot of folks out there that have flippant views of scholarship is like, well, what is that useful for anyway, and a book like yours is, is really a testimony to how a book can be incredibly well researched and be an overwhelming deep dive into a person and their philosophy and yet be gripping at the same time and readable.
At the center of the book is Bannon's philosophy, what he calls traditionalism.
And I'm just wondering if we can take that in parts because it's complex.
Like it is, this is just not an, uh, there's not, it's not a straight line sort of situation here.
Uh, traditionalists have very complex understandings of the past and the future of various, uh, castes or classes that human beings fall into, uh, various ages.
Uh, and they, they seem to have, uh, Murky goals for what they want, at least from the first sort of read.
And so can we just start with the past and the future?
Like if, if I'm Steve Bannon, and I'm a traditionalist, we're going to try to get a hold on this philosophy.
How do I see world history?
How do I see what's happened before us?
And what do I want to happen in the future?
Well, if you're a traditionalist, capital T, just so no one thinks that they're familiar with this, it's a very strange ideological school.
If you're a traditionalist, capital T, you don't really believe in the past or the future.
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