Every anxious citizen on this currently deranged planet of ours should feel a keen interest in penetrating the hyper-active political brain of Steve Bannon, who has been appointed as “senior strategist” by President-elect Donald Trump. Up until the point when he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon was a manically voluble communicator. He gave thundering lectures to right-wing groups.[1] He made films celebrating conservative icons from Reagan to Sarah Palin; there are reports that as a film-maker, Bannon modeled himself on Leni Riefenstahl.[2] He even collaborated on the script for a rap version of Coriolanus, “drawn to Shakespeare’s Roman plays,” according to the woman with whom he co-authored the script, “because of their heroic military violence.”[3] Then Bannon closed up like a clam. Presumably, the time for words had ended; the time for deeds had begun. Bannon is on record as welcoming darkness and destruction.[4] And in Trump, Bannon seems to have found the suitable political instrument of the darkness and destruction for which he yearns.
[click to continue…]
Posts by author:
ronnie_beiner
Aleksandr Dugin has come to public attention as “Putin’s Brain,” as Foreign Affairs memorably dubbed him – that is, as the ideological mastermind behind Russia’s moves towards reasserting imperial ambitions, notably with respect to Ukraine. Is this accurate, or is it just media hype? The truth is that it’s extremely difficult to judge with confidence exactly to what extent Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive policies towards, for instance, Ukraine reflect Dugin’s influence (or supposed influence) as an omnipresent publicist and behind-the-curtain advisor to aspiring czars. (The suspicion easily arises that Putin uses Dugin – lets him rant on state TV – without himself buying into the crazy worldview.) But whether Dugin really is influencing Russian policy or is simply the object of excessive hype, either way intellectuals as well as ordinary citizens in the West need to be aware of him, lest they be taken in by his pretensions as a theorist and his claimed interest in civilizational dialogue and pluralism, which functions as a rhetorical cloak. Either way, he’s dangerous.
[click to continue…]