Literary Corner: Bannon

Image by David Parkin from The Economist, November 2016, via Southfront.

Since the Twitter Mob, in the form of Kevin Kruse, Chelsea Clinton, and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz, not to mention Jimmy Fallon, has driven the magazine's timid editor David Remnick into the shadows and convinced him to rescind his invitation to that Gray-Green Eminence Stephen Bannon to share the stage at the Ethical Culture Society's digs on West 64th St., I thought I should give readers an opportunity to see what they're missing—what Bannon's performance under courteous but firm questioning is like.

Below the fold, from a conference at the Vatican of the Human Dignity Institute, 27 June 2014, on the subject of "Poverty and the Common Good", from Bannon's contribution via Skype ("Should Christians Impose Limits on Wealth Creation?"), apparently representing the Tea Party movement, is his complete response to a question from Benjamin Harnwell, the Institute's founder, asking him to explain the relationship between his European allies, Ukip and the French Front National, with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

I think he's saying that Farage and Le Pen needed (in the summer of 2014) to "look at" Putin's philosophical "traditionalism", notwithstanding Putin's being an "imperialist" and the "state capitalist of kleptocracy" and his views being in some sense the precursors of Italian fascism, because he's "very, very, very intelligent", and people like the "nationalism" part, and something to do with the so-called Islamic State, and "first things first".

Or, shorter still, we should adopt Putin's "Eurasianist" philosophy as part of our public relations strategy for combating ISIS first, and worry about whether it turned us into fascist kleptocrats afterwards.

This could have some relevance to us today, come to think of it. Have a look:

First Things First

by Stephen K. Bannon

When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some
of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot
of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he's got
an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola

and different writers of the early 20th century
who are really the supporters of what's called
the traditionalist movement, which really eventually
metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people

that are traditionalists are attracted to that. One of the reasons
is that they believe that at least Putin is standing up for
traditional institutions, and he's trying to do it in a form
of nationalism — and I think that people, particularly

in certain countries, want to see the sovereignty
for their country, they want to see nationalism
for their country. They don't believe in this kind of
pan-European Union or they don't believe in the centralized

government in the United States. They'd rather see more of a
states-based entity that the founders originally set up
where freedoms were controlled at the local level. I'm not
justifying Vladimir Putin and the kleptocracy that he

represents, because he eventually is the state capitalist
of kleptocracy. However, we the Judeo-Christian West really
have to look at what he's talking about as far as traditionalism
goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the

underpinnings of nationalism — and I happen to think
that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing
and a strong thing. I think strong countries and strong
nationalist movements in countries make strong neighbors,

and that is really the building blocks that built
Western Europe and the United States, and I think
it's what can see us forward. You know, Putin’s
been quite an interesting character. He’s also very,

very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States
where he's playing very strongly to social conservatives
about his message about more traditional values, so I
think it's something that we have to be very much on

guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that
Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are
really an imperialist power that want to expand. However,
I really believe that in this current environment,

where you're facing a potential new caliphate that
is very aggressive that is really a situation —
I'm not saying we can put it on a back burner —
but I think we have to deal with first things first.

Text transcribed by BuzzFeed, and graphically arranged by me. I hope commenters will offer some thoughts on how Remnick would have gone about channeling this kind of torrent into a useful and entertaining purpose in the Ethical Culture auditorium.