Steve Bannon: Narrative Warrior

By Steven Yates

July 29, 2022

Steve Bannon’s “contempt of Congress” show trial for refusing to answer the January 6 Committee’s subpoena came and went. Bannon and his legal team didn’t mount much of a defense. Establishment media (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, etc.) immediately claimed victory. They misunderstand. I think Bannon’s lack of putting up a serious legal defense is his way of giving the Establishment his middle finger. Acknowledging that these people are going to do as they please and call it “the rule of law.” And that those on his side of the narrative war are smart enough to figure out his strategy.

Evidence for this interpretation of events can be heard in statements made after his conviction, to the effect that in the future “there’s going to be a real committee.”

And in his post on GETTR the Friday of his conviction that “I am not backing off one inch.”

Look at it this way: Bannon, age 68, despite his somewhat slovenly appearance, is a very sharp guy. (If you look at history, you’ll find many formidable intellects who cared little about how they looked or were perceived by the powers around them.) He’s called for “4,000 shock troops” to fight the narrative war. “This is taking on and defeating and deconstructing the administrative state,” he said. “Suck on it. We’re destroying this illegitimate regime.” He spoke further of “dismantling” it “brick by brick.”

No mincing of words!

Reiterating: Bannon knows that Election 2020 was stolen, that claims of this being a “big lie” based on “conspiracy theories” are themselves baseless, that a narrative of attempting to “overturn the election” has been constructed around January 6, and that although the Establishment got back in power two weeks later, its hold on power is precarious. This is especially true with the economy having tanked since January 21, 2021. It is probable, moreover, that the GOP will retake Congress in three short months, and that the Bidenistas will find themselves under investigation — starting with Joe Biden’s slovenly son Hunter’s now-infamous laptop.

What people care about are gas prices, higher prices for all basic foodstuffs and other necessities, inflated rent and mortgage payments, and other things affecting them directly. The more intelligent are thinking about and preparing for impending shortages. Do they really care about the “insurrection” narrative that the January 6 Committee has foisted on viewers through controlled Corporate Media?

Speaking of which: all people need to do to get a more truthful perspective on what happened that day is watch this documentary from The Epoch Times. I recommend subscribing to watch it. It will be the best money you spend this year. A couple of teasers: the film makes clear that it was Capitol police, not the “insurrectionists,” who started the violence. It is also now clear that a couple thousand people entered the Capitol. Around 850 Trump supporters have been chased down, incarcerated, prosecuted. If you watch the videos closely, you’ll see people inside the Capitol who have never been identified and do not look like Trump supporters. A couple such individuals were adjacent to Ashli Babbitt when Capitol cop Michael Leroy Byrd shot her to death without provocation. There are other scenes of graphic violence by Capitol police, including the beating that may have killed Roseanne Boyland, 34, whose death was attributed to a “medical emergency.”

Returning to Steve Bannon: it’s not like he’s in danger of being simply tossed in the slammer and the keys thrown away. His conviction is under appeal, and if he loses the appeal and is given time, his status as another political prisoner will be obvious. He is too visible to be “disappeared.”

Bannon knows every bit of this, and is doubtless using it.

Because he’s a narrative warrior — whether he thinks of it in those terms, or not.

As someone who understands the Establishment’s big lies, he’s not going to deal on its terms — even if, at present, it has the upper hand.

For that could begin to change starting in November. If Trump announces despite the possibility of the Bidenista-compromised Justice Department coming after him, the narrative war will get hotter still, and things will change further.

There is no telling what the Democrats will do. The other night my wife and I lay in bed watching Joe Biden and a South Korean delegation. The South Korean delegate spoke while Biden stood like a potted plant. When Biden finally began to talk, his speech was slow, halting, and barely audible. It was evident that he was reading directly from a teleprompter. I was waiting for the next “end of quote” or some similar gaffe.

If Biden fails to finish his term because of advancing dementia, then what? I’ve seen scenarios that include Kackling Kamala first assuming the reins and then stepping down under some faked pretext. The question is, who will she make her VP in the meantime, to continue the Establishment reign? Nancy Pelosi? California Governor Gavin Newsome? Either would be as big a catastrophe as Biden if not worse.

In short, the Democrats will struggle to come up with someone their globalist-controlled DNC will get behind as having at least minimal credibility. I would not rule out Hillary!

If Trump is the GOP nominee, then other things being equal, he will run right over that person.

Bannon surely knows all this, too. He’s probably reasoned it out, that all he has to do is wait and be patient.

All of which scares the Establishment out of its collective wits.

This explains the January 6 Committee itself, and the desire to bring uncontrollable loose cannons like Bannon to heel this year before Establishment power again begins to slip. It explains the Committee’s reaching out for anyone and everyone who might have been involved in promoting the “insurrection,” such as Ginni Thomas, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife. Bringing her down would be a major step towards bringing him down, which the cultural left has wanted to do for years: a twofer!

All of this also explains the intense focus in Corporate Media on safeguarding, shoring up, etc., “democracy,” which some define as two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for supper.

Democracy is one of the Establishment’s primary propaganda words. The real thing involves majority rule, with the political class held accountable. We have not had either, anywhere in the Anglo-European world, for so many decades you might as well stop counting. I doubt that majority rule is even possible. Not that it would be desirable if it was. Responsible voting in honest elections is the closest we have come. But instead of political classes accountable to voters, what we have had is rule by a tiny, moneyed superelite that has been busy consolidating its power, its members never having been elected to anything. Who elected Klaus Schwab to direct the Great Reset?!

Covid enabled the superelite’s biggest power grab ever.

What some of us want, on the other hand, is to answer to our God, serve our families and clients and other associates with our superpowers, and otherwise be left alone — especially by governments, global corporations, and other predators.

One other author may have figured out Bannon’s strategy, based on his grasp at some level of all this. She doesn’t like it at all, but reveals with great eloquence the Establishment’s sheer terror:

In this week’s posturing before the Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court by the legal team defending Bannon, one thing became clear. These guys are not in it to win it. At the very least, they’re in it for the appeal. And if, in the meantime, they craft a counternarrative that works for Bannon’s podcast audience, riling up the nativist right, introducing more general chaos into American political discourse, and somehow advancing Bannon’s cause of spreading worldwide fascism, well, so much the better.

Or, as right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec said on Monday’s edition of Bannon’s very successful podcast, War Room Pandemic, “Now Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief strategist of the president of the United States, is on show trial for this, and … both sides know that the only reason he is there is because of the effectiveness of the War Room posse, the effectiveness of the national populist movement, and the fact that he was architect of so much of the MAGA movement 2016 (presidential election) victory, and they’re trying to take him off the playing field for 2024. This is the regime going after the opposition.”

Look at the language. Crafting a “counternarrative”? “Riling up the nativist right”? “Spreading worldwide fascism”? “Right-wing provocateur”?

These are the ways voices of the Establishment protect their narrative, convincing themselves that nothing else is legitimate. The description of “the regime going after the opposition” makes perfect sense.

Alongside the realization that for “the regime,” time is again growing short, because the Steve Bannons and Donald Trumps of the world are not going anywhere.

Whatever else happens, I’ve said it in various ways before and I’ll say it again: I think there’s a major donnybrook ahead. Maybe more than one. These two narratives are not compatible. They cannot both exist under the same political roof and legal structure. Once November comes and assuming Republicans retake control of Congress, we can expect the cultural left (which serves the superelite’s narrative) to pull something. Or something might happen they can use, as they did the death of George Floyd. And then we can reasonably predict that the Establishment itself will pull something. It could be another virus (something bigger than monkeypox which may be just testing the waters), or the cyberattack about which I’ve also written intended to take down the entire Internet for long enough to Build it Back Better.

What we can be sure of: the “regime” will do everything in its power to try to prevent Donald Trump from getting back into the White House! It has tremendous wealth including that of billionaires at its disposal!

Steve Bannon probably understands this. What I hope is that he also understands exactly what he (and others) are up against.

E-Mail Steven Yates: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com

Steven Yates’s latest book What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory (2021) is available here and here. His earlier Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic (2011) is available here.

These columns present a perspective unavailable elsewhere: of personal freedom and community autonomy, based on a philosophically-informed conservatism within a Christian worldview holding that in the last analysis, we all answer to our Creator.

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