Bannon's Long-Game

A Apocalyptic Bannon TEVE BANNON, President Trump’s chief strategist, was removed from the National Security Council in early April. Among the The Furthest ARTICLE Kremlinologists who watch the Trump White House, this has been interpreted as a setback for Sthe man whose neo-reactionary philosophy provides the guid- Exit: Bannon’s ing principles of Trumpism: Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and excited anticipation of a new American revolution. But Bannon’s ousting has also been called a disguised promotion, as he is restored to his proper role of the mostly unseen puppet-master. Long-Game In the first part of this article in last month’s issue, I put Bannon in the context of the alt-right and drew the connections between him, Gamergate, Milo Yiannopoulos, 4chan and Alexander Dugin. Here I want to continue this profile of Bannon by looking at his political Part 2: Trump’s chief strategist philosophy. Bannon subscribes to an sees history as ‘Turnings’ - esoteric version of history The State in its known as the ‘Fourth Turning’. current decadent The High, The Awakening, The Developed by amateur histori- Unravelling and (drumroll) The ans William Strauss and Neil baby-boomer form Howe in the 1990s, the Fourth must be dismantled. Yet this Crisis; and Neoreaction ushers in Turning applies the logic of cyclical history to the United “deconstruction” (his own the Dark Enlightenment, and exit States. Each turning represents a distinctive atmosphere that term) is simply a prelude to a dominates a generation. Or complete regeneration of the by Paul Eliot-Ennis better yet, to borrow a phrase from ‘True Detective’, a psycho- society to be accomplished sphere, encompassing the through total war social field of possibilities. In the first turning, following a period of crisis, the atmosphere is one of societal confidence built on a strong state and positively repressed individualism, known as “The High”. For Strauss and Howe, this period ran from the end of World War II to the Kennedy assassination in 1963. This is the era of the Greatest Generation and profound optimism in the American Dream. May 2017 4 7 POLITICS This turning was followed by “The Awaken- from individualism and back toward statism, ing”, where the state-individual relation was since only a strong state could win such a battle. inverted. Characterised by a dismantling of the For Bannon, there is a multi-faceted project to social order and the pursuit of individual auton- accomplish. The State in its current decadent omy, it descended, over time, into generalised baby-boomer form must be dismantled. Yet this Central to Bannon’s confusion as society splintered. It ran up until “deconstruction” (his own term) is simply a prel- the 1980s, and was followed by “The Unravel- ude to a complete regeneration of the society to vision is an existential ling” where individualism became unfettered to be accomplished through total war. On this such an extent that societal ties became excep- point, we find ourselves hoping that Trump’s per- confrontation with Islam tionally weak. Then follows the final stage, the sonality will prove sufficiently resistant to that will radicalise the entire one Bannon believes we are entering, of “The Bannon’s apocalypticism. Some say it is General Crisis,” where conditions require a radical re- James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Secretary of Defense, Millennial generation away assertion of the collective. who will be the greatest obstacle to Bannon’s from individualism toward One may wonder what the crisis was that vision. Surely this makes Mattis the world’s most shifted us into the Crisis. For Bannon the finan- unlikely dove. statism, to win the battle for cial crisis of 2008 marked the moment when Maybe you know all this. You have heard Americanism the individualism of the baby boomers was about Bannon the puppeteer and the raw revealed in its full consequence: a stolen onslaught the alt-right has engaged Western cul- Enlightenment comes not from Moldbug, but future. This is how he couches his vision when ture with. Yet the story is even murkier. Alongside from the British philosopher Nick Land. Land has speaking to older conservative audiences, the alt-right exists another position, neoreac- a storied history, emerging as one of the most requiring that they own up to their failure and tion, and it as close as this spectrum has to a exciting Continental philosophers in the 1990s then pointing toward the rise, in line with philosophical system. Trumpist populism and before abandoning academia and the west for a Strauss and Howe, of a robust Millennial genera- Bannonesque esotericism are no doubt in the freelance writing career in Shanghai. Through- tion that will blast through the Crisis to get to the ascendant, but they are always threatened by out, he served as an intellectual lightning rod for next High. their innate anarchism. There is a sense that the the hugely diverse spectrum of alt-right and neo- Bannon has in mind a quite specific segment game might implode, that equilibrium could be reactionary ideas. This has involved him of the Millennial generation: the pick-up artists, restored, that a counter-populist movement extolling the virtues of cryptocurrencies, human the meme-warriors of Twitter and 4chan, and the might render Trump’s reign an aberration. biodiversity, and singularitarianism (space pre- campus-touring Milo enthusiasts. It also Neoreaction, in contrast, is content to abide vents me from developing these), but his most includes the Chad nationalists, a group of its time. Developed by the elusive Curtis Yarvin, important contribution, is his emphasis on the “norms” who might not explicitly position them- under the penname Mencius Moldbug, neoreac- all-too-easily overlooked libertarian concept of selves on the political spectrum, but tend to be tion binds a disdain for stagnated democratic exit. on the right. Did Chad vote for Trump? It’s implicit politics with a cold formalist system of neo-mon- In the 1970s and 1980s, libertarians became in his name, like some kind of metaphysical archism. Given the inefficiencies of democracy, split over whether to enter representational poli- property. And it means Chad’s dad and his girl- only a strong leader, fully free to implement a tics. The ‘entryist’ wing established the friend and his fraternity did too. political programme, can steady the ship. Neo- Libertarian Party in the United Sates as a means These people will quietly act to maintain reaction sees itself as an antidote to the to introduce the idea of libertarianism into main- Americanism, but not necessarily in a militant Whiggish misreading of history that traces a con- stream politics and out of obscurity; similar way. The decision might not always be theirs, tinuous record of human progress. Instead of the parties have cropped up in other countries. The however, as central to Bannon’s vision is an Enlightenment, neoreaction ushers in the Dark American party was eventually bought out by the existential confrontation with Islam that will Enlightenment. wealthy Koch Brothers, who pitched a bid for the radicalise the entire Millennial generation away The most consistent formulation of the Dark presidency in 1980, but eventually gained a foot- hold in the Republican Party. Ron Paul long acted as the libertarian conscience in presidential debates, never expecting to win, but at least influencing the debate (the act is now performed by his son, Rand). Yet not all libertarians believed that entryism was the best method. Rather than gain a ‘voice’ in democratic politics they would seek an exit from it. This concept of exit over voice is expressed in numerous proposals: isolated communes, seasteading (living on ships at sea), space colonisation, and perhaps most successfully, by developing a digital frontier. Land in particular praises this cyber-libertarian politics for its pragmatic ability to implement exit. The most successful cyber-libertarians have been the cypherpunks. Originally a small group of privacy-conscious hackers, the cypherpunks planted the seed for the develop- ment of a digital currency, known as Bitcoin, that 4 8 May 2017 ‘PayPal’s Peter Thiel is betting on a Moldbuggian outcome where the state is recognised as a large company run by a CEO. With Trump installed CEO- King, Thiel seems himself as its Chief Technology Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Officer has allowed a large number of libertarians to opt for a new elite, recognisable to one another Sachs trader, is by no means immune to such a out, within constraints, from state-backed through their politically correct, stilted dis- perspective, and he too has been linked to Mold- finance. Bitcoin also acted as the bedrock for the course. Politics is the natural home for such an bug, but it is Trump who plays the part so well, emergence of darknet marketplaces, such as the elite, an arena where milquetoast personalities all gold furniture and court intrigue. infamous Silk Road, where illicit goods could be coast along through connections and survive pri- As in all kingdoms, it is the machinations of traded outside the gaze of the state. There is no marily by causing as little disruption as possible. court politics that will ultimately settle the direc- denying, however, that these new, ungovernable Thiel finds himself, therefore, within the recog- tion of the meta-religion of the nation. For what worlds are only proto-libertarian, in as much as nisable orbit of alt-right concerns, especially is most consequential about the alt-right is its they do not bleed out into the ‘real’ world. those about campus indoctrination, political cor- annihilation of what Moldbug called “the Cathe- At least, that’s how it seemed until just a rectness and haughty elitism. dral”. The Cathedral describes a couple years ago, when libertarians noticed a More than anything else, however, it is the media-academic-cultural consensus with condi- strange new phenomenon.

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