Analysis of Steven Bannon’s interview with The New York Times to understand the gestation of the serpent’s egg.

This is a translation from Portuguese of an article from the Brazilian Partido Communista (Communist Party). Read the original article here.

Nazism in the 21st century continues to grow despite the electoral defeats in 2020 and 2022 of its main exponents in the American continent, Trump and Bolsonaro. Defeats followed by failed coup attempts in the USA and Brazil.

In addition to the military movements and Nazi and terrorist actions carried out by the governments of Israel and Ukraine, the wave is on the rise in Argentina (Partido Libertario – PL), the Netherlands ( Partij voor de Vrijheid-PVV ), France ( Rassemblement National-RN ), Germany (Alternative für Deutschland-AFD), Portugal (Chega), Italy ( Fratelli d’Italia – FDI).

As the crisis of traditional right-wing governments increases and the left, which defends the neoliberal management of the State,  with its social bases, becomes more worn out, neo-Nazis present themselves as a consistent political alternative to defend the interests of big financial capital, imperialism and “traditional Western values” against threats coming from a group of countries oppressed by the imperialist system, led by Russia, China and Iran, whose influence radiates from a bloc of Eurasian countries and extends to Africa and Latin America.

On the eve of being arrested again, Steven Bannon, 70, one of  Donald Trump ‘s top advisers  and inspiration behind the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, a faction of the Republican Party, was convicted of refusing to appear before the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol in Washington by Trump supporters. He claims that the conversations he had with the president that day should be protected under executive privilege.

We reproduce with critical comments excerpts from an interview conducted by journalist David Brooks, opinion columnist for The Times. Steve Bannon’s interview with The New York Times was conducted on July 1, 2024. Bannon is a fascist with a keen bourgeois class consciousness in this decadent moment of the imperialist system created at the end of the Second World War.

In the interview, Bannon projects that “Our movement is metastasizing into something that is different from America First; it is American Citizens First”, demonstrating that MAGA’s racism and xenophobia evolve into even more elitist conceptions of the financial oligarchy.

Two opposing expectations about the effects of economic crises on the masses. The relationship between the 2008 economic crisis and the conditions favorable to the penetration of Nazi ideology 

The journalist seeks to outline a broad panorama, from a liberal’s point of view, of the decline of the left and rise of the right after the 2008 crisis:

“David Brooks – After the financial crisis, I thought it would be a great time to be a leftist. You have a financial crisis caused by irresponsible capitalism, wages are stagnant, inequality is rising. Hell, even I almost became a Marxist. But somehow this has been a better era for the populist right than for the populist left.

Steven Bannon – You see the America First Democrats. Look at John Fetterman. Fetterman and Steve Bannon are closer on their economics than Steve Bannon and the Republican establishment. The left didn’t have what it took because of the cultural issues and the racial issues, all this craziness that they’re in. They wanted open borders. They want DEI. [1]

The historic left is in total collapse. They always focus on the noise, never on the signal. They don’t understand that the MAGA movement, as it gains momentum and develops, is moving much further to the right than President Trump. They will look back fondly on Donald Trump. They will ask: Where is Trump when we need him?” (David Brooks,  My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon , The New York Times,  July 1, 2024).

As Brooks states, the expectations of common sense and even of broad sectors of the left were that the socialist left would rise after the deep capitalist crisis of 2008. The market economy shrank, wages were flattened, unemployment and underemployment increased, and social misery soared; in other words, the objective conditions for revolt and social revolution apparently expanded. However, the expectation that the economic crisis favors social revolution has not been fulfilled historically. On the contrary, economic crises have been capitalized on more by the right than by the left.

The leader of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and October 1917, Leon Trotsky, had already noted this relationship at the beginning of the 20th century: “A crisis acts on the working class not to exalt it, but to depress it, it takes away all confidence in its own strength and dilutes its political forces. A new breath of life in industrial life is necessary to animate the proletariat, regenerate it, restore its security, and make it capable of continuing the struggle.” (Leon Trotsky, My Life, page 265).

In fact, contrary to the decline of the revolutionary spirit caused by capitalist economic crises, industrial recovery strengthens the revolutionary movement. The greatest expression of this was the victorious revolutionary processes that occurred during the so-called 30 golden years of capitalism, between 1945 and 1975. The era of greatest capitalist economic growth was also the historical era in which there were more socialist revolutions (Korea, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.) and independence processes in countries that had been colonized by imperialism, in addition to the rise of the mass movement throughout Europe, Africa and Latin America, only contained by fascist and pro-imperialist dictatorships in Latin America and Indonesia.

The 2008 crisis greatly accentuated a phenomenon that had been latent for the last few decades: the deindustrialization of the United States and the loss of 25% of the purchasing power of working-class families, simultaneously with the indebtedness of families. The deindustrialization of the regions with  the oldest and most extensive industrialization  in the United States, formerly known as the manufacturing belt, where the steel, mechanical, metallurgical (automotive), petrochemical, food and textile sectors stood out, the  Great Lakes  and  Appalachian Mountains regions  caused the working-class electorate of this region to migrate their votes from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 2016, when Trump promised to reindustrialize and make America great again. Since 2016, the Rust Belt proletariat has been and continues to be a determining factor in the US presidential elections. The proletariat of the Manufacturing Belt has been transformed into the lumpenproletariat of the Rust Belt.

Before swapping Biden for Kamala Harris (The Communist Party criticizes the support of workers’ organizations for Harris’ imperialist candidacy. To learn about the Communist Party’s position on the 2024 US presidential elections, read Why are the Democratic Party leadership, corporate media, and pro-capitalist identity movements supporting Kamala Harris’ candidacy?  and   Is the PSOL Resistance current supporting Kamala Harris? ), the imperialist press highlighted the Rust Belt states that are the deciding factor in the elections: “Joe Biden’s most likely path to reelection is narrow and depends on the same three states that gave Donald Trump the Oval Office in 2016 and then took it away from him in 2020 — Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin” (NBC News,  To beat Trump, Biden ‘must have’ the Rust Belt , June 12, 2024).

This was one of the most dramatic results of the financialization/deindustrialization carried out by the US imperialist bourgeoisie. After the 2008 crisis, the bourgeoisie then, through fascism, seduced and mobilized this proletariat, which is its own victim, to join the bourgeoisie in the persecution of other proletarians and oppressed peoples on the planet.

Trump as a moderate and post-Trump neo-Nazism

The bourgeoisie’s bet on Nazism is like quenching thirst with salt water. It is never enough and heaven (in this case, hell) is the limit for the radicalization of bourgeois politics against the oppressed. This evolution of Trumpism, or rather, of MAGA, into an even more ambitious movement and consistent with the heinous plans of the bourgeoisie is anticipated by Trump’s advisor. Apart from the issue of Ukraine and Artificial Intelligence, on other issues such as immigration and China, MAGA’s aspirations are explosive:

“David Brooks – You said something I have to ask, that Trump is a moderate. In what areas is the MAGA movement further to the right than Trump?

Steven Bannon: I think we’re more to the right on radical spending cuts, No. 1. I think we’re much more radical on things like Ukraine. President Trump is a peacemaker. He wants to go in and negotiate and figure something out as a negotiator. I think 75 percent of our movement would like an immediate, total shutdown — not another dime in Ukraine, and massive investigations into where the money went. On the southern border and mass deportations, I don’t think President Trump is anywhere near where we are. They all need to go home.

Also, on artificial intelligence, we are virulently anti-A.I. I think big regulations need to come.

President Trump is a good-hearted person. He’s a people person, right? On China, I think he admires Xi Jinping. But we’re super-hawks. We want to see the elimination of the Chinese Communist Party.” (David Brooks,  My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon , The New York Times,  July 1, 2024)

For Russia and for Europe itself, it is better that MAGA wants an immediate suspension of the war efforts against Russia in Ukraine, and of the heavy investments of the imperialist state in the arms industry, which sabotage the economy of the European powers in favor of the United States. There are contradictions between MAGA and the Military Industrial Complex (or in modern terms, the MICIMATT: Military-Industrial-Congress-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tanks Complex, according to current political activist and former CIA agent Raymond McGovern). Contradictions that were responsible for the Trumpist assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 not resulting in a coup d’état. After all, the Trumpist faction of imperialism did not have the military and police apparatus to assert its interests over the other side. These contradictions will have to be overcome in the process of MAGA’s rise to power.

MAGA’s distrust of AI is due to the fact that they need to take control of this technological paraphernalia associated with intelligence and espionage and cyber warfare away from the Democrats and the deep state.

The prospects of the neo-Nazi MAGA movement depend on the conquest of the military, police and media apparatus and the entire toolbox developed by the US imperialist system’s machine of domination, so that it can carry out its armed war aspirations against the workers and oppressed peoples of the world. As long as it does not control part or all of the Military Industrial Complex, MAGA will continue to be an alternative, non-hegemonic movement in the class domination of the US and the international imperialist system.

To seduce the most xenophobic section of the proletariat, which believes that unemployment and social misery are caused by foreign invasion, especially of Latinos, Bannon promises “mass deportation”. Trumpism corresponds to the section of the American business community that has the most conflicts of interest with the Chinese economy and that is why the neo-Nazi advisor takes it upon himself to say: “We are super-hawks. We want to see the elimination of the Chinese Communist Party.” 

Trumpism 2.0, the first steps of a future Trump administration and the civil war

Trumpism has learned from its mistakes and if it comes to power again through the electoral route, it will not want to leave. To do so, it needs to dismantle and take over the MICIMATT machinery, just as Hitler took over the German military and police state, converting it into a war machine at his disposal.

David Brooks – What do you think a second Trump administration would look like in the first few weeks? Months?

Steven Bannon – Project 2025 and others are working on this — to immediately focus on immigration, the forever wars, and the tax and finance. And simultaneously on deconstructing the administrative state and going after the complete and total destruction of the deep state. In the first 100 days — this is going to be different from 2016 — we will have 3,000 political appointees ready to go.

David Brooks – Were these people selected and trained? When Trump came in 2017, you had a lot of Republican holdovers —

Steven Bannon – We had nothing. You have five or six groups that are building subject matter expertise, putting together position papers. They’re vetting people right now. So you’re going to go to war with the existing administrative state and the Praetorian Guard deep state. My point is, let’s, in the transition, get all the federal contracts. Shut them all down. Let’s get MAGA in there. Right. Let’s get our guys on the contracts. It’s going to be a hostile takeover of the apparatus.

David Brooks – Who is the inner circle? Who is the chief of staff?

Steven Bannon – I think you’re going to have somebody who knows what’s going on. Guys like Dr. Kevin Roberts and others. Also, I strongly believe that shortly after the Associated Press calls the election, Jerome Powell will resign. And then you’ll pick a new head of the Federal Reserve. And you’ll pick a Treasury secretary and an attorney general.

If he doesn’t get there through the electoral route, he could try the route of a second American civil war. The plan to dismantle the Democratic machines in the first 100 days is called “Project 2025.” Bannon promises to purge the machine of at least 3,000 positions of trust, political appointments of untrustworthy Democrats and Republicans, and to review all federal business contracts, obtaining control of the Central Bank, the FED, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General by MAGA: “We’re going to put our guys on the contracts. It will be a hostile takeover of the machine.”

At the time of the interview, the replacement of Biden by Harris had not yet been operationalized. This occurred just a few days after the strange attack on Trump (see  LCFI-CC Statement: Trump’s Attack and the “Civil War” in the USA ). The ruling staff had not been, as it is now, fully mobilized to stop Trump’s rise to the White House. Today, Trumpism is still disoriented and in need of reorganization to face the electoral campaign or the civil war.

Bannon’s interview shows how far the fascist project has advanced, regardless of the outcome of the elections that will take place on November 5, 2024. The tendencies towards civil war in the 21st century are based on the internal geopolitical differences of the US imperialist bourgeoisie between the tactics of exploitation and oppression of the oppressed peoples of the planet and in relation to the class struggle itself. In terms of strategy, both factions present themselves as the ones that best defend the aspiration to impose on humanity in the 21st century the continuation of US domination under the imperialist system at any cost. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that, for the Democrats, the main enemy is Russia, for the Republicans, the main enemy is China.

What is neo-Nazism?

The neo-Nazi phenomenon is: 

1) a counterrevolutionary and anticommunist superstructural movement that develops on the material basis of the decadent and deindustrialized West by the neoliberal policies of financialization; 

2) a reaction by the imperialist system to the economic and military development of China and Russia, capitalist states deformed by their legacy: the nationalization of the means of production, economic planning and deformed proletarian dictatorships. In different ways, China and Russia represent counter-trends to the prescription of Pinochet’s neoliberal shock therapies  while at the same time taking advantage of the market integration promoted by globalization to expand their businesses of buying and selling commodities (including energy), manufacturing  and military assets; 

3) it presents itself as the most resolute fraction of imperialism to stop the wheel of history, not to lose control of the capitalist world market itself to the Eurasian “workshop of the world” and its new multilateral cooperation organizations (BRICS, New Silk Road, New Development Bank, Shanghai Cooperation Organization ) increasingly integrated; 

4) on which a policy of reconquest is launched, particularly of Latin America, to maintain the 21st century within the domain of the imperialist system created by the agreement between the main imperialist nations under the leadership of the USA after the Second World War. 

To defeat this passing but still rising wave, which is predominant in the decadent West, the proletariat needs to understand its contradictions and develop a consistent policy of an anti-imperialist united front, since neo-Nazism is the spearhead of an imperialist system that refuses to die.

Footnotes

1. DEI,  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  is a term used to describe policies and programs that promote the representation and participation of diverse groups of individuals. DEI encompasses people of different ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, disabilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations.