One-time Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon is back, looking chipper. And why not? He’s the undisputed ruler of MAGA-world and there is no more powerful group in the US.
The jowly sidekick to Trump 45 has slimmed down courtesy of a stint in the slammer last year, time served because he refused to play ball with Congressional inquiries into the January 6, 2021, insurrection. His podcast, WarRoom, is a megaphone to the angry American mob who put his guy into the White House and who will never be pushed around again — or so he tells them.
Bannon has also been the bearer of great news this week. Courtesy of Trump’s largesse, his daughter, Maureen, has been appointed to the board of visitors of West Point Military Academy, the training ground for the elite of the US military. The provocateur-in-chief was chuffed about the family honour, which would see a Bannon having a say on the curriculum, discipline and academic methods of the august academy.
Them’s fightin’ words
The real headline news though was something way more ominous. Trump also named retired general Michael Flynn to the academy board, thereby positioning a Russia-friendly, convicted (then pardoned) felon and serial conspiracy theorist in the inner sanctum of US defence.
The Flynn file is thick with off-the-charts acts, any one of which should disqualify him from high office. As national security adviser to Trump during his first presidency, Flynn was sacked after three weeks when he was found to have lied to vice-president Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador in Washington. He was ultimately pardoned by Trump but those dealings were the subject of an FBI investigation and a plea deal. That was only one of several occasions when Flynn was ensnared by his Russian contacts.
To Russia, with love
As head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn visited Russia in 2013 and became the first US official to be invited to the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the GRU. In 2015 he attended a special commemorative event for the Kremlin-backed television network RT. It was later revealed he was paid US$45,000 for his attendance and was seated at the same table as Vladimir Putin. CNN reported that US intelligence officials became concerned about potential Russian influence on Flynn. Some limited how much sensitive information they shared with him. One US foreign policy scholar, Stephen Halper, was so alarmed by Flynn’s close association with a Russian woman at a conference that he had his concerns passed on to US authorities.
Russia aside, Flynn caused further alarm when he swore his allegiance to the extreme QAnon conspiracy theory which has it that Satan-worshipping pedophiles had infiltrated the highest offices of the land. He posted a recording of the QAnon oath-taking ceremony to Twitter. It showed him standing by a blazing fire along with five others as he recited the QAnon creed: “Where we go one, we go all. God bless America.”
Lies in ruins
Flynn, naturally, ran hard with Trump’s big stolen election lie in 2020. He called on Trump to suspend the constitution and declare martial law for the military to run a fresh election.
“Freedom never kneels except for God,” he tweeted. Flynn, in case you hadn’t guessed, is a Christian nationalist. He is the full Trump catastrophe, down to his choice of lawyer, the extravagant conspiracist Sidney Powell. Now he’s rubbing elbows with America’s military class again as US defence becomes increasingly MAGA-tised.
Bannon’s podcast celebrates Flynn as the ultimate patriot, the hard man who cares little for the law and convention. WarRoom has a cast of regulars including the alt-right Laura Loomer, who describes herself as a pro-white nationalist and proud Islamophobe. Its White House correspondent (so-called) is 24-year-old Natalie Winters, another off the production line of young and glam far-right-wing ideologues who love a camera and who speak 13 to the dozen fluent, gleaming-teeth Trump.
Word of (dis)honour
Through Winters, listeners learnt that billionaire George Soros was pulling the strings behind the scenes and was paying activists to protest against Trump. This is fairly standard conspiracy stuff. More concerning is Bannon-world’s view on Ukraine which casts Putin as hard done by. She said:
“We know in reality it’s all propaganda and hyping it up. Obviously [Russia] are bad guys, but to exploit that fear to make the argument that we should keep sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine [is wrong].”
Bannon and Winters agreed that Washington DC think-tanks, “the K street lobbyists” and the entire “globalist and Atlanticist” class had made their millions out of “thwarting the rise of Russia”. Trump was now reversing what Winters called the “managed decline of the United States”. Bannon was cheering on a Trump showdown with the judiciary on the question of deportations.
In an attempt to understand the MAGA universe, Californian Democrat Governor (and possible 2028 presidential candidate) Gavin Newsome has launched a podcast in which he interviews figures such as Bannon. He says he aims to find common ground, using rationality as a tool. Pigs might fly.
Dark days
Bannon’s threshold position is that the 2020 election was stolen and that this must never happen again. Facts be damned. After nearly 20 years of scheming and dreaming, this is Bannon’s moment. He was there at the beginning of the far-right online site Breitbart News. He was a vice-president of Cambridge Analytica, pioneering the dark arts of influencing elections. He once told his followers they needed to be prepared to go to prison if they were true patriots. He wants the end game to take place now.
Are Australia’s national security experts tuning into WarRoom? What about PM Anthony Albanese’s people? They’d have to wonder how Australia could contemplate military ties with a country where Flynn, a QAnon lunatic and suspected Russian agent, is anywhere near the levers of power.
We are certainly entering territory that we have not seen before. It is beyond alarming, it is now outrightly dangerous.
You guys really hype the anti Russia BS don’t you? Anyway, Flynn’s a looney for sure, so he’ll fit right in.
What is of most concern to me is that all of this ‘extremist tendency’ and ‘radical ultra-right’ alignment has come out of the closet so quickly. To me, the sheer number of these ‘what the f##k’ players is also frightening.
For God’s sake, get us out of AUKUS as quick as possible, and before we are dragged into something really horrible.
I honestly think that we have *already* been dragged into something really horrible.
Trump has certainly Made America Ugly Again
Sarah Ferguson’s bestie, Steve Bannon.
All that was exposed with Ferguson and Bannon was that he thought she was a good iinterviewer.
with apologies to Monty Python – “what have the Americans done for us?’ and before you say ‘saved us from Japan’ – did they do that for us?
Now is a good time to re assess our allegiances and think about why we don’t align with India or even China.
Neither are particularly democratic, if that really matters, but they are, by and large, predictable and resourceful and living in our(the real) world.
i agree Patrick. Time for Aus to become an independent Republic, joining with all our neighbours in the region as good friends and trade partners; we need to shake off the failing colonial powers – US UK – and strike a new non-aligned stance.
We need defence sovereignty! That way we could deal frankly and strategically with all players.
The sooner Australia dissociates itself from Uncle Sam, the better. Now that America has turned (spy term for ‘you’re now one of us’, make of it what you will) to the dark side by electing the worst possible person in the world for president, it’s time to ditch the 80 year old relationship. I have persistently scoffed at conspiratorial John le Carre spy-stuff between MAGA mob and the Kremlin, but I am beginning to think differently. MAGA maniacs, and that’s what they are, now have unfettered power under the demented DJT whose tentacles have already begun to reach us here in Oz – Tariffs; withdrawal of funding for joint US/Aus university partnerships; and today the PBS. How long before its influence permeates the military/ASIO, et al.,?
Bang on, Jeff. This mob cannot be trusted. Its motives are dubious at best, its duplicity and venality quite clear. To continue to crawl to Trump Inc will cause us nothing but pain.
Yep.
G’day David, you certainly have been quite partisan today. NATO bombed Serbia without a UN resolution and attacked and completely destroyed Libya with a UN resolution fig leaf (sic). The US invaded Iraq using A LIE the same with Afghanistan but you mention none of these as background to your unprovoked SMO of Russia’s. I am no MAGA follower and suggest Trump is deranged cult leader of disillusioned hoi polloi but he has saved us from a possible ww3 and nuclear annihilation maybe only temporarily if people like yourself and VDL,KK, Starmer Merz Macron etc who want to cut pensions and health to increase military spending for continued war against Russia. Europe and Britian have been trying this since 1800s but never succeeded. Remember The cookie monster Nuland and the Maidan in 2014 and her f….. the EU and all that followed you leave out also. Now do you remember the Cuban missile crisis, what was JFKs response now think Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania and the militarisation of the hohols and you have today’s situation which you only see one side of.
Please be less partisan or you will lose relevance and be no better than Steve Bannon or the bouffant one himself.
Who wants Europe to increase spending and reduce spending on health and education? I thought it was the orange one.
Well said, not nearly enough analaysis of the causes of the Russian Ukraine war. Russia was provoked, the US only too happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
Good lord Steven, That’s a first class rant, all over the place, God knows what you’re getting at
I think it “amounts” to the argument that NATO and the EU are imperfect (pretty obvious really) therefore it’s not fair to criticise Russia. A very old fallacy…
But it’s hard to make much sense of what was posted.
G’day Felix, over the last 200 years how many times has Russia attacked/invaded Europe, none yet Europe aka the West has invaded/attacked 4 times including the US after ww1.
Russia lost 27million lives in ww2 and beat the German fascists and saved Europe.
Yet you think it’s a fallacy, well obviously your history is lacking or you are partisan or a troll maybe.
The West have the problem with Russia not the other way round. Now think about Operation Gladio, research it if you don’t know what it is. That started in 1945 and now we are seeing the results in Ukraine with the slaughter of the hohols as proxy for the West to once again defeat Russia.
This is just silly.
Nobody denies past history, but that doesn’t even begin to excuse present wrongs.
Morality is not a form of perpetual arithmetic. Every action and every situation must be assessed on its own merits.
Nobody has been attacking Russia since Hitler. And, while I enormously respect the Russian effort and sacrifice in fighting Hitler, I seem to recall that they did get a bit of assistance from a few other nations who now happen to be part of NATO.
Yes, “the West” and NATO did oppose the Soviet Union but they never attacked. It was ultimately its own internal problems that doomed the USSR and its novel, brief and entirely connected Empire under the Warsaw Pact. It was never going to last and there is no sane basis for trying to restore it as Putin is doing.
Nobody provoked Russia to invade Ukraine. Their borders were not under threat. The Ukranians were not attacking or endangering them.
I guess you were too excited by your own wish gallop of factoids to actually read what I said and understand it. I did NOT say your history was fallacious, rather that your argument was. It’s called the tu quoque fallacy. YOU might like to look that up.
G’day Felix, no one is talking about the USSR downfall which obviously was assisted by the Cold war efforts of the west as they have with Venezuela etc and all the secular Arab nationalists states like Syria etc
Felix, you say no one threatened Russia’s or its borders well ask Merkel and Hollande signatories to the Minsk agreement in 2015 I think who admitted it was a ruse to militarise and heavily arm the Banderites and Ukraine’s military for future war/invasion. Then think of the installation of nuclear capable Aegis Ashore batteries in Poland and Romania which were formerly aligned with Russia, then the banning of the Russian language and the outlawing of the Ukrainian Orthodox church in Ukraine following the USAID invoked Maidan in 2014, plus the Ukraine military started attacking it’s own citizens in the Donbass and then spends the next eight years shelling Donetsk from their huge heavy fortification in Avdeevka.
During this time repeated endeavours were made by Putin
Lavrov and Nebenzya for a detente with the US neocons but you know the results. Pure dismissal and further arming which was even started by Trump supplying Tomahawk missiles in 2018 I think.
Even whilst amassing forces on Ukraine’s northern borders in late 2022 constant requests for Ukraine’s neutrality and no OTAN membership were made by the Russian Federation, too much info for here and now to continue with the minutae of the diplomatic efforts msde.. Then after entering Ukraine for a shock,further agreements were vetoed by the West a la Boris Johnson for continued war as is now still the situation with OTAN/EU wanting continued warfare to the point of mortgaging their future and attempting to raise 1.8trillion euros for rearming of itself for future war with Russia.
Now you can see the chain of events which I have mentioned above which is far from complete and understand the slow and steady build up by the West for war with the Russian Federation which ad nauseum repeats was unprovoked, which you obviously feel is the case I feel.
I look forward to your reply.
G’day Felix, I neglected to comment on your remark re a bit of assistance from a few other nations who are now in OTAN. I am not sure who you mean as all Eastern European nations had previously been suppressed by the Germans whilst they were allies with the USSR. The Ukrainian Banderites supported the Nazis with killing of minority behind the lines and attacking Russian forces and killing Poles also so not much help. The Hlodomar was still felt and experienced by the Kulaks of the steppes at the time.
Please advise what you which nations you were referring to.
G’day Lee, is it your spelling that’s lacking or comprehension, the Empire goes all over the place to do its dirty deeds so how to limit the telling by being in one place only just for you.Sorry for the overload.
“the bouffant one”: priceless.
If anyone wanted to ruin America, just fix the votes and get the huge, undeserved, EGO in as president. And look how fast he has done just that, made it ten times worse than before for now. There’s worse to come, I’m sure, much wors.e
Time to shut down Pine Gap & send the US spooks packing.
Steven wants us to believe that just because Russia hasn’t invaded NATO countries (it’s just ‘resumed’ a few neighbouring ones), that it is not dangerous. Putin and his oligarchy are so adept at eliminating serious opposition. That’s enough to convince me we should never trust Russia as it exists today.
G’day Colin, instead we believe in the US dajjal instead and look where we are. You obviously suffer from cognitive dissonance as you can’t see what the US has done from Panama previously to Vietnam and onto Syria Libya, Iraq Afghanistan etc etc. Please advise how bordering countries wars are bad but across the world and all over is honky dory and kill millions is fine and dandy too.
Who has used the nuclear weapon in anger or tested the weapon on huge population centres.
The empire propaganda has sunk into every cell of your being and you are their cyborg warrior now. Go past the headlines and learn history and see for yourself, the internet has a wealth of information but also revised history and lies.
America hands down wins the narrative but is losing the war literally and figuratively but you want to barrack for the losing side who Henry Kissinger said of, it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy but to be America’s friend is fatal. Think about that Colin.