** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 798 22/11/18 STEVE BANNON: A SPECTRE HAUNTING EUROPE

MY PRESS TV INTERVIEW https://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=4f37f19ec7&e=5707b9e8db LEADS ME TO PONDER: IS STEVE BANNON'S SPECTRE OF POPULISM HAUNTING EUROPE? LIKE THAT OF COMMUNISM IN THE PAST?
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‘A spectre is haunting Europe…’ announced Marx and Engels’ prophetic ‘Communist Manifesto’. It was the spectre of Communism, the two revolutionaries proudly claimed. Communism dissolved, another, equally apocalyptic spectre scares liberal Europeans: Steve Bannon.  Though not quite spectral in his portly shape, President Trump’s former strategist heads ‘the Movement’, a consultancy body aiming at coordinating populist parties in Europe. A spectre of soft fascism?

Indisputably, Bannon scored hugely in getting Trump elected. Hence the fear and loathing he provokes in leftist quarters. Media vituperation of his stubbly, Darth Vader-like figure is relentless. Speaking at the Oxford Student Union the other day, he had to be sheltered from a PC mob. Still, could he work the same political trick in Europe with his Movement? Looks unlikely. He speaks no European language. Nationalist leaders like Marina Le Pen in France and Hungary’s Orban aren’t quite enthusiastic. Only Italy seems willing. Maybe ‘sloppy Steve’ is another Lorenzo De Medici? Might he incubate a political Renaissance in the country of my birth? God knows. Stranger things have happened.

Bannon’s spectre won’t inspire a cultural revolution, though. For that, you need to be a visionary, a philosopher or tough ideologue and he is not. As Antonio Gramsci – Italy again – taught, the prelude to profound political transformation requires achieving cultural hegemony. Marxism-Leninism won over intellectual elites, prior to its eventual conquest of power. If there was an ideology called ‘Bannonism’, it would have to intellectually storm and sack those fortresses of liberalism like the BBC, The Times, the key think tanks, NGO’s and similar dens of psychic iniquity. To replace them with institutions shaped by its alternative Weltanschauung, or world view. Fascism – the real thing – could draw on Hegelian idealism, Futurism, Sorel’s syndicalist violence, Vilfredo Pareto’s sociology and the like. Bannon’s ‘Movement’ is intellectually thin and bloodless. The spectre lacks intellectual appeal. Blasting globalisation, Soros and ‘the party of Davos’ won’t be enough.

Wait a minute…Could Russian writer Alexander Dugin be the man? The author of exciting tracts, including The Fourth Political Theory. A stimulating, I would say incendiary text to rival Marx and Engels’ Manifesto. Rather enjoyable. Dugin is au courant with the key trends in political and ideological thinking. He engages with them, provides suitable critiques and proposes his own vision. But Dugin’s philosophy belongs to the world of Eurasia, not to the West. Like Dostoevsky, to whom he physically resembles, he is a fascinating thinker but…Russian, all too Russian. Too culturally remote a chap. A spectre that won’t do. Demonised by hostile commentators as ‘racist’ – an absurd and unfair label – he has been described as an adviser to President Putin and that too doesn’t help. I am sceptical, actually. What does Putin care for intellectuals? No evidence of that. Putin is a pragmatic nationalist, that’s all. Anyway, the President has the Russian Orthodox Church with her Byzantine mysticism t
o comfort and back him up. That must suffice him. Dugin would be de trop.

My interview with Press TV whose link is posted above mentions Bannon’s ‘dark’ involvement with consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Can online messaging based on algorithmic study persuade people to vote in a certain way? Expert Naomi Nikolajsen in The World Today casts doubt on Big Data’s capacity to manipulate democratic procedures, like elections. An eye-opener of an article. Algorithmic personality analysis isn’t conducive to ‘a deep understanding of people’s intimate traits on a replicable, ethical, global scale’. She doesn’t believe that our political core values ‘are easy to manipulate via algorithmically-driven means’. Hence the evil Russians could not really have swayed the US Presidential elections! Given that Naomi writes in a magazine produced by Chatham House – an impeccably pro-Establishment think tank for whom Bannon and his ilk are like the devil incarnate – you can’t suspect her of seeking to defend Sloppy Steve, can you?

Steve Bannon: a strategist in search of a philosopher king, a Wittgenstein of the Right? He once came close to finding him, perhaps. At the Vatican. No, don’t mean the Pope. It was during a conference there that he let slip a fateful name, evoking a most frightening spectre. Julius Evola. Another Italian, a man whom I knew intimately and about whom I have written a book. One of the most controversial thinkers of the XXth century. His name is dynamite. Unlike Dugin, Evola was totally rooted in Western thought and tradition. Of the wrong kind, mind. Evola’s philosophy of history is the very opposite of liberalism’s. Not progress, not evolution but regress, involution. A gradual fall, a ruinous descent from the highest to the lowest, from the golden age to the iron one – that in which we live now. Good job that Bannon dropped Evola’s name only de passage. He didn’t suggest he was his guru. He knows better than that. Sheer political suicide if he had.

Conclusion: the European/Western Right has a problem. Populists can sometimes reach power, like in Hungary and Brazil, maybe can disinfest the institutions from the ravages of liberal democracy and the Market, but they lack the spiritual imagination, the will or talent to create a better, different project. That can only come via a credible ideology, a philosophy yet unknown. Unless that cultural hegemony materialises, the likes of Steve Bannon will not change the European Zeitgeist.

Spectres lack reality. Marx and Engels fleshed out the ghost of Communism into a powerful, prophetic utopia. The analogous spectre of the Right has yet to emerge.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli






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