As I’ve been reading the articles this week about the new administration I can’t help but think about what has been happening with the executive orders and other actions that they must be the thrilling highlight of Steve Bannon’s adult life. He’s long said that he wants to see the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” My recollection is that he talked about that as early as the 2016 election, but I couldn’t quickly find a record of that. He did, though, mention it at CPAC in February, 2017; and then there’s this...
In February, 2017, a Guardian columnist wrote about Bannon’s desire to emulate Lenin.
“Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too,” replied Bannon. “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
Later in the column, the author describes Lenin’s style. How familiar does this sound?
But much of Lenin’s political style and strategy can be adapted to present conditions. He depended on constant conflict and drama. He deliberately used shock tactics. He was nearly always domineering, abusive and combative, and often downright vicious. He battered opponents into submission with the deliberate use of violent language, not because he was personally vicious – he wasn’t – but as a technique “calculated to evoke hatred, aversion, contempt … not to convince, not to correct the mistakes of the opponent but to destroy him, to wipe him and his organisation off the face of the earth”.
Steve Bannon has long been whispering in the felon’s ear. Leveraging his natural vindictive and petty behaviors into something much larger and far more dangerous.
We’ve all seen the impact of Bannon since at least 2016. I remembering writing postcards to tfg before his 2017 inauguration letting him know my fear of having someone as dangerous as Bannon acting as his advisor. Seems so quaint now, doesn’t it?
By the time I wrote the postcard I had finished reading the book pictured at the top of this diary. It was a good book about a war and, more importantly, the immediate post war I didn’t know anything about. The war in question was the Franco Prussian war, and the sum of my knowledge of it was that it was between France and Prussia.
Immediately after the Franco Prussian war Paris was held by French Socialists who had been part of the French military defending the city during the war. They held power briefly, but were quite violent and deadly towards the French military and civil society. Ultimately, the French army suppressed the group with lethal action.
Here’s the section that was so disturbing to me upon learning of Bannon’s influence. Alistair Horne, (the author of The Fall of Paris, shown above), writes:
All through his life Lenin studied the Commune; worshipped its heroism, analysed its successes, criticized its faults and compared its failures with the failure of the abortive Russian revolution of 1905. In his mind, two mistakes committed by the Commune stood out above all others; as he declared in an often quoted article written on the anniversary of March 18th, in 1908:
…The proletariat stopped half-way; instead of proceeding with the ‘expropriation of the expropriators’, it was carried away by dreams of establishing supreme justice in the country...institutions such as the Bank were not seized...The second error was the unnecessary magnanimity of the proletariat; instead of annihilating it’s enemies, it endeavored to exercise moral influence on them; it did not attach the right value to the importance of purely military activity in civil war, and instead of crowning its victory in Paris by a determined advance on Versailles, it hesitated and gave time to the Versailles government to gather its dark forces…
When the moment came for the revolution for which his whole life had been a preparation, Lenin would not repeat the Commune’s ‘half-measures’ and ‘unnecessary magnanimity’. There could be no question of accepting, as the Commune had demonstrated, ‘the available ready machinery of the State’, and adapting it’ everything had to be smashed and re-created in a new, proletarian image. To Lenin and his followers, the supreme lesson of the Commune was that the only way to succeed was by total ruthlessness.
Steve Bannon has been quite willing to publicly state his destructive goal. Don’t doubt for a minute that others, including the president, are willing to go along with him. Some may even agree with him, and just aren’t willing to be as open about it as Bannon.
This isn’t just idle talk by Bannon and others. We’ve all seen, just this past 10 days, how much more organized, (publishing Project 2025, anyone?), and more swift than they were in 2017. To quote Bannon, they’re definitely “flooding the zone with shit.”
How do we deal with the flooded zone when we don’t hold much power?
First, I think it’s important to find personal balance. Make sure you’re spending part of your day doing something you enjoy. Stay connected with others, too.
Second, we don’t have to kick up our adrenaline until something actually happens. I see this as a version of not obeying in advance. Just because the felon in the WH says something doesn’t mean it will actually happen. Sure, keep it in the back of your mind, and if it affects you or people you care about, you should spend more time planning for it. However, there’s a fair amount that can be ignored for the time being.
Third, call your Rep. and Senators. Let them know what you’re concerned about, angry about and what you’d like them to do about it. Do this regardless of whether or not they’re Democrats or republicans.
