To the Bureau of Prisons, Steve Bannon is inmate No. 05635-509. But to his disciples in America and Europe, he’s a true-blue hero, populist prophet, savior of Western civilization and F-bomb-spouting soldier of God.
Most Americans never heard of him before he led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for president and then served briefly in the Trump administration, where he championed Trump’s Muslim travel ban.
Bannon claims to be a traditionalist Catholic, calls himself a Trotsky to Trump’s Lenin, and says Hitler’s filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl inspired some of the scenes in his propagandistic film attacking President Barack Obama. His mission is to help build “the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.”
On July 1, he reported to a low security prison in Danbury, Conn., where he will serve four months for his 2022 conviction for contempt of Congress resulting from his refusal to testify before the House January 6 Committee.
Beforehand that morning, he taped an episode of his “War Room” webcast, a four-hour show covering all things MAGA, in front of his usual backdrop of images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, held a rally at a church, received a blessing from a priest, and said he was “proud” to be going to prison as a “political prisoner” and victim of the Biden administration’s “lawfare” (the use of law for political ends). He told the media one of the books he ordered for his prison reading was a Bible, in the King James Version.
“War Room” carries on in his absence with guest hosts from the far-right firmament: Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and more. But it won’t be the same without Bannon, who has a knack for getting his guests to open up. For example:
- Before he was Trump’s nominee for vice president, JD Vance told Bannon: “I don’treally care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
- Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts told Bannon America is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Here’s how he described the show in a lengthy interview with David Brooks of The New York Times:
“This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt.”
“I’m not a journalist. I’m not in the media. This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt. This is how we motivate people. This show is an activist show. If you watch this show, you’re a foot soldier. We call it the Army of the Awakened.”
The 70-year-old Bannon has lived a rich and varied life: U.S. Navy officer, investment banker, executive producer of Hollywood films, founder of alt-right news outlet Breitbart.
He says he was largely apolitical until his Navy service showed him “how badly Jimmy Carter f***ed things up.” He later saw that George W. Bush “f***ed up as badly as Carter,” declared the country a disaster, and determined to turn it upside down. He now sees everything as political.
It’s no accident Bannon’s show is called “War Room.” He’s a proud street fighter who’s known for being argumentative, egomaniacal and Machiavellian. He’s been married and divorced three times. His former employees say he degraded and mocked them. His conflicts with Trump shortened his tenure as an adviser in the White House.
Donald Trump congratulates Senior Counselor to the President Stephen Bannon during the swearing-in of senior staff in the East Room of the White House on January 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
He has called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci and former FBI Director Christopher Wray. He helped orchestrate Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker, as well as the ouster of Rona McDaniel and other Republican Party officials.
Bannon has more than his share of shady friends. He and his partners defrauded donors to the charity We Build the Wall, which promised to add to the southern border wall but instead enriched its founders. Trump pardoned Bannon for his federal charges, but Bannon still faces state charges in New York. And on Tuesday, a longtime Bannon associate was convicted of defrauding his online followers of more than $1 billion.
Bannon is beloved by his conservative Christian friends and patrons. James Dobson called him a “true patriot” when introducing Bannon to a 2017 gathering of major Christian philanthropists who Dobson said were “mesmerized” by his message.
“We’re putting together a field army of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics.”
“There’s a civil war going on,” Bannon said, echoing Dobson’s words of decades earlier. “The two sides are irreconcilable. … We’re putting together a field army of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. … The future of the Judeo-Christian West sits on your shoulders.”
Bannon has made similar appeals to Catholics, including at a 2014 Vatican conference where he said: “We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict” against those who would “completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.”
For years, Bannon sought to create an “academy for the Judeo-Christian West” for right-wing Catholic activists in Europe but failed.
The Jesuit magazine America says Bannon is promoting a “bastardized form of Christianity” that presents “only a veneer of Christianity, intended to justify his political aims.”
“Mr. Bannon proposes … linking Christianity to a specific culture. But he is tying the fortunes of Christianity to a culture that has largely already rejected it,” the magazine says. “He is also setting it against other cultures, presenting Christianity to much of the world as an enemy.
Whether left or right, however, all Catholics must beware of any party or ideology that sacrifices the universal mission of Christianity in the name of politics.”
Bannon is scheduled to get out of jail just before the November election and offered this prediction for a second Trump term as president: “We’re going to rip and shred the federal government apart, and if you don’t like it, you can lump it.”
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