Title: How Steve Bannon became the face of a political movement with roots in Los Angeles - Los Angeles Times
Sharing information in the manner Hannah Arendt did in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” and as I do with this as one more partial excerpt/ draft of “The Origins of American Fascism,” here is additional history of an aspect of that. Disregard what Ben Shapiro says below that Bannon "has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy.” In fact, Bannon carried that legacy of being the “Best Friend Israel’s Fascists Ever Had” forward with Trump in exactly the manner Breitbart’s friend Netanyahu wished for!
Amidst all the right-wing rewriting of history coming out of Trumpite think-tanks and media platforms, it’s important for us non-fascists to remember its “Origins,” as Hannah Arendt recognized of Totalitarianism. This article from 2017 has been overtaken by events with Bannon and the “national revolution,” as something similar was called in Germany beginning under Weimar and continuing until 1945, more influential than ever. With Bannon a leading light of National Conservativism now as Rachel Bovard made so clear recently in her lamentation that the “Martyr” had to report to prison shortly before this year's conference, as she said there, and wrote here:
. . . "National conservatism today is the undisputed majority political coalition and persuasion not simply in the Republican Party and in America, but across the West. "We’re not PART of the conservative movement. We ARE the conservative movement!
So henceforth, stating it again, I will not make distinctions within today’s "conservative movement,” in keeping with Bovard’s and Kevin Roberts’ ("no-prefix Conservatism") assertions, but will follow their definition of today’s “Conservative Movement.” And readily acknowledge that the “political theorist” most influential in this “achievement,” was the original “Thought-Control Conservative,” Willmoore Kendall. Whom I recognize as the “Father of American Fascism.” As Mussolini was of the Italian version, and that German fellow was of the German variety, in taking it to its outer limits. Which I don’t say anyone is contemplating today, when “mere” ethnic cleaning is available instead of all-out extermination.
The "Hungarian Conservative” is less discreet than what seem’s its American counterpart is, in acknowledging “Conservatism's” fascist “origins,” as this explains, of the Nazi’s fascist rivals, the “Conservative Revolutionaries” of inter-war Europe:
"The so-called ‘conservative revolution’ refers to a particular political–philosophical ideology and cultural–literary current that emerged between 1918 and 1933, the period between the First World War and the emergence of Nazi Germany.
"The phenomenon of the conservative revolution, which is referred to in the literature as both the ‘German neo-conservative movement’ or ‘new nationalism’, had a significant impact on the intellectual atmosphere of the Weimar period. Some of the names associated with the movement, such as Moeller van den Bruck, Othmar Spann, Ernst von Solomon, Ernst Niekisch, or Edgar Julius Jung, have now been forgotten and are familiar only to scholars of German literature, political history, and philosophy. However, figures such as Ernst Jünger, who also became famous as a literary writer, Stefan George, who is regarded as one of the greatest German poets of the 20th century, and Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt, who are also artists and thinkers from the world of historical and political philosophy, are all part of the wider context of the ‘conservative revolution’.
. . .
"The militant nationalism of the Prussian military tradition had as much influence on the representatives of this movement as the ‘front line experience’ of the world war, with its glorification of sacrifice, heroism, and comradeship, and the constant presence of death and violence, which marked the tragic end of the ‘happy years of peace’ and the ‘long nineteenth century’."
And celebration of Carl Schmitt’s variety of fascism here:
"Undoubtedly, Schmitt’s concept of the friend–enemy distinction in politics can serve as a compass for understanding contemporary political issues. This dichotomy can be found in various contexts, from international affairs to domestic politics. Quarrels and power dynamics between nations and ideologies, such as between Democrats and Republicans, often follow Schmitt’s assertion that political identity and groups are shaped by the differentiation between friends and enemies.
"‘Any distinction that can serve as a marker of collective identity and difference will acquire political quality if it has the power, in a concrete situation, to sort people into two opposing groups that are willing, if necessary, to fight against each other.’"[1]
Steve Bannon is among the leaders of a movement raised in West L.A. that found its voice in online media and worked its way into the White House. And while Bannon’s tenure in the West Wing has come to an end, the movement and infrastructure he is part of shows no sign of slowing. Here are its origins.
In the beginning
A native of Brentwood, the late conservative Andrew Breitbart cut his teeth in the news business on The Drudge Report, the news aggregation site started by fellow-Westsider Matt Drudge. The two met in the mid-1990s. Eventually Breitbart became Drudge’s first assistant, finding and linking to stories online and crafting headlines. “It’s a one-man operation with a second guy,” Breitbart told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.
Along the way, Breitbart met Arianna Huffington and contributed to the creation and launch of the Huffington Post in 2005.
Following a 2007 trip to Israel with childhood friend and Los Angeles attorney Larry Solov, Breitbart went on to create the series of websites that would ultimately bear his name: Breitbart.com. Breitbart would be the driving force, while Solov would be the president and chief operating officer.
“This is no exaggeration to say we were brothers,” Solov told The Los Angeles Times following Breitbart’s death in 2012. With the loss of the website’s founder, Solov assumed Breitbart’s CEO role. A member of the Breitbart News Network board would become the executive chairman: Steve Bannon.
Not to be confused with the group of colleges in nearby Claremont, the Claremont Institute began in 1979 and offers a number of programs for students of conservative thought. The institute also publishes the right-leaning Claremont Review of Books. Through the institute’s Lincoln Fellowship program in 2009, Breitbart attended a weeklong training in conservative thought.
Another alum of the institute is Ben Shapiro, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Yeshiva University High School and later UCLA and Harvard Law School. Shapiro, a syndicated conservative columnist at the age of 17, went to work for Breitbart.com in 2012 as an editor.
“Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump...”
They’re gonna put me in the movies
Bannon has his own ties to the Claremont Institute, though not as a participant in the fellowship program.
Increasingly, Bannon’s documentary work would bring him together with the conservative movement’s power base. He’d go on to write and direct films for Citizens United, and he grew close to the organization’s president, David Bossie.
Another Bannon documentary film brought him into Breitbart’s orbit.
It was during a 2004 screening in Beverly Hills of “In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed” that Bannon and Breitbart met. Eventually Bannon became involved with Breitbart News, home to several Southern Californians crafting their brand of journalism.
It’s known that Bannon honed some of his worldview based on the writings of William Strauss and Santa Monica native Neil Howe. Their book “The Fourth Turning” postulates that America undergoes recurring cycles, each made up of four generations or “turnings,”. It’s during the fourth turning that America faces crisis and tumult. The latest “fourth turning” was predicted to begin in 2005 and last two decades. In 2010, Bannon released a documentary based on the authors’ theories, “Generation Zero.”
(TP-disregard what Shapiro said below, as everything Shapiro, and his friend, Yoram Hazony, say should be disregarded, as obviously Breitbart was an anti-Arab racist, as is clear of Shapiro and Hazony.)
With the death of Breitbart and the naming of Bannon as executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network, the site’s tone and voice shifted further to the right, according to former editor Shapiro.
“Andrew Breitbart despised racism. Truly despised it,” Shapiro wrote after candidate Trump named Bannon as his campaign chairman. “Now Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website, with ... the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.”
Fast-forward to Trump’s White House, and roots formed in Southern California are hard to miss. The media platform Breitbart created and the philosophy honed by Bannon, who served as a special advisor to the president until Friday, have been on full display in the new administration. (TP-as former editor of The American Conservative Johnny Burtka and TAC’s Curt Mills told Vanity Fair: "The publication that came closest to ”in-flight” status during the 2016 campaign was Breitbart, said Mills, but “that’s just a different type of thing. It’s not a magazine.” “On our best days,” he added, TAC is the primary publication “grappling with the ideas” of the current White House.)
Then there’s Michael Anton, a senior Trump national-security official.
In September 2016, Anton penned an anonymous essay in the Claremont Institute’s “Claremont Review of Books” titled “The Flight 93 Election.” The essay published under the pseudonym “Publius Decius Mu” argued that “conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything. And yet these same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo.”
Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles where it all started, Breitbart.com has grown to be the home for conservative news. What started in a basement in Westwood now has staff spread around the country, as well as in London and Jerusalem.
Breitbart’s friend and still-CEO of Breitbart News, Larry Solov, told The Los Angeles Times he didn’t see an end to the website’s popularity among conservatives.
“We think we are going to be the best place for coverage of Trump.”
When news of Bannon’s firing broke on Friday morning, it was a rare tweet from Matt Drudge that sent news outlets racing to catch up.
