On Steve Bannon’s 60 Minutes Interview

2,035 words

Eclipsing the exodus of Chief Strategist Steven Bannon from the White House is the troubling news that President Trump has reached an agreement with top Democrats to “protect thousands of younger immigrants from deportation and fund some border security enhancements,” according to AP. These are people who were brought illegally to the United States as children and who benefited from Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. But I think how we link the two events can help illuminate what the Trump presidency means to white advocacy and nationalism.

At one point during Bannon’s 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose, Rose asked him whether he was on board with ethno-nationalism. Bannon quickly dismissed the idea as ridiculous. According to Bannon, ethno-nationalsm is not only “morally wrong,” it’s also “totally irrelevant.” Earlier, he had referred to white ethno-nationalists as “morons” who were “marginal people that have no impact in our movement.” He also claimed that they were hitching a free ride on the Trump train. That about says it all, doesn’t it? This is also exactly the response anyone who’s been paying attention to politics should expect from Steven Bannon or anyone from the Trump administration. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Stepping back, however, I find it instructive to ask why Rose posed such a silly question to begin with. We could just as easily ask why candidate Trump was hounded by the mainstream media to denounce white supremacy. And no matter how many times Trump did so, it was never enough. Neither Trump nor Bannon have ever promoted ethno-nationalism, not for whites anyway. They have also gone on the record numerous times to denounce people who support ethno-nationalism and similar identity politics. So why the repeated questioning?

It’s because the mainstream media, Marxist epigones that they are, do not trust Donald Trump and do not trust Steve Bannon. They trust Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and other liberals, and so will take them at their word. But like police detectives who think they have their perp, these same people will not relent in their questioning someone they don’t trust until the perp slips up somehow, contradicts himself, or (their hope of hopes) cops to it all.

“You’re goddamn right, I ordered the code red!”

Something like that.

It all boils down to Vox Day’s Third Law of SJWs: they always project. Liberals like Charlie Rose are aware of and approve of the anti-white ulterior motives of their Democratic leaders. They then project this animus whenever they harangue people who don’t share such ulterior motives, typically, their Republican opponents. In so doing, they always prompt their opponents to reveal their pro-white ulterior motives. Despite fervent denials, the Charlie Roses of the world just know such ulterior motives exist. How? Because they themselves have them. That’s why they call it projecting. And that’s why they never stop.

Insidiously, by taking such a tack, the questioner intends only galvanize the non-white and anti-white Democratic base at the expense of his interlocutor. As we all know, being explicitly pro-white is the naughtiest of the naughty in today’s political climate, and nothing will excite the Left more than getting that code red (or, really, code white) admission from a Republican.

This leads to three possible outcomes.

1. Rose is right. Trump and Bannon are secretly promoting the racial interests of white people at the expense of non-whites.
2. Rose is wrong. Trump and Bannon are secretly promoting the racial interests of non-white people at the expense of whites.
3. Rose is simultaneously right and wrong. Trump and Bannon are promoting the interests of whites and non-whites equally, just not their racial Instead, they promote American economic and national interests which, according to Bannon, runs much deeper than something as superficial as race.

I would imagine that from the wording of this list you can guess where I stand on this issue. But let’s quickly dismiss the first two possibilities before delving into the third.

Trump’s recent action on DACA repudiates the first possibility, as if there were any doubt. Acting in the racial interests of white people would demand that the nation take in absolutely no more non-white immigrants, let alone the 800,000 which will in effect be amnestied by Trump’s actions. Whites are having difficulty reproducing at replacement level as it is, and many of their brighter lights are currently suffering from the suicidal delusions of cultural Marxism. Meanwhile many non-whites have no trouble drastically increasing their numbers every generation. Therefore, bringing in more non-whites or keeping the illegal ones—as in the case of Trump’s DACA compromise—will ultimately spell demographic disaster for whites.

As painful as it was to learn about Trump’s read-my-lips moment over DACA, the silver lining here is that we can finally put to rest the canard the Donald Trump is a closet white supremacist. As for Bannon, despite rumors about his appreciation for Camp of the Saints and his name-dropping of Julius Evola and other hints towards a Hard Right disposition, he claims in the interview that he opposed Trump’s DACA decision because it harms America, not specifically white people. This is a point Bannon makes a few times in the interview: America needs an immigration system which benefits America, which means a merit-based immigration system. Hardly words to satisfy white advocates, for sure. As such, I think we can also lay to rest any idea of Steve Bannon keeping swastikas and photos of Hitler in his bedroom.

Many of Trump’s other actions repudiate the second possibility as well. Repealing Obamacare and building the Wall are two obvious examples. Others include the so-called Muslim ban, the reduction of illegal immigration, and the crackdown on sanctuary cities. If Trump and Bannon secretly wished to promote the racial interests of non-whites, they wouldn’t have done any of these things. In fact, they would not have diverged from any of Barack Obama’s policies at all. Yes, this is a bit of a straw man argument, but it does serve to demonstrate that the Trump-as-anti-white argument is every bit as absurd as the Trump-as-Pro-White one.

And, to Bannon’s credit, he does oppose amnesty and the path to citizenship for many of these DACA people. Amnesty is “non-negotiable in the Republican Party,” he says. And when pressed about the fate of these people in America he stated flatly, “when work permits run out they self-deport.”

As for the final possibility, it makes the most sense if you listen carefully to Steve Bannon throughout the interview and take him at his word. It seems that all Bannon really wants is for people to place nationality before race. This jibes most with his constant repudiation of identity politics and his constant promotion of what he calls “economic nationalism.” Here is a particularly meaningful snippet:

The Left, all they try to do is identity politics. And I say this and I’ll say it every day. The more you play identity politics, and we focus on economic nationalism, we will win. We will roll you up. Because Hispanics and blacks understand that if there’s jobs there and careers there and they can take care of their families and their children and their grandchildren so their children and grandchildren can get into engineering schools, and get into computer science and go to Silicon valley and work then this country is going to be more prosperous. And by the way, that’s a winner. Identity politics is a loser.

Here’s another:

We have citizens in this country that have to be taken care of and that’s the promise of Donald Trump. I’m looking out for you as a citizen. You are an American citizen whether you are Hispanic, whether you’re black, whether you’re Jewish, whether you’re an evangelical Christian, whatever your sexual preference is, you’re an American citizen. And guess what. I will defend your right to the job first.

See? So Steve Bannon opposes illegal immigration from Mexico not because he feels superior to Mexicans but because illegal immigration harms the Mexicans who are already in America as citizens. He opposes H-1B Visas not to keep America free from Indians and Chinese but to protect the interests of the Indians and Chinese who are already here as citizens. Sure, opposing illegal immigration and H-1B Visas also helps the white majority, but that, at the very least, is not the stated purpose of his economic nationalism.

So what should a white advocate or nationalist make of all this? I would say three things. First, we have to assume that we really don’t know all the details surrounding Bannon’s departure. He claims he jumped rather than was pushed. He also says he’s going to become Trump’s wingman now that he’s back to running Breitbart and that he and his ex-boss are as chummy as ever. Who knows?

Second, it doesn’t really matter if Bannon and Trump are race realists at heart. Perhaps they are. From my perspective, both men seem too fearless and too pugnacious not to be. Yet they denounce white nationalism and subscribe to the politically correct America-as-melting-pot notion anyway. This could possibly spring from munificent good intentions. Conversely, this could also represent the kind of ideological compromises needed to shift the Overton Window rightward a realistic couple of clicks. It’s either that or abandoning political correctness wholesale and, with it, any hope of moving the Overton Window at all.

In either case, white advocates and nationalists should not expect too much from Trump and Bannon. These two will serve our economic interests well, as shown by record stock market gains, increases in manufacturing, common sense policy decisions (such as dismantling President Obama’s climate change initiatives), drops in unemployment, and other fortunate outcomes. They will also serve our national interests by beefing up the military and police, by making it harder for terrorists to enter the country, by renegotiating lopsided international deals, and taking effective action against rogue enemy states like North Korea. These are all good things. Yes, they benefit non-white Americans as much as white Americans. But it is still good, and far preferable to the overtly anti-white policies the Democrats wish to impose on us.

But this is far as it goes. To think that Trump and Bannon harbor some kind of ulterior pro-white motives to match the anti-white ones of the Democrats amounts to little more than wish-casting. We have no deep state champions in government. At least we have to assume that we don’t. That way, we can make the most of the little breather from history that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have afforded us. In the big scheme of things, we have very little time to lose.

The last takeaway from the Bannon 60 Minutes interview is this: never has the absolute maliciousness of our enemies been so clear. We live in a world in which our mainstream institutions believe that placing whites on an equal footing with other races is tantamount to white supremacy. Think about that for a moment. Donald Trump’s and Steve Bannon’s greatest sins are to cater to the needs of whites as much as to the needs of non-whites, and to seek their votes as much as anyone else’s. And that counts as white supremacy. That’s the reason why Trump and Bannon are so hated. And that’s the reason why wearing a Make America Great Again hat can get you physically assaulted in certain parts of the country. When Left says, “black lives matter,” they’re really leaving out the rest of the sentence. “Black lives matter more than white ones,” is what they really want to say. And they will say it soon enough, if whites let them.

In the meantime, we have well-meaning men like Donald Trump and Steve Bannon who are holding the line, mostly by keeping us rich and safe. But they do this by pretending that an antiquated notion of America will be enough to keep the tapestried fabric of our nation from tearing apart along racial lines when the time comes. White advocates and nationalist however should not suffer such illusions, and when the fabric of this nation does finally tear apart, we should be ready to move quickly and act decisively to pursue our own interests at last.