Steve Bannon’s Vision for a Holy War Is Coming into Focus

We've talked a lot about our 45th president, Steve Bannon, around here lately, and the reason is simple: He's basically a xenophobic war-monger who gives voice to neo-Nazis, and he happens to be running the country. Sure, Donald Trump was "elected" and "sworn in" and "is technically the president," but the truth seems to be that the real power in this country rests in the hands of the former Breitbart chairman, accused wife-beater, and propagandist, whom many can't decide whether to call a "white supremacist" or a "white supremacist sympathizer," as though one were better than the other. Now, typically when you have a shadowy figure pulling the strings, they have the decency to at least try to, well, stay in the shadows. Not Bannon. Here's an actual quote that he gave to The Hollywood Reporter after the election:

"Darkness is good... Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

The dude compared himself to Satan, AND HE MEANT IT AS A GOOD THING. It would be so great if we could confidently sit here and be able to believe that most idiotic of excuses the alt-right loves to use in cases like this and say that Bannon was just "trolling." But now he's in power, and we see that he was just being honest. And as we discussed yesterday, he has now ascended to an unprecedented position of power for a political operative and has unseated two veteran security officials on the National Security Council, making him a huge player in dictating our foreign policy. This wouldn't be quite as scary if it weren't for the fact that Steve Bannon believes we're in a holy war with Islam, according to The Washington Post:

At the same time, Bannon was concerned that the United States and the “Judeo-Christian West” were in a war against an expansionist Islamic ideology — but that they were losing the war by not recognizing what it was. Bannon said this fight was so important, it was worth overlooking differences and rivalries with countries like Russia...

In the past, Bannon had wondered aloud whether the country was ready to follow his lead. Now, he will find out.

“Is that grit still there, that tenacity, that we’ve seen on the battlefields . . . fighting for something greater than themselves?” Bannon said in another radio interview last May, before he joined the Trump campaign.

And in truly horrifying news, we won't even be able to track what exactly he's doing on the NSC because, as an anonymous intelligence official told Foreign Policy, Bannon decided he didn't want a paper trail to follow his decisions:

The lack of a paper trail documenting the decision-making process is also troubling, the intelligence official said. For example, under previous administrations, after a principals or deputies meeting of the National Security Council, the discussion, the final agreement, and the recommendations would be written up in what’s called a “summary of conclusions” — or SOC in government-speak...

These summaries also provided a record to refer back to, especially important if a debate over an issue came up again, including among agencies that needed to implement the conclusions reached.

So not only does Steve Bannon seem ready to go to war with the entire Muslim religion, he also doesn't want anyone to know he's doing it. That same intelligence official described the situation as Bannon "running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC.” Donald Trump may be the Wizard of Oz, but Bannon is the Man Behind the Curtain, and he's ready to take Oz to some new, dark places.