Beating Bannon

Last week, capital’s Faustian bargain with the Bannon cabal began to unravel. The President’s sociopathic dealings with crucial trading partners--including the staunchest of Anglo-American co-conspirators Prime Minister Malcolm Turnball, himself a former Goldman Sachs partner--and the chaos brought on by Bannon’s hyper-nationalist Executive Orders shattered hopes among the CEO class that regulatory laxity and a corporate tax-cut bonanza would be worth the nuisance of a Wrestlemania-inspired presidency.

As evidenced by the tech-sector revolt and complaints by the banksters, Bannon’s maneuvers have already darkened the corporate profit outlook significantly. Why the holders of capital blinded themselves to the obvious incapacity of the regime--led by an ideologist who subscribes to a crude, pseudo-historical theory of world war as a desirable and necessary cleansing agent for an America contaminated by deviant hippies turned investment bankers--will be dissertation fodder for decades. (For a review Bannon’s bizarre reading of “turnings” theory, see this excellent synopsis of his troubled thought system, or get it straight from the source in his documentary.)

Given the instability created by his actions, ridding ourselves of Bannon is an achievable intermediate objective for the resistance movement. A Bannon-less White House would still leave a white nationalist narcissist as President, but the risk of short-term global conflict would be reduced and Bannon’s drive toward a catastrophic version of far-right Francoism with global reach would be slowed.

Viewing Bannon through the lens of community organizing helps to illuminate our leverage. A power analysis, the starting point for any effective organizing, reveals that Bannon was vulnerable even before his corporate allies began distancing themselves. Bannon has built neither a party structure nor a reliable mode for mobilizing his brownshirt minions, who swarm with abandon on social media, but are bashful about appearing in public. His deepest networks are the fringe rightists attracted to the website he once ran.

Achieving Bannon’s downfall will require, like most organizing victories, targeting elite actors with a range of tactics—from direct action protest to hashtags—until they are moved to alter the regime’s course.

A key factor in planning for Bannon’s demise is the primacy of the corporate donor class in Republican politics. Congressional leaders these days may speak in far-out terms that suggest a measure of autonomy, but they know how to follow their corporate masters in the age of Citizens United. The concentration of billionaire donors in finance, fossil fuels and technology gives those networks special sway.

Given this, the first strategy, and the most viable, is to target the kings of finance and tech until they are moved to pick up their cellphones and dial the likes of Pence, Priebus, McConnell and Ryan, who are all heavily dependent on funding from these sectors, to issue the Bannon banishment order.

A key target is Blackstone Group’s Stephen Schwarzman, who chairs the President's Strategic and Policy Forum and flew Air Force One with Trump this past Friday. In addition to his role in the administration, Blackstone is Mitch McConnell’s largest donor and Paul Ryan’s second largest. Up to this point Schwarzman has served dutifully as a key regime emissary, carrying the now-discredited message that Trump, applying his TV talents, appeared unhinged in the campaign phase to rile up his base and would reform himself once in office. Schwarzman has transmitted this chestnut to Canada’s Justin Trudeau and many colleagues in the private equity and hedge fund “communities,” but the chatter about the regime’s incompetence among elites, including fellow financiers, university and foundation presidents and CEOs, is growing beyond anyone’s ability to quell it.

Other targets within finance with direct access to the administration’s inner-circle include Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, who hobnobbed with Trump at the financial regulatory rollback announcement last Friday, and Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein. Moving this trio to expel Bannon can be seen as one front of the permanent campaign against the Big Banks that progressives must wage to reclaim our democracy.

Schwarzman, Dimon and Blankfein have heard the concerns about Bannon’s devious intentions swirling in high finance, but it is crucial that we the people amplify the message through sustained protest outside their Manhattan offices and whenever special opportunities arise, like Schwarzman’s blowout 70th birthday party in Palm Beach this week. The NYC community groups that have occupied Blankfein’s front yard at Goldman provide a strong example.

It is also worth noting that Bannon’s extreme actions have mobilized unlikely opposition, like middle-managers at Google. These dissenters undoubtedly exist in significant numbers at Blackstone, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman, and their voices could be key to pressuring their bosses. And clients of the three banks, including large universities and foundations as well as individual consumers, should also register their objections in the most effective ways possible, whether through direct petitioning or hashtags.

Tech capital is further along in its Bannon dissent, with lawsuits and organizations coming together in opposition to the regime. Two key holdouts are Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who belong to Trump’s economic council. Viewing both as targets of multi-faceted campaigning, including street protest and hashtagging, could move them to abandon their roles, following the lead of Uber’s Travis Kalanick, further isolating the regime.

Another scenario, though less likely, is that Bannon’s own patrons can be moved to see the light. Fake populists, it turns out, are dependent on the very same billionaires they rail against. Bannon is particularly constrained, as his propaganda machine operates at the largess of one family, the eccentric and shadowy Mercers, and more specifically Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies and his daughter Rebekah, who bankrolled Breitbart and negotiated the transfer of Bannon and Conway from Ted Cruz to Trump once Cruz’s bid was deemed a failure Since Renaissance makes its money trading with algorithms and has few real-world planning concerns--no widgets to produce, no orders to fill, no empire of stressed-out employees--they are insulated from the impact of the mess they’ve wrought. Although the Mercers are true-believers in the buffet of contradictory ideologies that are the far-right, they do interact with some number of non-fascists, such as Robert Mercer’s longtime business partner, the neoliberal Democratic Party overlord James Simons, who ought to be telling him to cut the bull.

Holding the Mercers accountable for their role in maintaining Bannon’s power position through street protest, investigative journalism and social media strategies could move them to abandon their protege.

Finally, there is the chance that Ivanka and Jared, who not long ago maintained a presence in liberal elite circles, hosting Cory Booker fundraisers and the like, will find the courage to muscle Bannon out.

Ending the Bannon nightmare will require concerted street action and coordinated consumer action to push elites toward the inevitable conclusion that permanent instability serves nobody’s interests. Imagine the day when fear of Bannon’s jackbooted footsteps in the night fades and we can return to more pedestrian concerns, like our corrupted political system, structural racism and a rigged economy. What a wonderful day that will be.