General Discussion

sheshe2

(83,793 posts) Sat Feb 25, 2017, 08:43 PM Feb 2017

Bannons Desperate Apartheid Conservatism

Yesterday Steve Bannon gave a rare public appearance in which he once again stressed his core political philosophies concerning nationalism versus globalism, and the need for nationalist cultural resistance to global corporate power. These would be almost progressive-sounding themes, if they weren’t belied by the Trump administration’s pro-corporate economic choices, and if they weren’t strongly tinged with white supremacy, prejudice and anti-cosmopolitanism. And they would sound impressive, if they weren’t the product of inherent weakness and desperation.

The problem, of course, is that Bannon’s is a deeply racist vision that presumes a cultural identity of America that is white, male, libertarian, rural, self-reliant and distrustful of foreign entanglements. It ignores the story of America that has always existed alongside that vision: a land of immigrants, a rich diversity of ethnicities and nationalities combining to create cultural melanges and technological innovations (enabled in part through government assistance) unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

Conservative white America is in a demographic death spiral, and Bannon knows it. That’s a concern if you’re the sort of white American who derives a strong part of your identity from being white. It’s a problem if you’re the sort of person who sees the default American as a John Wayne archetype, and who sees American identity as having less to do with Ellis Island, microchips and fusion restaurants, and more to do with cattle ranches, steel mills and coal mines. The latter America is definitely declining due to a combination of demography, automation and globalization, while the former is ascendant. Bannon is on a desperate and futile mission to stop that cultural transformation from happening–and not for the noble reason of wanting to help and protect the rural workers affected, but for the darker and more prejudiced reason of wanting to keep conservative white culture in an artificially dominant position over America’s more diverse, more liberal and more economically productive urban centers.

But never forget that the logic of apartheid is not one of strength, but of weakness. Bannon and his friends know they cannot win on the merits, and they know that unless they act quickly and dramatically, they cannot win over the long term. That makes them dangerous, but theirs is a position of weakness, not of strength.

More: http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/02/25/bannons-desperate-apartheid-conservatism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+washingtonmonthly%2Frss+%28Political+Animal+at+Washington+Monthly%29

They are terrified of losing their white privilege. Desperation makes them dangerous to us all, yet their position is weak. Rise up. RESIST.