The specter of Steve Bannon is haunting Europe, instilling fear in traditional political elites. The former strategist of Trump’s campaign is referred to in the political mainstream – partly out of fear and partly due to an elitist perspective from above – as ‘Bannon the Barbarian’, after Conan the Barbarian, attributing to him almost supernatural powers in dismantling the political ‘mainstream’.
His recent announcement that he is preparing to connect and unite the European new right for the European Parliament elections next year has caused a real alarm in the ‘mainstream’ across Europe, including Croatia. As advisory and analytical support for the project, his foundation, symbolically named Movement, will operate in Brussels starting this autumn.
Bannon’s Role in the Elections
It was known as early as last spring that Bannon frequently stays in Europe, exploring the possibilities of adapting and transferring the American model that brought Donald Trump to the White House to European countries.
When the former strategist of Trump’s campaign openly announces an assault on the European Parliament, as the beginning of the end of the globalist neoliberal order, then anyone politically serious takes such an announcement seriously. Because we are talking about lucrative positions and big money.
It has been speculated that he had a role in the defeat of traditional political parties in the Italian elections and the rise of Salvini’s right-wing neoconservative League, that he helped through his European friend Viktor Orbán in the Slovenian parliamentary elections for Janez Janša… But when Bannon openly announces an assault on the European Parliament, as the beginning of the end of the globalist neoliberal order, embodied in the financial-political wizard George Soros, then anyone politically serious takes such an announcement seriously.
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This is about tectonic changes in the world order that are at the doorstep. From the same Washington address, after the collapse of the communist empire in the late eighties and early nineties, following Bill Clinton’s entry into the White House, a wave of globalization began, a doctrine according to which trade without borders, capital without color, and human rights without borders represent the ideal model for managing the world.
Which will, of course, guarantee American dominance in governance. And after the first fifteen years of momentum, the project began to show its weaknesses: management was taken over by multinationals and sponsored so-called non-governmental organizations, human rights and freedoms became, with mainstream media as intermediaries, a means of controlling society.
States and ideologies always opposed to the West entered through open societies and economies into its soft belly (Russia, China, Islamism) and began to take over governance. Even in the USA, which invented globalization. States have become ‘small’ and powerless, losing not only their identity but also their immunity to various viruses contrary to traditional Western values.
But the intertwined supranational political, corporate, and NGO establishment has become powerful, self-sufficient, managerially superior, with almost absolute control over society and almost an end in itself. At the same time, it has become so resistant to everything that comes out of that bureaucratized mainstream: it does not know how to deal with migrations and Islamization, it is resistant to anarchist or radically right movements sponsored by Putin, it does not know how to resist Chinese economic takeover….
A Concrete Network of Lucrative Positions
The American response that emerged in the ‘Donald Trump project’ and the principle of ‘America First’ represents a new model of governance, a return to former sovereign prerogatives of the state alongside worldview and economic conservatism. That is why Bannon’s announcement of an assault on the European Parliament so disturbs the European mainstream establishment.
The emergence of Steve Bannon and his Movement in today’s Europe is as serious as the emergence of George Soros and his Open Society a quarter of a century ago. And both are exponents of a part of the American deep state.
It is about a very concrete network of lucrative positions, a very large amount of money that circulates in that network, and exceptional managerial power. You would be angry if someone questioned that. And you would do everything to prevent it. The least that can be done is to call it all sorts of names: fascism, racism, xenophobia… You would be especially angry if that threat is serious.
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And the emergence of Bannon and his Movement in today’s Europe is as serious as the emergence of George Soros and his Open Society a quarter of a century ago. And let’s not deceive ourselves: Soros was then, as Bannon is today, an exponent of a part of the American deep state. Those stories about a talented stock market manipulator or a social media wizard who alone changes world orders belong to the naive school of Hlebine.
For Europe, just as for Croatia, it is therefore not at all questionable whether the ‘movement’ will happen. But how to utilize it in national and developmental interest. Can it be done so that one can at least be in the middle, and not always at the back of the process?
