"The Mouthpiece of the Party of Davos": Bannon interview with Economist Editor in Chief

Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, interviewed by Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s Editor-in-chief (Open Future festival in New York on September 15th 2018). In contrast, New Yorker editor David Remnick surrendered to protests and disinvited Bannon from The New Yorker Festival two weeks ago.

For almost two decades I subscribed to The Economist and The New Yorker. But these days I read them only sporadically.

Whether you like or hate Steve Bannon, this interview is worth watching. Beddoes and questioners from the audience attack Bannon vigorously, but mostly allow him time to answer in full. Opening tactic is, no surprise, to insinuate racism, which Bannon explicitly rejects for the millionth time... If your source of information about Bannon is primarily the mainstream media, you might be surprised at what comes from the horse's mouth.

Topics covered: populism, nationalism, economic war with China, immigration, class struggle, tax and tariff policy, and Duty, Honor, Country.

Bannon @15:30 (talking over interruption):

Bannon: ... you keep getting bailed out by the Deplorables -- in World War One and World War Two, in the Cold War and whatever else is in the future it is working men and women that have bailed you out ...

Editor: We have to go on to something else...

Bannon @23:15, as the racism attack morphs into sexism:

... I'm a former naval officer that served in the South China Sea in the Pacific. My daughter is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served with the 101st airborne in Iraq. She's an army captain today after serving in Eastern Europe, probably going to be deployed back to Afghanistan. She's on the faculty at West Point. I know how to help raise an empowered woman ...

General Douglas MacArthur, 1962 speech at West Point:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.