美国总统川普的首席战略顾问班农（Steve
Bannon）被很多人称为中国式的“国师”。从川普的1月20号的就职演讲到他最近一系列的行政命令和演讲，我们都可以看出班农影响的浓重痕迹。众所周知，川普是个实干家，理论和意识形态非其所长。于是，要想理解川普新政府治国理政内在的逻辑和趋向，重要的途径之一便是了解他的国师的思想倾向。最近，美国Quartz网站两名记者Gwynn
Guilford和Nikhil
Sonnad专门对班农的思想背景做了非常详细的调查和分析。现在我们来看看这两位记者提到的所谓“班农主义”（Bannonism）的三大核心立场：资本主义、民族主义（Nationalism）和基督教价值观。
一、资本主义
班农认为美国已经陷入了“资本主义的危机”之中。不过，这不是传统资本主义的错，而是美国一代精英阶层的错。传统上，资本主义有缓和贫富差距的功能，因为它要求富有创业精神的美国人照顾好同为基督徒的同胞。这种“文明的资本主义”是美国得以逃避二十世纪各种野蛮思潮和政治风潮的原因。不过，从二十世纪六七十年代美国出现反主流文化的思潮后，文明的资本主义开始退化，最终酿成美国资本主义的危机。
在班农看来，美国战后婴儿潮一代（他和川普都属于美国战后婴儿潮一代）是“美国历史上被溺爱得最厉害、最自我中心、最自以为是的一代人”。这些出身丰裕家庭的孩子不懂祖父辈曾经的艰辛，也不认同他们辛勤劳动的价值观。他们反而群起拥抱不劳而获的社会主义政策，让更多的人越来越多地依赖政府。这种社会主义倾向逐渐影响到美国权力结构中最上层的人士。到1990年代后期时，美国的政府、媒体和学术界基本被社会主义思潮占领。这些人利用手中的权力和影响力设计出的种种政策在让自己及后台老板大发横财的同时，却扭曲了美国的资本主义体制，洗劫了美国中产阶级的财富，让美国资本主义名誉大受损害。
世俗化的自由派人士以全球为自己职业生涯和财富积聚的舞台，其最突出的代表便是华尔街。华尔街在同为全球化支持力量的美国政府精英的帮助下，通过投机谋利，而不再投资于能为美国带来工作机会的企业。更糟糕的是，当由此而来的金融泡沫最终余2008年爆破时，同一批持自由派、全球化立场的政府精英让辛勤劳作的美国人承担金融救援的代价。班农曾将之称为“富人阶层的社会主义”；当然，美国还有“穷人的社会主义”。美国广大的中产阶级成为被两头挤压的弱者。
总之，班农认为，美国资本主义的危机导致了社会主义的兴起以及广大中产阶级的损失。让当下美国人最为不安的是，他们留给儿孙辈的国家将不能为他们提供改善生活品质的机会。因此，班农志在摧毁这种几乎退化为社会主义的资本主义，力争让美国回到原有的资本主义，也即能为美国人创造工作机会、增进美国人福祉的资本主义。
二、犹太-基督教价值
对班农来说，西方社会------尤其是美国------要保持活力，仅有资本主义是不够的。如果没有犹太-基督教的道德架构作为资本主义之锚，资本主义可能是一种破坏性的非正义力量。为了重建美国的经济并恢复美国社会结构的健康，美国需要重申基督教的伟大价值，其中非常重要的一环是必须让资本主义重新被基督教的价值观所规范。班农认为，让美国成为伟大国家的正是这种基督教价值观。美国民众共同遵守的道德规范可以确保企业界在投资时不仅只考虑自己的盈利，同时还要顾及本土工人及其后代的利益。
美国的人权和公民社会并非来自任何抽象的理论，而是源自传统。对美国人来说，这一传统就是上帝。将民众作为真理和正义的最终裁决者最终一定会导致暴政。对政府权力最大的约束来自上帝的教导。与此同时，如果美国没有坚固的道德根基，社会便会趋于解体。总之，美国社会以及西方文明的成功运转需要资本主义，而资本主义的成功则取决于犹太-基督教价值观。
不过，班农并没有因此要求所有美国公民都信奉基督教，也不试图改变美国政教分离的原则或者美国宪法所保障的宗教信仰自由。他反倒认为这些都是美国过去取得成功的重要条件。可是，由于美国的建国之父们在为美国创立基业时依靠的是一套源自基督教传统的价值观，为了保持美国的这一传统特性，美国有必要限制那些不认同这些价值观的人移民美国。
三、民族主义
民族主义是班农反击他眼中的美国内外的全球化精英的主要手段。美国鼓吹全球化的精英鼓励外来移民。这些外来移民一方面给大公司带来丰厚的利润，却冲击了美国的社会和就业市场，压低了美国的工资标准；而且中产阶级还不得不承担安置这些移民的大部分税收负担。这就导致了美国社会的普遍不满，激起普遍的民族主义情绪。美国全球化精英所鼓吹的多元主义的无神论社会秩序就此遭到美国民众的普遍抵制。
班农认为，民族主义是犹太-基督教传统和价值观可以借用的管道，因为民族主义可以是完全包容的。所有种族、宗教和文化背景的人都可以共享“美国人”的身份，因此成为美国的民族主义者。这一方面可以消解美国的种族隔阂，另一方面可以说服美国某些少数民族不再试图获得特殊待遇。马丁 路德 金被作为美国道德传统的一个正面例子，因为他的人权观念基于基督教价值观。相反，2007年的次贷危机则可以被看作政府对黑人住房优待政策的失败。
自由派精英过于强调多元主义和少数族裔的权利，削弱了共同的美国身份认同，事实上也削弱了美国这个国家。因此，班农认为，凡是不认同美国人这套共享价值观的人都不应来美国，因为他们来了会对社会形成伤害。这也是他反对移民的最基本的逻辑出发点。
四、小结
通观班农的思想，我们可以看到，18世纪伟大的爱尔兰保守主义思想家埃德蒙 伯克的无所不在的影响。班农本人也会偶尔提及伯克。伯克认为，一个社会成功的基石并非诸如人权、社会正义或平等之类的空洞概念。相反，最有利于社会的情况是，那些被证明行之有效的传统被一代一代地传递下去。毫无疑问，班农认为与他同龄的美国婴儿潮一代背弃了伯克的谆谆教导，放弃了他们父辈经实践验证为正确的价值观，比如民族主义、朴素、父权主义和宗教，转而拥抱抽象的新观念，比如多元主义、性别主义、平等主义和世俗主义。对班农而言，这可能就意味着社会的混乱，因此他要力挽狂澜。
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撮要 班农认为，美国历史有四个转向的周期，第一个周期始于独立战争，第二个始于南北战争，第三个始于萧条和二战，现在处于第四个周期之中。
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撮要 班农认为，美国历史有四个转向的周期，第一个周期始于独立战争，第二个始于南北战争，第三个始于萧条和二战，现在处于第四个周期之中。
Steve Bannon's obsession with a dark theory of history
should be worrisome
By Linette Lopez
Business Insider February 2, 2017
President Trump's adviser, Steve Bannon, is on the cover of
this week's Time magazine, and in the piece it is revealed that Bannon deeply
believes in a theory about America's future laid out in a book called "The
Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous
with Destiny."
This fact should concern every American.
In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize
that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called
"saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed
that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a
cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a
trial of fire.
This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and
Bannon, like Strauss and Howe, believes we are in the midst of one right now.
According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings that
America experienced were the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and then the
Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War.
All these were marked by periods of dread and decay in which
the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only
after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a
catalyst event, then there's a period of regeneracy, after that there is a
defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally
there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized.
This is where Bannon's obsession with this book should cause
concern. He believes that, for the new world order to rise, there must be a
massive reckoning. That we will soon reach our climax conflict. In the White
House, he has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that
will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary
new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and
turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos.
In that way, Bannon seems to be trying to bring about the
Fourth Turning.
The book in Bannon
Bannon has never been secretive about his desire to use
Trump to bring about his vision of America. He told Vanity Fair last summer
that Trump was a "blunt instrument for us ... I don’t know whether he
really gets it or not."
Perhaps not, but putting a Fourth Turning lens on Trump's
policies certainly give them a great deal of context. Bannon believes that the
catalyst for the Fourth Turning has already happened: the financial crisis.
So now we are in the regeneracy. Howe and Strauss describe
this period as one of isolationism, one of infrastructure building and of
strong, centralized government power, and a reimagination of the economy.
Of course it's important not to lose sight of the end here.
Bannon believes in authoritarian politics as preparation for a massive conflict
between East and West, whether East means the Middle East or China.
Over the years, Bannon has unsuccessfully tried to pressure
historians such as *Professor David Kaiser to say the same thing.
From Time:
"I remember him saying, 'Well, look, you have the
American revolution, and then you have the Civil War, which was bigger than the
revolution. And you have the Second World War, which was bigger than the Civil
War,' Kaiser said. 'He even wanted me to say that on camera, and I was not
willing.'
"Howe, too, was struck by what he calls Bannon's
'rather severe outlook on what our nation is going through.' Bannon noted
repeatedly on his radio show that 'we're at war' with radical jihadis in places
around the world. This is 'a global existential war' that likely will become 'a
major shooting war in the Middle East again.' War with China may also be
looming, he has said. This conviction is central to the Breitbart mission, he
explained in November 2015: 'Our big belief, one of our central organizing
principles at the site, is that we're at war.'"
The reality of repetition
Ultimately, the danger of writing about the past at the same
time one writes about the future is that it can be hard for an author to
separate the two. The steps and missteps of the past seem so easily repeatable
that the future seems to march in lockstep. But this is not what history has
shown us. The catastrophes of every era have always materialized in their own
unique ways.
It is here where Strauss and Howe fail in their work, and
here where Bannon gets caught in their failure. The authors mention in passing
that the event that brings us into a crisis could be "as ominous as a
financial crisis or as ordinary as a national election."
This makes sense. The Fourth Turning of the Civil War and
Reconstruction played out differently than the Fourth Turning afterward, the
Depression and World War II.
But Strauss and Howe fail to recognize that difference in
their description of the Fourth Turning to come. They forget that no two
Turnings are alike; instead, they get trapped thinking that the last catalyst —
the Great Depression, a financial crisis — was the next one as well, and Bannon
does too.
This is why he believes that the Great Financial Crisis of
2008 was the catalyst of our crisis, just as the Great Depression was the
catalyst in the previous saeculum. But the two are not comparable. Unemployment
in the US never reached 20%, as it did then; it hit 10% in October 2009. In
2008 the government acted fast to prevent a full global meltdown, and it did
not allow the situation to deteriorate the way President Herbert Hoover and his
administration did for two years.
Instead of all of America suffering as one, what the
financial crisis brought on was an exacerbation of the inequality growing in
the world for the 40 years before it.
So when President Franklin Roosevelt described a country
laid waste by the Great Depression in his inaugural address in 1933, he was
describing a picture that all Americans were seeing. On the other hand Trump,
in his inaugural, described a dark "American carnage" that many did
not recognize. That lack of recognition marked our deep division as a country.
Alignment
So perhaps there is a Fourth Turning to come, but Bannon is
not an architect of its initiation. According to Howe and Strauss, unity is the
defining feature of the regeneracy. It is what allows leaders during a crisis
to become "authoritarian, severe, unyielding" in commanding resources
in order to rebuild society.
This is what allowed FDR to command the full force of
government to put people back to work. But unity is less apparent in American
society than it has been in years. Quite the contrary, our society is showing
division as never before.
The stars of the "Fourth Turning" are baby boomers
and millennials. Boomers are the ideologues who lead our country into conflict
through folly; millennials are cast as the young heroes that bring them out of
it.
Once the catalyst event takes place, Strauss and Howe describe
a situation in which America coalesces under one leader — a boomer "Gray
Warrior" — who will "urgently resist the idea that a second
consecutive generation might be denied the American Dream. No matter how
shattered the economy ... "
Millennials vs Boomers on gay marriage immigration
If Bannon believes that he is working for this Gray Warrior,
then he's missing a very important point: Millennials are the ones who lead the
way forward out of crisis in this story, but considering the needs of the young
has never had any place under Trumpism. Trump's words appealed most to older
generations who felt like something had been taken away from them, not to
younger generations who felt like they were never given a chance at the
American Dream in the first place.
The majority of young people who voted in 2016 voted against
President Trump, and even more millennials chose to stay home. That is, in
part, because Trump never offered young people anything. In July, at the
Republican National Convention, the national head of the young Republicans, Alexandra
Smith, warned her party about this.
"For too long Republicans haven't been making their
case to millennials," Smith said, her saccharine tone smoothing over the
severity of the situation. "There's just too much old and not enough grand
in the way we express our party's value to the next generation of voters."
"The Fourth Turning" envisioned by Howe and
Strauss requires a return to an agreed-upon set of values, but millennials and
the GOP (or Bannon for that matter) couldn't be farther away from one another.
For one, millennials are the most diverse group in US history (43% of them are
nonwhite). Most do not share Bannon's vision for ethnic conflict.
"The Fourth Turning" is the story of our country
unifying against internal struggles and an outside threat. The authors describe
it as the natural course of history, as something that just falls into place.
Instead, what we are seeing, with Trump's travel ban and his threats against
Mexico and China, is the creation of enemies, enemies many Americans don't want
to have.
Instead of uniting us, Bannon's belief in "The Fourth
Turning" is dividing us. This is dangerous, uncharted territory. What
comes next is, as always, unwritten.
-------------------------
The Daily Beast, 2016-8-22
By Ronald Radosh
‘MY GOAL’,Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State’
The Breitbart executive director turned GOP leader boasted at a party about his goal of destroying the conservative establishment.
Why has the Trump campaign taken as its new head a self-described Leninist?
I met Steve Bannon—the executive director of Breitbart.com who’s now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafort—at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse on Nov. 12, 2013. We were standing next to a picture of his daughter, a West Point graduate, who at the time was a lieutenant in the 101 Airborne Division serving in Iraq. The picture was notable because she was sitting on what was once Saddam Hussein’s gold throne with a machine gun on her lap. “I’m very proud of her,” Bannon said.
Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.
I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:
“I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.”
Riding on the Metro to the party, I read an article that had just been posted on National Review Online and in TownHall.com by Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist, in which he opposed the tactics used by the Tea Party in shutting down the government. He favored the intent of the Tea Party, but strongly opposed its tactics. "The only question," he wrote, "is about the tactics, the Tea Party's attempt to defund Obamacare." Their actions did not fit the standard set by Edmund Burke, he wrote, of a "rational endeavour." There was no chance of making a dent in ObamaCare or defunding it when Democrats controlled the Senate. and the public created a "backlash against that futile attempt," so that "there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose."
I then asked Bannon whether or not he had read Sowell's piece, since Bannon was in favor of the very Tea Party tactic that Sowell had criticized.
“National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also.” He added that “no one reads them or cares what they say.” His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups. His plan was to get its candidates nominated on the Republican ticket, and then to back campaigns that they could win. Then, Bannon said, when elected they would be held accountable to fight for the agenda he and the Tea Party stood for.
If they didn’t, “we would force them out of office and oppose them when the next election for their seats came around.”
That, essentially, was the tactic employed when Eric Cantor was ousted by a far right candidate, virtually unknown college economics professor Dave Brat, in his Virginia district’s primary. It was also the path Donald Trump’s supporters took in Wisconsin, when hoping to duplicate their successful tactics in Virginia, they ran a candidate in the Wisconsin Republican primary against Speaker Paul Ryan in his own district. There are a few Republicans that Bannon does respect. One of them is Rep. Louis Gohmert, the fiery congressman from Texas, who was also at the party. Gohmert, who is part of the self-proclaimed anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party, was an ally of Cruz in the government shutdown.
Trump’s decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by him—that of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it. Trump’s behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannon’s belief in Leninist tactics. As the Bolshevik leader once said, “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”
Only one question remains. Knowing this, why do leaders like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others, who regularly condemn Trump’s statements but yet still endorse him, stick with such a self-defeating approach? They will only end up helping Bannon and company cast them into oblivion and finish their hostile take-over of the GOP.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect when the party took place, and which Thomas Sowell article was discussed at it.
