In what is effectively a coup, the US president is transferring power into the hands of a select few, writes Shannon Ebrahim.
The world is finally waking up to the truth behind what is driving US President Donald Trump and where he plans to take the US and the world. Virtually every day this week, more and more mainstream news agencies are catching on to who is the brains behind Trump – Steve Bannon – and his very specific ideology and world view that includes waging World War III very soon.
For those who think it sounds like far-fetched conspiracy theory, a Google search on Bannon will reveal a plethora of information on his speeches, documentaries and transcripts which clearly outline his world view. Bannon now sits as the chief strategist in the White House, and perhaps the most powerful principal member of the National Security Council (NSC).
It is his ideology and world view which is key, particularly given the fact that he has probably just become the second most powerful man in the world.
It is unprecedented that a political adviser who ran the US president’s political campaign for the White House would even sit on the National Security Council. Former president George W Bush’s campaign manager, Karl Rove, was barred from NSC meetings in an attempt to separate politics from issues relating to security, war and peace.
What Bannon has staged is a palace coup – he is now the man calling the shots in the NSC, even though this is a role usually occupied by senior generals. Bannon has ensured the downgrading of the roles in the NSC of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of intelligence, who now only attend NSC meetings on an “as-needed” basis. He has even eclipsed the role of national security advisor Rtd Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn, who as right-wing as he is, has been a life-long Democrat. The strategy behind this is to shut out any potentially alternative views to consolidate unchallenged and unrivalled power.
Not only is there no appetite among the new White House chiefs for dissenting views, but there is an unprecedented move to ensure that there is no paper trail of what is discussed in the NSC. Leaks in the White House have been prevalent since Trump took power, and his inner circle is now attempting to plug these holes with urgency, to prevent the American public from realising what is coming down the pipeline.
Last week, the Washington Post got hold of a draft executive order stating that immigrants who would need any form of public assistance (ie those with disabilities) would be barred from the US. It also called for immigrants already living in the US who need any form of public assistance to (where possible) be deported.
The media has got hold of another draft executive order in the pipeline ordering the bringing back of American black sites, and reopening the debate on torture. This draft executive order has already been circulated among NSC staff.
What is effectively happening is a 21st-century coup, where Trump is firing and sidelining top officials in the military, state and intelligence who might stand in his way, and transferring all effective power to a small inner circle.
But the crux of the matter is the agenda of this inner circle – the brains of which is Bannon. One of the most instructive speeches that Bannon gave, which clearly outlined his world view, was a speech he gave via Skype to a conference inside the Vatican in 2014. In it he called on “church militants” to fight against the new barbarity of jihadist Islamic fascism, and claimed that there was a major war brewing, a war that was already global.
It is not just a war with Islam that Bannon envisages, it is a colossal war – more brutal, violent and of unparalleled magnitude that will bring down the established political order as we know it, and forge a new world order based on the pillars of Judeo-Christian values, patriarchy, nationalism – a world in which pluralism, diversity and human rights have no place. What Bannon wants is a violent resurgence of Western civilisation, and now he has positioned himself in such a way that he has the power to fulfil it.
As insiders have already noted, “the president’s leadership hangs from the scaffolding of Bannon’s world view”. And that world view was elucidated in a speech Bannon gave to the Liberty Restoration Foundation, in which he outlined what he sees as the great turning points in US history, the first three being the American Revolution, the American Civil War and World War II. The next turning point, at which he believes we are now, is a colossal and brutally violent war against Islam. Bannon has become obsessed with the 1999 book, The Fourth Turning, by sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe which advanced this theory.
When ardent neo-conservatives in the US like David Frum are calling for the US Congress to use the 25th amendment to impeach Trump, it is clear the new reality of where Trump is taking the US and the world is now increasingly understood.
* For Part 2 of “Brains Behind Trump and WWIII” please see the Global Spotlight column in this week’s Sunday Independent.