Steve Bannon Books

A man who has pretty much done it all, Steve Bannon played a critical role in the rise of President Donald Trump to the White House and as a result is perhaps the establishment’s second most hated Conservative.

Bannon was an officer in the Navy in the late ’70s and erly ’80s before becoming an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. He then moved into a successful role in Hollywood, acting as an executive producer and making 18 films from 1991 to 2016. During that time he co-founded Breitbart News, helping create a powerful right wing voice in the digital media space.

His intellect, ambition and expertise have made Bannon a sort of propagandist for the populist movement. Breitbart helped pave the way for a President Trump. Trump’s long-standing attack on the corporate media as the enemy of a free people is foreshadowed in much of Bannon’s work.

Like Trump, Bannon’s opinions and philosophies tend to be crass but powerful. Nowhere might this be more true than in an interview he gave after the 2016 election when he said, “We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall. This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls. The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Bannon’s political philosophy includes never backing down, understanding that when you apologize or admit fault, it’s all over.

Along with his role in running Breitbart, Bannon also served on the board of the Cambridge Analytica, which helped strategize President Trump’s successful 2016 election run.

President Trump’s acknowledgement of Bannon’s skills and his responsibility in winning the election came in Bannon’s appointment as the White House’s chief strategist. A net-new position inside the administration, it only lasted seven months before he resigned.

Bannnon has given rise and given voice to the populist movement and is a dedicated free market capitalist.

With all the Steve Bannon has done, he hasn’t had much time to write books. As a result, he only has one title to his name and it is a transcript of a Munk Debate in which he squared off against David Frum (former speech writer for George W Bush) on the topic of populism. Bannon takes the pro-populist argument, highlighting the rise of populist parties not just in the US, but it’s growth globally in Europe, including the rise of the Brexit party led by Nigel Farage.

If nothing else, the debate provides less insight on Bannon and more on Frum, a faux-Conservative, the sort of with Pat Buchannan wrote about in “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

The Rise of Populism