"Harvard Business School [c]lassmates remember him wearing his conservative beliefs like a badge: He would carry it into almost any discussion.
Several of his fellow students are shocked at the comments they now see attributed to Bannon, and those that come out on Breitbart, the conservative website that he runs. A May 2016 article called Bill Kristol, a longtime Republican and Weekly Standard editor, a “renegade Jew.” In July, an article said that if women did not want to be harassed online, they should log off.
Women, the article said, are “screwing up the Internet for men by invading every space we have online and ruining it with attention-seeking and a needy, demanding, touchy-feely form of modern feminism.”
“We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” Bannon told The Washington Post in January. “We think of ourselves as virulently antiestablishment, particularly ‘anti’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”
It’s the kind of language that was virtually unheard of in his Harvard days, from Bannon or anyone else. And some of those who got to know Bannon back then say they don’t think he believes some of those things, even now.
Instead, they believe he is simply doing what he was taught more than three decades ago: exploiting a business opportunity, this time in the furious, neglected legions of the white middle class. He saw a market in their sense of alienation, and Trump’s election suggests that his forecast was truer than most.
“If you were asking me about some of the articles published and things clearly intended to be lightning rod, I’m not sure Steve subscribes to those beliefs,” said one former classmate, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But there’s a strong argument to be made that he was doing whatever any good business leader would do, which is serving his customers and providing a product.”
In that sense, the classmate said, they see Bannon now as the same brash and driven striver they saw 32 years ago when he joined their class.
“A lot of people give him credit for being the brains behind this political revolution, almost as if it’s coming out of nowhere,” the classmate said. “That’s very consistent in the behavior I saw from Steve in the HBS environment
“In a way, he would surprise people with his insights and the extent of his understanding of a complex situation. But doing it from the fringe. And the fringe in that case was skydeck [section of the lecture hall]."
The perch Bannon will soon occupy as Trump’s chief counselor and strategist is no longer the fringe of the classroom, or the fringe of anywhere. It’s the Oval Office."
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18 comments:
Interesting guy. I predict a presidential run, say 2024?
The guy's a success. No doubt about that.
I have heard Bannon on the radio more than a few times and he is not the character the dishonest media would present him as--he is a thoughtful host and definitely prepared.
An anecdote in the article said on the first day at HBS, the professor called up to him in the upper part of the auditorium, and asked what he thought of a certain case. Bannon gave a witty answer that made the class laugh, then proceeded with an off-the-cuff, succinct analysis of the matter. I look forward to seeing more about him. Heck, I haven't even heard him speak.
Sounds like a guy who gets it.
Bannon sounds like a mortal threat to the established classes. I predict an early, convenient death -- much like Breitbart's.
Every so often there is a visionary political operative who shapes a campaign or a candidate who becomes a dominant force in American Politics. They have a philosophy or a slant that nobody else has and they guide their candidate to exploit it for at least two terms that can that transforms American politics for their generation.
Lee Atwater with his Southern Strategy.
James Carville with his "triangulation."
Karl Rove with his "compassionate conservatism."
You don't have to believe in their program but you have to admit they were very effective politically and led to two terms for their Presidents.
Steve Bannon is following in their footsteps. His embrace and promotion of populism and Americanism is what propelled Trump to victory. He reminds me of Mark Hanna another member of the press who was instrumental in electing a President. He is a master of the new media just as Hanna was in his day. Hanna perfected the idea of "front porch" campaigning to dampen the frenzy of post reconstruction politics and ushered in an era of Good Feelings. The press and political operatives of the day were in a frenzy but normal people appreciated the change.
What is very interesting is his support of the Alt-Right and their agenda. He has good instincts. Certainly at this point better than all of the pundits and conventional wisdom mains stream media scumbags. He saw Trump as a winner from the beginning. He sees the issues that the Alt-Right raise as winners. He encourages Trump to use Twitter and Youtube and Social Media and to bypass and marginalize the mainstream lying media. He might not specifically list their issues but he will feature them in articles and stories on Breitbart.
It is a new padagim. I see him dominating for two terms as the others had done before him. That is the way history works. The uninformed moronic media has no concept but this has all happened many times before. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Wow. The MSM can dig up opposition data, even college reminiscences at lightning speed.
I'm sure they'll be publishing Obama's any day now.
I hear Clinton's campaign team is demanding a second opinion regarding Castro's death.
Bannon can't believe the things he's saying, he just can't, he's our kind of people and he's talking like...THEM!!!
Is Bannon's first name Bruce? Is that sumbitch gonna hulk out on us?
He's not dead, Jim, he's padagim.
Is Frederico Franco still dead?
Can anyone in Wisconsin add or count?
Does anyone in Wisconsin count? Or matter?
How many recounts will it take for us to elect Mrs. Clinton?
Those are the questions I want answers to.
Well I know that nobody in Wisconsin matters. Sorry AllenS.
But youse guys know what I mean. Just sayn'
A laundry list of how the Dems actually elected Trump:
"Immigration. Here Hillary and Obama did great work for Donald. As Obama frantically brought in as many “refugees” as possible from everywhere, anywhere that might not be compatible with the people upon whom he would force them, Hillary promised to import huge numbers of Muslims. It was luminously stupid politics, but politically she was luminously stupid, so it fit.
It is why she is not President.
She knew that the backward peoples of Flyover Land ought to want hundreds of tmhousands of Somalis and Pakistanis and who-knew-what to live with, and if they didn’t, she would force them and it didn’t matter because she had big donors and everybody in the media loved her.
However incoherent and ignorant Trump was, the Establishment was determined to elect him. Elect him it did."
-Fred Reed archive at Unz Review, found in right side column.
There's an article up at The Black Report, with a Green Party member explaining that Stein is demanding recount to work toward fairness in vote counting. Claims many a local race is lost to Dems through vote tampering.
No, Sixty, his first name is Race.
Just call him by his nickname.
Whitey.
Excerpt from Black Report article:
"By filing for recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania aren’t Stein and the Greens selling out to, allowing themselves to be led by, or jumping into bed with Hillary and the Democrats?
Absolutely not. Democrats didn’t fight for voting rights in 2000 or 2004. Hillary and her Democrats are not fighting for voting rights today. Democrats are not standing up for the victims of felony disenfranchisement. Democrats aren’t insisting on voting rights for the District of Columbia. In 30 years, Democrats have not meaningfully contested unfair state level redistricting schemes in states like Indiana and Texas which Republicans lopsided Congressional majorities elected by a couple million fewer votes than a minority of House Democrats. Democratic politicians had more than 40 years after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to consolidate their victory with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, which would have put voting rights in a place untouchable even by the Supreme Court, and prevented the entire panoply of laws and practices that currently infringe on that right.
Democrats are perfectly content to keep Greens off the ballot entirely in Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana and Oklahoma, and force Green candidates to run without party labels in Tennessee, Alabama and many other states. Fighting for voting rights is just something Democratic shot callers don’t DO."
I like the fact that the guy doesn't wear a tie or shave. That's my lifestyle. I shave once a week and wear a tie only for court, funerals and weddings.
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