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12 September 2018

What Steve Bannon really believes in

A clash with the New Yorker magazine has led to Trump’s former strategy chief being called a fascist. But what is the driving force behind the arch-nationalist?

By Sophie McBain

For President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the invitation to headline the New Yorker festival next month must have been a high point in an otherwise rough year. In August 2017, six months after he had glowered from the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline “The great manipulator”, Bannon lost his White House job. In January this year he lost his position at the helm of the alt-right website Breitbart and the patronage of the rich and powerful Mercer family.

Granted, the New Yorker might be the apotheosis of what Bannon terms the globalist, opposition party media, but an interview with the editor David Remnick would cement the idea that the 64-year-old propagandist film-maker and former naval officer and investment banker is neither a political has-been nor simply a right-wing attack dog, but rather an influential thinker whose ideas should be interrogated by one of the most respected journalists in America.

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