00:00:00.000In 2021, the world is a very tricky place, endlessly complicated.
00:00:05.900Society is in decline or appears to be.
00:00:09.680It's only March and already the targets of cancel culture include Dr. Seuss, Pepe Le Pew, Dumbo, Gina Carano, Sharon Osborne, Bill Burr, Shakespeare, Parler, the guy from Bachelor, the other guy from the Food Network and most of all, Mr.
00:00:31.340Meanwhile, we have gained racist strippers at the Grammys.
00:00:37.900After three years of nonstop cancel culture, the left claims that cancel culture doesn't even exist.
00:00:44.900In their next breath, they claim that, and this is a direct headline from The Washington Post, nobody loves cancel culture more than Republicans, end quote.
00:00:59.940Even so, I don't think that we should trust any idea that causes an unprecedented amount of damage to almost every major city in America, but that's just me.
00:01:10.780But that all wouldn't matter because we can't even agree on whether or not truth still exists.
00:01:18.740I'm going to the podcast, and that's what this is all about.
00:01:23.600A growing number of radicals claim that truth doesn't exist, which leaves people like us who believe in the traditions of the Enlightenment, the idea that there are certain truths that are self-evident.
00:01:39.740It leaves us feeling more and more isolated.
00:01:43.580All of this stuff is happening so fast that we barely have time to comprehend one ridiculous disaster before another dozen pop up.
00:01:52.300A few months ago, I met a guy who is remarkable because of what he's done and what he can explain.
00:02:02.120Today's guest has spent the last 10 years examining the movements that have led to all of this chaos.
00:02:10.880He wrote about it in his book, War for Eternity.
00:02:14.960Now, this is a book that defies political classification.
00:02:19.120It doesn't fit neatly on either side of the fence because what it talks about is the war for eternity, a global war.
00:02:29.920This is probably why Glenn Greenwald called it an indispensable text for understanding the most profound and tumultuous political shifts in defining societies on every continent, end quote.
00:02:46.820On top of being an author, today's guest is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a scholar of radical nationalism.
00:02:56.260This one, every person on the right needs to hear.
00:16:43.720I also could read a thermometer, you know, global warming.
00:16:46.980And I also will give the fact that if there is warming, it doesn't seem logical to me that man doesn't have a role when we have done what we've done to the earth and the air.
00:18:52.880You could call him a media personality.
00:18:55.260You could also call him a diplomat or you could call him a political operative.
00:18:58.960Some people would call him a warmonger.
00:19:00.580And at different times, he appears to be all of those things.
00:19:04.260He has written some very influential books in Russia.
00:19:07.840He wrote really a seminal text called The Foundations of Geopolitics right after the fall of the Soviet Union, which essentially outlined a plan for Russia to reassert itself against the United States once the Soviet Union had disintegrated.
00:19:23.560And and and it was it was elaborate, although he left out a lot of his a lot of his earlier esoteric occultist yearnings and interpretations of the world.
00:19:35.760Dugan has a very complicated background, which which we probably don't have time to get into.
00:20:03.460So that's where that's where Dugan enters the stage in the late 90s.
00:20:07.280Later on, we see him being employed as an advisor to certain members of the Duma in Russia.
00:20:15.580We see him almost inexplicably showing up in situations of profound diplomatic tension when Russia was having this conflict with separatists in Chechnya.
00:20:29.020Dugan turns up to be one of the mediators in their debates.
00:20:33.440This is officially, again, just a philosopher.
00:20:35.500Later on, 2015, when Russia, Turkey, Syria have a major diplomatic crisis over the shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkish forces on the border to Syria and in Turkey.
00:20:50.060We don't know how all these players got together and solved the situation.
00:21:15.960He's never been an official advisor to Putin, but he he seems to be used in these key places.
00:21:21.180So so but he is kind of a guy that you wouldn't want to publicly connect with if you're a Russian politician, I think.
00:21:33.940I mean, I've seen his interviews, whatever the big interview show, kind of like our 60 Minutes where they sit around that big, huge tables.
00:21:46.560He has I mean, he has talked about to the guy's face rationally.
00:21:52.460He's like, yeah, I think some people need to be executed.
00:21:54.980And the host said, would I be one of those people?
00:21:57.360And he said, well, yeah, yeah, you should be gone.
00:22:00.160I mean, he is he is as frightening in some ways as Hitler must have been in 1930, 1928.
00:22:11.860A guy with no power really seems like a fringe player.
00:22:16.100But the things he says, if you take him seriously and literally, he's an extreme danger to the world.
00:22:24.720Well, think of it in this terms, if you if you compare him to someone like Hitler, who he says, if I'm not mistaken, he says Hitler's problem.
00:22:43.140OK, well, think of it in these terms, in these terms.
00:22:47.300But he he looks at the United States, he looks at, let's say, the founding principles of the U.S.
00:22:53.060and considers them to be a sort of metaphysical evil, looks at the universal values that are espoused in the Constitution, enlightenment values, the individualism.
00:23:06.920And and says that these are values that anyone opposed to them cannot coexist with.
00:23:13.500That sets us up for a sort of all or nothing conflict.
00:23:17.700And he believes that Russia, Eurasia in particular, have a sort of also of metaphysical mandate to push against the United States.
00:23:28.520There's not a lot of room there for coexistence.
00:23:32.380So when you see a sort of apocalyptic yearning in this way of looking at the world, that's where it's rooted is a belief in a fundamental inability for us to coexist.
00:23:41.400And that's one reason why throughout his history, he's also wanted to see a coalition, not just with with Russia and, let's say, China, which is which is fairly well, well publicized.
00:23:53.380But he's also been quite interested in bringing Mujahideen, Islamist enemies of the United States, together so that all of these anti-American forces can collaborate against the West.
00:24:04.260And and again, for him, this is this is more than just geopolitics, geopolitics and states represent a metaphysical spiritual conflict in his mind, secularism, individualism, enlightenment values, modernity versus the premodern versus tradition versus eternity, essentially, which is represented by these these other states.
00:24:26.940And again, it might sound it might sound wacky, but this is this is a person who has had a major platform and has figured into high level diplomatic actions.
00:24:37.820OK, so if the thing that stuck out when I first started looking into him is that his symbol for his philosophy or or whatever you would call it, is the ancient symbol of chaos.
00:25:55.100You could say, yes, it almost it looks at those at those other modern political ideologies, fascism, communism, liberalism, and and tries to find in them a way to consistently oppose individualism, individual freedom.
00:26:15.540You could say an interest in economic advance and progress finds a way to oppose all of those ideas and wraps them, wraps them into one.
00:27:09.400So most traditionalists, these capital T traditionalists we were talking about, they they look at world history and they say that ages millennia ago, certainly before the time of Christ, there was a single true religion.
00:27:23.080That's the tradition, capital T. That's what that's what it is.
00:27:26.620And that over time, this tradition, this religious truth was gradually forgotten, destroyed.
00:27:33.440That's why we started writing is because we started to forget it in their in their history telling.
00:27:38.280And the truths that were that were contained in it were splintered in all these different directions and they can be found today in piecemeal fashion in certain religious practices, typically the mystical versions of, let's say, Islam, sometimes Christianity.
00:27:54.300And in Christianity's case, it's typically Catholicism and East Orthodox Christianity, sometimes Kabbalah and Judaism.
00:28:12.560And on the and on the face of it, yes, they would appear to be a Christian like you, Glenn.
00:28:18.320But there's this back story to it, which is the belief that Christianity is just an imperfect pathway to something else, something pre-Christian, something larger than Christianity.
00:28:30.740Most often traditionalists believe that it would be like the the Druids and things like that.
00:28:37.980Right. And is it almost a Gnosticism, a Gnostic approach that you're born knowing and then you lose it or, you know, there's only a few of us that really get it.
00:28:49.460Well, that's an interesting way to put it.
00:28:52.100OK, the truth is that, I mean, if they think that once there was there was a true, authentic revelation to humanity, they also believe that today you can only get a scrap of it if you fully devote yourself to one religious path.
00:29:06.580But that doesn't mean that that religious path in some way has a monopoly on truth.
00:29:52.280We are brothers, because that is a very difficult, scholarly kind of book made for geeks like us.
00:30:01.160And in that, he talks a lot about how Hinduism was something that they were pursuing, that they that, you know, they they they that they say they were Christian and they certainly weren't Hindu.
00:30:20.920But they had this mystical belief and it was driven by Hinduism.
00:30:34.560So so when we think about, you know, Nazism, we think about the veneration of the Aryan race, which which, of course, Hitler saw as this blonde, blue eyed master race of Germanic people.
00:30:45.060The term Aryan, you might not realize this, but that relates to what is thought to be a tribe of North Indian people who eventually invaded India from the north.
00:31:07.900And and there there is some historical truth to that part of the story where things get much more complicated is when you try and connect as Hitler was doing Europe to that.
00:32:12.680So they believed, and there's truth to this, that the pre-Christian religions that spread from India through Iran, Zoroastrianism, paganism through Europe, that they were all part of the same religious world, actually.
00:32:26.660They're all variations of the same thing.
00:32:37.740So there are a lot of people who look to Hinduism as being the last remnant of European pre-Christian paganism.
00:32:45.640And therefore, especially if you're, let's say, one of these figures we're talking about, Alexander Dugan, or a traditionalist, you see Hinduism as being virtuous and maybe even better than the other religions because it is older and because it hasn't been tarnished.
00:33:03.060That makes it closer to that eternal, ancient truth that they're trying to get to than the other practices.
00:33:11.680That's one of the reasons why Hinduism is elevated.
00:33:16.240So when he uses, because he talks a lot about the Eastern Orthodox Church reestablishing itself, and that is purely like Hitler using Christianity as a vehicle to help him destroy.
00:33:34.700There's no love here for the Eastern Orthodox Church, right?
00:33:58.580And when we get to America, that's why Christianity is important.
00:34:02.960Again, it's not that this is a Christian movement.
00:34:06.020In fact, it's the opposite of a Christian movement.
00:34:08.040It's that it's a banner that they can use to unite people on because those people who are Christian will hear words about tradition and they're like, yeah, I'm with that.
00:34:24.160But thing thing in these terms, though, I mean, Christianity, the principle that Christ's salvation was available to all people throughout the world and all times.
00:34:35.140And this this is what is behind the evangelistic impetus to a lot of modern Christianity.
00:34:41.040That is a sort of anti-nationalistic doctrine.
00:34:45.020That is that is that is a way of looking at global society that says that the boundaries we put around ourselves are actually a problem and actually stopping a divine message from getting through.
00:34:57.460So it's the it's the opposite of using Christianity as the banner of a tribe, let's say, that is only a message for some people.
00:35:04.160That was part of the revolutionary element in Christianity was this universal element.
00:35:11.020So so by treating Christianity in this way, you really are violating a principle of it.
00:35:15.320And that's, again, another reason why a lot of traditionalists do not identify with Christianity.
00:35:20.320They are an anti-Christian right in most cases.
00:35:41.300Kof, I can't say founder, but the co-leader in some ways with in in the world, he's really made the push.
00:35:52.360He into Europe and some of these really spooky European right organizations are really gaining traction with his help, his fundraising and his his connections.
00:36:32.620Dugan has been a force pushing, especially in Austria, Italy, Hungary and France to make sure that this ascendant politically powerful movement from from the right in Europe will be pro Russian.
00:36:48.820And in a lot of instances, he's been successful in that.
00:37:50.440And Glenn, when you talk about this cultural conservatism and Christianity being being a sort of facade, it's especially clear when you look at Putin's past because he did not care about this at all.
00:38:03.740No, he he had no ideology when he began, you know, really solidifying his power.
00:38:09.760Cultural conservatism came later as as he began to to imagine a geopolitical role and a message for himself, aside from just Russian might.
00:38:21.380So let me just stop one more place with him.
00:38:53.480I don't I don't know that much about about Dugan doing that personally.
00:38:58.200He certainly was supporting it and he was using his media outlets to to support Brexit.
00:39:02.760In his mind, a weakened European Union means a weakened United States in Europe and there and thereby also opportunities for Russia to push outward.
00:39:13.300But as you're mentioning, also, this is an example of destroying and disintegrating some some political entity.
00:39:19.860And that that appeals to Dugan, no doubt.
00:39:22.440And also, I think people and because I can watch I can watch England and relate to it without being emotional, you know.
00:39:33.440And so it's a better place to really understand it, because in some ways we feel the same way.
00:39:41.600And what people were feeling, the if you were a traditional Englishman, you were losing your heritage.
00:39:50.480They were now starting to say that you can't even fly the British flag and, you know, Great Britain isn't so special and maybe they have some problems in the past and we should erase that.
00:40:01.880And we should be more of this global community.
00:40:04.400And you were seeing all of these influences coming from outside of your country.
00:40:10.580You found them damaging and your politicians were lying to you.
00:40:27.720Absolutely. Absolutely. And add to everything that you just said, there's there's also the question of sovereignty there.
00:40:34.560Right. There is the fact that, you know, British English fishermen and fishermen were not able to control their own destiny.
00:40:42.340And changes to fishing laws would take place that, you know, in halls of power that were so remote and so inaccessible that, yes, of course, you I think it's very easy to understand feeling disgruntled and feeling resentful of of that political political entity.
00:40:58.840The question is always what is going to fill the void when it is destroyed and what interests are going to be served by each action that makes this complicated.
00:41:08.600That makes this something other than a black and white situation.
00:41:11.440OK, so now before we come to America, there's a second leader of this.
00:41:20.860So his name is Olavo de Carvalho, and he's most often just described as Olavo, his first name.
00:41:27.460He is a Brazilian. He lives in the United States.
00:41:30.800He's lived in the United States since 2005.
00:41:32.960And if Dugan is hard to characterize, if I can't really decide whether to call him a philosopher or a political operative, that's that's even more so the case with this figure, Olavo.
00:41:43.640He's recognized today as being most often, quote unquote, the guru of Jair Bolsonaro, who's the president of Brazil.
00:41:51.420He rises to power in Brazil after a major political power vacuum and a lot of resentment against the progressive left administration and establishment in the country's government.
00:42:12.080He does not have any official position in the Bolsonaro government, although he does have acolytes who, let's say, currently the current foreign minister is a former student of his.
00:42:22.460He's past ministers of education have come straight straight out of his sphere of influence.
00:43:15.940And an astrologist, yes, rests with this history and traditionalism.
00:43:22.440He was initiated into one of the most closed and, let's say, direct ideological and, let's say, religious schools tying to the to the original traditionalists.
00:43:47.480And throughout most of his career, he has been interested in studying esoteric, occultist, alternative spirituality, new age sort of stuff, in addition to traditionalism.
00:44:01.420And relatively late came to conservatism and then, let's say, populism and the right.
00:44:09.180Earlier in his life, he was a communist.
00:44:11.060So this is this is a highly eccentric figure, produced a lot of text, has a lot of followers, difficult to characterize, but undoubtedly powerful as well.
00:44:30.340If you ask him, he would say that the political situation in Brazil just got to be too tiresome and he had to leave because the leftists were were just running amok, essentially.
00:44:41.760What is strange is that now he's in so much favor.
00:44:44.820I mean, there are literally squares of people holding placards with his name on it, shouting that Olavo was right and the president, Jair Bolsonaro, gave him a medal.
00:44:57.360So so I think some shrewd observers are suspecting that there are there are some major legal issues that would come into play where he just to go back into the into the country.
00:45:07.860Now, here's where it becomes personal for a lot of conservatives, and it is one of the reasons why I was adamant against Donald Trump at the beginning.
00:45:24.220And it wasn't had didn't have anything to do with Donald Trump.
00:45:27.880It had everything to do with who he was surrounded by.
00:45:31.040And I am not convinced at all that Donald Trump knows or understands nor cares about any of this stuff.
00:45:49.820But he is advised or has been advised by the main anchor here in America, who I find to be an extraordinarily disturbing man, Steve Bannon.
00:46:05.160He's the he's the third in this unholy trinity.
00:46:09.960Steve Bannon, just to give give some insight, we've been talking about Alexander Dugan quite a bit here in this program.
00:46:17.260In November 2018, after he left the White House, Steve Bannon met Alexander Dugan in Rome.
00:46:26.140The purpose of the meeting from Bannon's side was to push a geopolitical agenda.
00:46:32.420But the the reason that the two of them got together in the first place was because they both identified with traditionalism in different ways.
00:46:41.840They both shared this this way of thinking.
00:46:44.360How did so that is how did Bannon where is that coming?
00:46:49.840Traditionalism, where is that coming up in America?
00:46:55.560It's it's complicated and contradictory, of course, because for most most of the history of traditionalism and for most traditional lists, the United States itself is an abomination.
00:47:06.700It is a state created in modernity and with the values of the Enlightenment.
00:47:13.660That's that's part of our DNA in their mind.
00:47:15.760So how you could combine that with traditionalism is a real question.
00:47:19.340And it and it and it took a lot of work.
00:47:21.340But for Bannon, he has been interested in this world, this alternative spirituality world for quite some time.
00:47:29.980People tend to read his biography and see a lot of gimmicks.
00:47:35.260Let's say, you know, Ben Shapiro, for example, you know, is a strong critic of Bannon and sees, you know, just kind of one gimmick after after the next with him.
00:47:43.620That that can be true in certain respects.
00:47:45.760But he has been interested in this this ideological world well before he got involved in politics.
00:47:52.180That kind of begins during his college years when he is interested in Buddhism and transcendental meditation, stuff like that.
00:48:00.000A lot of people were into that, of course, in the United States.
00:48:02.200But as he moves in the 80s and the 90s, he he's not only reading these authors and authors close to them.
00:48:10.400He's also starting to associate with other people who do as well, starting to participate in communities.
00:48:16.320One thing I document in my book is is that in the early 90s, he was meeting with a group of alternative spiritualists, alternative spiritualists in California who were all followers of a mystic named Gurdjieff, who may be known to some of your some of your readers, who's kind of adjacent, not really a traditionalist, but but in the same world.
00:48:36.600And throughout that time, he he learns about traditionalism.
00:48:43.560I was very impressed, actually, by the breadth of his knowledge.
00:48:46.600Of course, I spent about two years interviewing Bannon about this.
00:48:52.200And when we get into the 2010s, then we know that he's he's also reading Alexander Dugan, familiar with Dugan, admiring his books, not just a reader, but an admirer of Dugan's writing.
00:49:04.460And that all ends up being the prelude to this meeting in this attempt to collaborate.
00:49:10.040Great. So this is first of all, you're an ethnomusicologist by trade.
00:49:19.600You study music like jazz and and track it to or what?
00:49:26.600You could do that. Ethnomusicology is the combination is the study of music and culture.
00:49:32.140So it's you could say that I'm an anthropologist.
00:49:34.440I what I typically say to people is that I'm a scholar of politics.
00:49:38.120I like I study politics and culture. And in contrast with my political scientists, colleagues, I think that the most important political developments do not take place in a ballot box.
00:49:48.940Not they're not registered on opinion polls.
00:49:52.060They take place in culture. And so music is something that I've looked at in the past.
00:49:55.520But when music is not involved, I'm happy to depart from it as well.
00:49:59.740That's interesting. I'd love to talk to you about just that.
00:50:03.000I mean, I'm fascinated by Martin Luther King when he said no movement is a real movement unless it has a soundtrack.
00:50:14.480Yeah. So but so if that's your gig and you're not interested in things, really, you your depth of knowledge is enormous.
00:50:24.220How did you get interested in in this with Steve Bannon and how did you get so many interviews and get him to say the things that he said on record?
00:51:37.660That was that was really European right.
00:51:40.040European right has changed politics over there forever.
00:51:42.560I mean, it was it was a major historical transformation these past these past decades.
00:51:48.140Traditionalism, you would see these figures show up at seminars, at rallies, at, at, you know, political festivals and things like that.
00:51:57.420They were not the movers and the shakers.
00:51:59.260They were the oddballs at the at the edge of the gathering.
00:52:01.980And that's partly why when I heard that Bannon read some of some traditionalist authors, that's all we really knew.
00:52:10.560Let's say 2017, 2018, there are a few journalists who learned a little bit about this.
00:52:15.520That was enough to to catch my attention, because I didn't think anyone with political power, anyone who had kind of succeeded at climbing up, climbing through the halls of power in the way someone like Bannon had.
00:52:30.120They would ever, ever, ever even know about this stuff.
00:52:34.520I guarantee you embrace it, let alone embrace it.
00:52:39.580I guarantee if you went around Washington prior to to Bannon's arrival, asked senators, congressmen, if they ever knew of any of these authors, they would have no clue.
00:52:49.040I think if I said traditionalism, they'd start talking about something else.
00:52:53.000I have to tell you, honestly, I I think I've had in 10 years one guest who, you know, they're, you know, very smart politically, globally.
00:53:21.520This is I mean, it's it's it's striking because his primary cause and the way if he has had influence, it has it has been influence in stoking the Kremlin on into additional conflicts with the West and with the United States.
00:53:39.220So, you know, Dugan has served as a mouthpiece for the war cause in Georgia, said that Russia needed to intervene in Georgia.
00:53:48.080Your listeners might remember that that particular conflict, because to do so was actually to fight against the United States in Ukraine.
00:53:58.100He did the same thing, demanded and started, you know, drumming up support in Russia for military intervention into Ukraine and worked in Syria as well.
00:54:08.880To make sure that a coalition between Syria, Russia and even Turkey in a complicated way would maintain itself so that the United States would would stay out of it.
00:54:18.980So this is this is an actor who is principally opposed to a lot of U.S. geopolitics.
00:54:24.260So I share I share I share your reaction over the fact that not more U.S. politicians know about him.
00:54:31.180Yeah. When we when we look now at Bannon, I'll never forget 2015, 2016.
00:54:42.480You have Alexander Dugan on his YouTube channel just raving about Donald Trump.
00:56:42.120When he in interviews talks about the disassembly of the administrative state, think about that as the tip of the iceberg.
00:56:52.400Think about that as the the public facing explanation for an agenda that might appeal again.
00:57:00.300Let's say to libertarians who think the federal government has exceeded its its limits and rights to be rolled back in Bannon's case, though.
00:57:07.580There are multiple layers behind this.
00:57:10.540There is the belief in his case that if if the administrative state is pulled apart, if if that takes place, something will come back up to fill its void.
00:57:27.020That is going to be essentially almost a pre-enlightenment version of the United States, something that predates the U.S. Constitution, something that I'm sorry.
00:57:35.960Ben, can you give me the high point of pre-enlightenment anything on the planet?
00:57:43.040Pre-enlightenment that was called the Dark Ages.
00:57:46.520What what is so attractive about the pre-enlightenment world?
00:57:53.180For these thinkers, it would be the primacy of spirituality.
00:57:57.860Let's say it would be the disinclination toward globalization, the notion that the world could be, let's say, spiritual, collectivist, anti individual and also bounded, that you would not see expansion of goods, trade, peoples, governments, that everything would be would be kept in its in its place.
00:58:26.020And that you would not have free radicals, individuals just moving, moving up and down the social ladder and across borders in any which way.
00:58:35.080So when I'm describing that that sort of ideal, again, bits and pieces of that, I imagine, might might resonate with an American conservative and bits and pieces of it might not.
01:00:06.340That to me, Bannon, when you get to details, things get get complicated.
01:00:09.760He's not he's not stupid, but it is in that direction.
01:00:13.740It is it is a vision of the United States that is not as attached to the principles of the Enlightenment as it is for virtually all other conservatives.
01:00:24.260And the Constitution, which is itself an Enlightenment era document, which is universalist, which in his mind paves the way for globalization, which is individualist, which paves the way for a lack of solidarity within the nation state.
01:00:37.020So replacing those those values in his mind will it would be something more, let's say, less American, less inherently enlightenment, liberal and modern.
01:00:52.460So people would say to me, I've heard this.
01:00:58.960I can't tell you how many people in the press I have called and said, look, we disagree on everything.
01:01:03.460But when you're thinking about the religious right or you're thinking about a spooky right, this is what you're talking about.
01:01:12.360And Alexander Dugan, if I'm not mistaken, his translator is either the wife or the girlfriend of Richard Spencer, the the Nazi here in America.
01:01:22.820So they're they're they're they're they're really tied into things.
01:01:28.040They either get a glazed over look or they'll say, what does he matter?
01:01:33.300And I'll say, well, because Bannon is part of this and nobody and they'll say the same thing every time.
01:02:04.640If you have a seat on the National Security Council, you have power and influence.
01:02:08.300If you are the the manager of Trump's 2016 campaign, you have influence.
01:02:14.560But when we look when we look at Bannon, we can not only talk about certain, let's say, secretary or leadership or administrative administrative assignments that he helped help make in the early days of the Trump administration.
01:02:29.780We would look not only to some of the immigration policies that he pursued.
01:02:35.860And I get I know that probably a lot of our viewers and myself might have different thoughts about that.
01:02:41.520But I think that the key the key thing with Bannon was also his ability, A, to narrativize the Trump movement.
01:02:49.200By that, I mean, to explain and try and give meaning to what was going on, to say it wasn't just a good storyteller of of stuff.
01:03:59.940So that and and more and more increasingly, they're explicit about that fact.
01:04:04.340So also bringing in in Brazil, Bannon's chief efforts in Brazil were not only connecting with Olavo de Carvalho, who I spoke to you about earlier, but also also trying to to stoke the branch of government that was aligned with his particular values in relating to traditionalism.
01:04:25.220So all of those all of those things are going on.
01:04:29.040Some of his projects are catastrophic failures.
01:04:31.720Some of them are sort of, you know, goofy mishaps, but occasionally they're not.
01:04:38.420And we have to look at the meeting with with Dugan in particular.
01:04:42.460And this does not mean that, you know, Russiagate was true or anything, but it certainly attests to Bannon's vision to bring the United States and Russia together, not on the basis, not on the basis of shared economic or political values, but on the basis in his mind of a deeper religious ethno religious identity.
01:05:01.660Probably not so much ethno, but deeper religious identity.
01:05:04.920I will tell you, when they first started saying stuff about Russia, right after he was elected, during when he was elected, I think I might have said it, you know, when he was first named to the Trump election.
01:05:20.880I, I was like, I don't Russia, everything, everything Russia is now tainted.
01:05:27.840Um, and honestly, I thought we would find Bannon in the Russia stuff, but the Russia stuff turned out not to be true as they were saying it.
01:05:40.980Trump wasn't involved in it and nothing, but Bannon was involved in Russia in an entirely different way.
01:05:50.560And, and, and, and at a deeper level, right, he's, he's, he was talking about, and his vision was a union between Russia and the United States against China, the basis of which would be something other than what we were used to seeing in geopolitics, not economics, not political values, but a deeper tribalistic union between our, our, our peoples in his mind.
01:06:14.060Um, it's, it's important to pay attention to this to spiritual leaders in a way.
01:06:22.480Dugan was not interested because in his mind, there's the fact that if the United States is a Christian nation, that in and of itself does not mean anything special to him.
01:06:31.120He has no, in his, in his worldview, he has no more allegiance to the Christian West than he does to Islamic Iran.
01:06:50.340And you have Putin understanding, no love for Christianity, but understanding, uh, if I'm a spiritual defender, if I'm a defender of all the things these, he's almost Constantine, if you will, where I don't care what you decide, just come together.
01:07:10.680This, this is about, about giving character and meaning to what is otherwise a fairly crude play for political power in Russia on, on Putin's part for Dugan and the people pushing, uh, pushing for a more, let's say a more ostensibly Christian Russia.
01:07:27.220It has, it has, it has actual ideological content and meaning to it.
01:07:32.180It's about pushing, using religion to push against the United States.
01:07:39.980Bannon is probably looking maybe at some prison time.
01:07:44.440Uh, you know, it's, uh, things are not going well for him, et cetera, et cetera.
01:07:48.980Uh, tell me, tell the, the viewer, the listener who is like, Oh, that's a fascinating story.
01:07:57.080And I believe maybe those things might be true, but it's, it's not going to make an impact here.
01:08:04.080Tell people what to look for, where it is, you know, how to stay away from it, how to spot it.
01:08:11.820I would, to begin with, I'm not sure that Bannon is going away.
01:08:18.520Um, he's in a legal fight right now, following his pardon from president Trump.
01:08:22.620There's things are very much up in the air as to whether or not he might still be implicated in a legal battle surrounding this, this border wall.
01:08:29.740Um, but what we see around Bannon and around this particular movement, traditionalism is a complete disregard for the status quo.
01:08:41.820And for the establishment, and that might sound good at face value, but I would certainly encourage, uh, encourage your listeners to ask always, okay, if we destroy this, what comes next?
01:09:30.880A, it's very easy to destroy something.
01:09:32.540I mean, this is a, this is a common critique of the right against the left that, that, you know, we are completely convinced of your ability to tear down something, not convinced at all at your ability to build something up in its place.
01:09:44.280Um, those same, that same line of questioning could be posed to this wing of, of the right as well.
01:09:52.080Um, destruction to what end define, define the movements, define the categories.
01:10:16.660I'm willing to admit, even though I, I'm, this is not my political home per se.
01:10:20.620I can still acknowledge, I think that there is a problem if society does not have any commentary on spirituality in it.
01:10:29.820If there is no emphasis on collective spiritual life, that doesn't mean it needs to be part of the state, but it is a problem that we have always known.
01:10:39.600With classical liberalism and enlightenment values is that it's great at social mobility.