Did… did I just slide to a parallel universe? Do I get to meet Jerry O’Connell? What the hell is going on?!
Broken clock?
Bannon is the cackling villain.
He knows the system is fucked. He knows he’s fucked. He knows you know it’s fucked and there’s no reason to hide anything.
If Starscream slicked his hair back and had a thing for Johnny Cash’s wardrobe, you’d have something close to Bannon.
I hate how accurate your besmirchment of Starscream is.
Carry on.
…some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
I’m wondering if we’re in the process of seeing the parties flip tbh. It seems like D’s are becoming more conservative and R’s are now trying to make systemic changes. Granted it’s not a perfect flip and R-progressiveness is more like going backwards at times (abortion) but things feel weird now.
- D: Trying to maintain (aka conserve) the status quo. Haven’t been truly progressive for decades. Doesn’t seem to have learned anything from losing in 2024.
- R: Got suddenly forced into populism by Trump’s surprise win and staying power. Their status quo rich politicians are all being forced out. “Anti-Elites” and big chaotic changes are now their calling cards.
If R’s realize that voters will strongly support them for attacking the rich, it might happen imo.
One key thing is that the Republican party has very much now become the party of the working class. In 2024, Kamala won those making less than $30k, and more than $100k. She won the poor and the professional class, but Trump won the working class, (and I assume) the extremely wealthy.
The Democrat’s real base right now is the professional class. Those with college degrees working white collar jobs. The poor also vote more for Dems, but they vote in fewer numbers based both on their poverty and their lower than average age.
We always assumed it was the rich vs everyone else, but it need not be that way. It could easily turn out to be the rich and the working class vs. the professional class and the poor. When someone like Bannon suggests raising taxes on the “rich,” he may not mean the actual ultra-wealthy, but the professional class.
And there is a form of taxation that could be implemented to fall on the professional class the hardest - targeting the tax advantages of 401ks and IRAs. That seems the most obvious target. Just raising income taxes would have to also hit the rich, but taking away a lot of the tax benefits of retirement accounts would mostly hurt the professional class, the white collar workers with bachelors and graduate degrees. The doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, the college professors, etc. The truly wealthy don’t really rely on these accounts much, as they have limits on them that make them useless for storing tens of millions or more in. And the working class? Well if you have a household income of $60k, odds are pretty low you’re going to be maxing out your 401k contribution.
The retirement accounts seem the most likely targets of this. The poor and working class don’t usually make enough to put substantial money away in these accounts, while their asset protections are a rounding error to the wealthy. Raiding 401ks and IRAs would be a way for them to raise taxes in a way that zeros in on the Democratic electorate and hurts them the most.
We could even see a very weird political landscape where 401ks and IRAs were raided to pay for social programs like health insurance subsidies, expanded subsidies for new parents, subsidized daycare, and other social spending meant to increase birth rates. They would sell it as “raising taxes on the wealthy to give to the working class,” while they would really be raising taxes on the professional class to pay for subsidies for the working class and tax cuts for the wealthy.
The white collar college educated workers are the heart of the Democrat’s current power base. They are the most likely targets of any Republican tax increases “on the rich.” And the easiest way to raise taxes on the professional class without also taxing the wealthy is to come after the retirement accounts.
And while some might say, “that would never happen, people wouldn’t stand for it. It would be the government going back on its word, people would be infuriated!” Well, I just come back to the end of Roe v. Wade. Republicans stripped civil rights from half the country, and the electorate responded by giving them full control of government. If you can strip the civil rights from half the population, stripping retirement account benefits, which far fewer people are actually able to really take advantage of, is minor in comparison.
401k and IRA protections are just tax policy. They can be changed at any time. A law could be passed tomorrow that said, “401k accounts are being wound down. All 401k accounts must be liquidated within the next five years and transferred to regular taxable brokerage accounts. This liquidation will be taxed like any other 401k or IRA withdrawal.” Then, everyone has to liquidate their accounts, and the full balance would be taxed as regular income. Not only would this give the government more long term revenue, but it would represent a massive short-term windfall. The treasury would bring in trillions as the government effectively seizes 20-30% of every 401k account in the nation. It would be a temporary windfall, but in the years of this one-time liquidation, it would likely even allow Trump to claim he actually balanced the budget. Anyone with sense would know it was a short-term stunt, but his base isn’t known for having a lot of sense.
Exept Musk I assume. Or Trump. Or any other fascist fuck.
This is a 1932-type realignment, if we do this right
Guys, he’s not talking about the re-alignment in America in 1932…
This reminds me of a manifesto I was reading for a proposed proletarian-run state. Comes from early 1900s, before the world went to shit because of the rise of fadcism. Particularly a few key points from their 25-point plan stood out to me:
- Abolition of unearned incomes [passive income, in today’s terms]. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
- In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice of life and property that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment due to a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. Therefore, we demand ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
- We demand nationalization of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).
- We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
- We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
- We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
- We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of land rent and prevention of all speculation in land.
- We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
[…]
- The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious citizen to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. […] We demand the education at the expense of the state of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
- The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, […]
Oops, wait, that’s excerpted from The National Socialist Program
Yeah, it turns out Nazis have always been willing to use socialist rhetoric to appeal to the working class. They know what they’re doing, but it’s only a matter of time before what’s determined to be for “the good of the workers” is coincidentally aligned with genocide and war and the greed of the ruling class…
TL;DR Nazis were always on board with taxing the rich… Until they didn’t have any more competition, at which point it’s back to oligarchy (and genocide, lots and lots of genocide).
I was wondering with a few of those. Particularly number 18 is dropping fucking anvil sized hints. And knowing what to look for the rest fall neatly into line with their position against reparations and American government loans; their stance on veteran’s care; and their conspiracy that corporations cost them world war 1, (this handily turned into Jews the second they needed corporate money).
So yeah I guess what I’m saying is you should definitely look the gift horse in the mouth. I learned this lesson as a kid in the 90’s watching Newt Gingrich talk about how we need to do more to help poverty stricken and homeless children. I was nodding right along and then he got to his solution, workhouses. He even used an updated “Dignity of Work” line about how they’ll learn useful skills and be proud of themselves.
Sooooo, current day russia?
Ya, explains a lot tbh.
Why are you reading Nazi manifestos? Most of those bullet points look terrible either way though.
Because reading the enemy’s playbook is useful.
Because I believe in learning from the past, and not making information forbidden either formally via regulations, nor informally via social pressures.
Bannon is an anger salesmen. Anger salesmen don’t sell you somene else’s anger, though – they can’t. Instead, they package up your own anger, and sell it back to you.
Bannon sees the the reaction people are habing to CEOs right now, slapping a big ol’ bow on it, and selling it back to people.
Oh snap the broken clock was right for once.
He’s talking about rich Dems / libs
he’s talking about The Jews
"This is a 1932-type realignment, if we do this right,” Bannon explained. “Look at the demographics that got us here – black, Hispanic, white, working class, all of it. If we deliver for these people, and I mean deliver in a big way economically, then this is a coalition that could last for 50 years.”
He added that loyalty to “crony capitalism” and “tax breaks for the corporations” could “squander” a unique moment in history.
Making the economy better is how Hitler got into power too. The irony in saying this could be a 1932 style realignment is not lost on me. Trump has also said he wants to go after his political opponents and put them in prison. Also something Hitler did.
To expand on this for the unaware: Hitler came back into power for his second term in 1932. His first term, similar to trumps, was rife with turmoil and political/administrative blunders. One of the first things he did, upon returning to power, was a German version of The New Deal. They massively invested in their country’s infrastructure and provided tens of millions of jobs for the young working class, who had been suffering the worst unemployment crisis in an age. For the first time in their lives, young Germans had good jobs (with great benefits) and were contributing towards building a better, cleaner, safer Germany, all facilitated by “the national socialist party”. This was the part of nazi history that actually included socialism, and it’s how the nazi party duped an entire generation into becoming their foot soldiers. They actually delivered substantive, positive change for the people, allowed people to get comfortable with the new status quo while they further built propaganda machines, then turned that status quo into a carrot on a stick. Young nazi’s were very fearful of a backslide, so when nazi propaganda started saying all these bad people were trying to take away their newfound financial freedom, it was very easy to convince these young, relatively ignorant, working class people to “defend” the country they proudly built with their own hands.
If the GOP did a 180° on all of their economic policy, of the last 60+ years, to follow a similar story arc, I would be extremely concerned. With how down-trodden our 3 youngest generations are, the conditions for an American copy of nazi Germany couldn’t be more perfect than they are right now.
I’m not a historian. I just read a book on this subject recently. Feel free to correct or add to anything I got wrong/missed!
I’d be interested to hear which book this was!
Well, it started with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, which is more about what happened after the coup, until nazi’s downfall. Then, I read parts of The Third Reich by Thomas Childers, which prompted a documentary watch and I haven’t gone much further than that. But both of those books are amazing and very informative. I can try to find that documentary too, if you’re interested.
I’m interested
Found it!
If you appreciate books on history and this history specifically, check out what came right before it: Takeover: HITLER’S FINAL RISE TO POWER. It’s about the final six months before Hitler got there. It was surprising to me how much of an accident of history his reign was when I’d long thought it had been inevitable.
Thank you, I’ll have to check it out!
If they flipped on their last 60 years of policy though… I’d be much happier with the status quo though. A new new deal and a thriving economy that helps the working class would be great. It would give far fewer issues that we need to address at once. Shit, if you got them flipped, since Republicans tend to fall in line they’ll take it as a win and celebrate it as they believed he would be good the entire time ignoring all of his policies changing. And it lands the Republicans left of the Democrats. Meaning when the Democrats lean towards the pubs to get voters … they’ll be moving left as well. If we somehow got healthcare and fair wages and taxation better through this… Then we only have to focus on ensuring they don’t subjugate populations like minorities, and get policing under control which all would be easier with a thriving economy and workforce. Less people are scared when more people are doing well. Whether someone is racist or not, the stereotypes become harder to push on people. A few other huge things like climate change, but with high taxes on the rich pushes companies to invest their money into their companies to avoid paying those taxes which in turn will churn out good things. (Either more quality, efficiency, research and expansion). Maybe we could finally catch up on battery tech and secure our own energy sources and grid for the future. That would be a great way to put America to work. Building an upgraded grid with storage and modularity for natural disasters.
Don’t get my hopes up on this shit just to
While I generally agree, I would still be extremely skeptical of those changes coming from the people that have spent the last 60 years sliding us into a situation were we desperately need those changes. If that was the play, I would see it as a decades long scam with the intent being to purchase legitimacy with a lie. The logical conclusion being they want absolute power and see a working strategy to obtain that by following in the nazi’s footsteps, with some modern revisions.
Skeptical is understandable. But we can use some wins man… if the winds blowing in the right direction better to veer the ship in the right direction than try to go agaisnt it while hurting and tiring ourselves out in the process.
The difference being that the Nazis were often competent people, and there was not the same massive base of crony capitalism with its fingers firmly enmeshed around every single area of government like there is in the US currently.
I won’t say it’s impossible, and I think they might be able to leverage social media to construct the exact same mass movement of loyal followers with the exact same horrifying results, but I don’t think the type of economic populism that did it for the Reich is feasible for the MAGA people to pull off. Definitely not with Trump at the helm.
Nazi leadership was not competent.
I mean, they took over the country and then more than half of Europe. Hitler fought in the infantry and wrote a whole book. I’m not saying they were geniuses and some parts were a pure clown show, especially after Hitler took over for real, but Trump literally just shuffles around shitting in his pants and doing whatever the last person who talked to him convinced him is a good idea.
And just like that, Steve Bannon learned about all the structures of liberal democracy that have thus far been stopping crony capitalism from squishing him like a worm on the sidewalk.
There’s a reason he isn’t hosting his little podcast in Russia or Algeria. He’s not 1% of strong enough to survive without the cushy protection afforded to white men in America who are broadly aligned with the rich people.
Thank you, this is the real lesson to take away from this, not some bass-ackwards universe shift again.
Edit: Stray thought about this again, this is why right wing populism is both effective at getting elected and devastating on countries as it shifts to fascism. Appeal to the masses while conspiring to retain power and increase wealth accumulation at the top.
None of this matters. Bannon is still useful to the media when they want a headline but he doesn’t have enough influence with Trump to actually action anything like this anyways. Trump’s cabinet is nothing but billionaires lol.
He’s talking about FDR not Hitler.
He’s definitely talking about Hitler. He might have FDR in mind for reasons of plausible deniability.
The FDR paradigm lasted 50 years until Reagan. The Hitler comparison doesn’t make sense in context given that it wasn’t a coalition in the way Bannin describes and didn’t last that long. Whereas the FDR coalition encompassed Northern liberals and Southern conservatives and controlled congress from 1932 to the 1994 mid term elections.
https://www.newsweek.com/bannon-thought-thats-hitler-when-trump-rode-golden-escalator-author-1677386
Like a lot of fascists, he tends to be dishonest about what he really means depending on what he thinks he can get away with, but he means Hitler.
One would like to think so. The problem is that imagining a right-wing Republican willing to jackboot some motherfuckers is easy; imagining one who wants to out-FDR FDR? Come on.
FDR wasn’t the champion of civil rights but he did fix the primary economic problems of the US during the depression. I personally don’t trust Bannon either but he’s clearly comparing to FDR not Hitler.
They despise FDR. Despise is too kind of a word for how they feel about FDR. That makes zero sense.
Bannon is from a catholic Irish family, his parents absolutely admired JFK. The whole reason why Bannon founded Breitbart was to propagandize an alternative right (alt right) to the elitist GOP. This does add up for him personally. Would Trump’s party do any of this though? Of course not.
Yeah, really. I mean, there was an entire plot to assassinate FDR called the Business Plot and they counted on literally a retired general to help them pull it off, who they were going to install as a dictator. A year later the general testified against his fellow conspirators before a House committee. Nobody was actually prosecuted (huge mistake, IMO), but the final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
You can increase the taxes. The hard part is making them pay it
He’s just talking nonsense though. There is zero chance Trump will tax the billionaires overall. They paid him off, they own him.
But possibly of he’s feeling particularly pesky, he might target people he doesn’t like and target only them and pretend he did something meritorious.
Absolutely correct. Trump already told them if they help get him re-elected, he’ll cut their taxes.
And when has Trump ever kept his promises?
He will keep this one because in his mind it is a huge benefit to him. He’s always hated the idea of having to pay any taxes at all.
I’ve been hate listening to his podcast. A lot of what he says would be considered pretty eft leaning. But then a lot of it is conspiracy minded. Honestly Lauren to his podcast, it’s pretty unbearable, but he hates the elites as much as anyone here. It probably goes some way to understanding why trump won
But he and Trump are elites. Especially Trump. You really can’t get much more elite than someone who owns a skyscraper in Manhattan with his name on it.
Elite is a conceptual category. He’s a human being like the rest of us and a small ornament on the tree of life.
I would say “has his name on the skyscraper he owns in one of the richest cities in the world and is president of the United States” would fit most people’s concept of “elite.” I’m not sure who wouldn’t consider that person to be elite. You don’t think the word is being used in a complementary sense, do you?
So is everyone they’re competing against…
Who exactly do you think they’re competing against? They won the election. They control all three branches of government. They’re set to turn America into a one-party state.
Sorry, I meant during the recent election
Bannon is from an ultra-conservative Irish-heritage working class family. He has always - at least in public - been anti-elitist, although of course he was an investment banker for years
Ok so he’s either a very complex and deep person, or a fucking liar.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s multiple groups of shitheads using each other to gain power, not just one big group of elites who are all trustworthy buddies.
My guess is that Musk will need to buy a merc army before he’s able to establish his own nation in space. Might already have one.
There’s a reason he’s been having Tesla divert more resources to their Optimus robots. The man intends to have a machine army that he could use in a coup. We play our cards right and get behind cloning research, we could have a Grand Clone Army. 200,000 units now, with a million more well on the way. Begun, the Clone Wars have.
At least then we’d finally live in a cool dystopian future.
Me and my friends walk into Musk’s office
Mr. Musk, in the name of the Senate of the American Republic, you are under arrest.
Musk: Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?
Me: The Senate will decide your date.
Musk: I AM THE SENATE.
Me: Not. Yet.
Musk: It’s treason, then.
Or maybe, just maybe, you don’t know as much about others as you thought you did.
No dude we all have a pretty fucking good idea who Steve Bannin is at this point. He’s a morally bankrupt opportunist, grifter, and bigot. Got anything else to add?
He’s also a Dominionist that wants to rule the world and bring about the apocalypse.
The list goes on!
Lol, this is one the most entertaining news video I’ve seen in awhile from 2020 (foxnews on youtube warning). He had a confederate flying yacht, what’s not to guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boMfSUUD1Bk
That dude wants to control the millionaires so he’s warning them.
Lol the guy says one thing I agree with and I’m supposed to throw out everything else I know about him. Get real.
Bannon literally compared this to the time period of the Nazis coming to power.
Glug glug glug
I’ll tell you wants going on. He is saying the quiet part out loud.
He is admitting that conservatives have always known what would make the country better but refused to admit it, instead have always played “dumb” by claiming their free market and deregulation approach is what they honestly believe is best for the country.
I might be reading too much into it but imo this shows that decades of democrats playing fair and true to the process is why we got here. Because selfish people realized that they can take advantage of the benefit of the doubt and just ruin the government while pretending they don’t know any better.
Pretty evil, more than I actually expected from him tbh.
Lmao it’s like when the old white men become senile and slide to the right except Bannon is morally inverted.
Maybe he doesn’t want to get targeted by the adjuster. I mean killing CEO and the rich is hot right now with the 99%.
It’s not polling all that well, tbh. Only hot with 41% across the income spectrum among youths, lower in every other demographic.
I’m not young at all and I say…. Eat the rich… lol
The one poll I’ve seen about him was from a “company” that was created a few days before the poll released
