No Bannon, no KKK, no fascist USA.
The Protests are loud and growing louder against the new arrivals at the Oval Office.
Their target not just Donald Trump -
-Everyone knows what that means, right?
-But his powerful chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
The unthinkable becoming thinkable ….
The man who helped orchestrate Donald's Trump's once unthinkable election victory made apocalyptic
propaganda films like this one Generation Zero.
In the film Mr Bannon says the baby boomers of the 60s became an uncaring ruling elite,
responsible for economic disaster.
This was a recurring and provocative theme when he ran Breitbart, the right wing website
accused of stirring racial hatred in the United States.
"A president of the United States should not have a racist at this side…."
Alarm from the right, as well as the left…
He's a nightmare.
The number spot in this week’s edition of Who is the Real President goes to.
Such is his power and influence in the White House, he's already been played as Trump’s
puppet master.
Steve Bannon...
You don’t get between Steve and his objective.
Mr Bannon's dark world view outlined in his film and media appearances, speaks of a dystopian
American, battling multiple enemies from its own corrupt elites to radical Islam.
I believe strongly that this is a crisis both of our church, our faith….a crisis of the
west and a crisis of capitalism.
We are at the very beginning stages of a brutal and bloody conflict.
He is trying to encourage chaos.
So who is this Steve Bannon - and is it his visions that is shaping the Trump administration
- and its more controversial policies.
You can't handle the truth.
So what is his truth?
We had the revolution…we had the civil war, Great Depression and world war 2.
This is the fourth great Turning in American history.
Steve Bannon Believes America is at an historical turning point and he sees the corrupt political
and business elites as an enemy to be defeated.
Don't believe the establishment.
Don't believe the permanent political class.
We are on the right side of history.
This is going to be a very nasty long protracted fight.
His enemies - are both at home and abroad.
It is a crisis both of capitalism but the undermining of the Judeo Christian West in
our beliefs…
To be brutally frank.
I Mean Christianity is dying in Europe.
And Islam is on the rise.
Stand for our beliefs, to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that is starting.
He's also has a problem the massive influx of migrants - including many muslims - to
Europe.
Not migration, it’s an invasion.
'These are not people with thousand of years of understanding democracy.
In their DNA coming up here.
To try to understand how Steve Bannon came to hold these views we traveled first to his
hometown.
Mr Bannon grew up in a working class family children in this neighbourhood of Richmond
Virginia.
One of five children in a close knit community where Christian faith was central to daily
life.
As an Irish Catholic, his Judeo-Christian worldview was initially shaped during his
formative years at this Benedictine school, run almost like a military academy.
Orthodox catholic training from the Benedictines, I think influenced Steve.
Pat McSweeny Grew up close to the Bannon family.
and went to the same school.
What was He like?
Combative.
Feisty.
Undersized but played sports.
Compensated through energy and determination for what he lacked physically.
A scrapper?
Yes a scraper.
He had to be held back.
You did not have to push into conflict.
He was there to find it.
And he never backed down.
Many of Bannon’s historical American heroes were assertive revolutionary figures who came
from Virginia - including founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and
Patrick Henry who proclaimed, here in Richmond, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
You got ideas in the documents -
Larry Nordvig, a former Virginia Tea Party director, has worked with Mr Bannon and says
the President’s key advisor sees himself at the vanguard of historical change.
When Donald trump speaks about making America great again, and Steve Bannon as well.
These the figures they are talking about?
Bannon has this sense that we've been handed down this gift, that we must preserve and
throw it forward to the next generation.
He's a big reader of military history.
Sees himself as perpetually involved in grand civilization struggles.
Everything with Bannon is mega and big and going to lead to a clash.
So he's on a constant war footing as it were?
Yes absolutely.
Constant war footing.
Josh Green first met Steve Bannon in 2011 and wrote a Bloomberg Businessweek cover
profile on him.
At the time the man who was to become Trump's campaign manager was working on a promotional
film about the right wing firebrand Sarah Palin, hoping she would run for president.
Everyone in politics back then thought Palin would run for president in 2012.
So Bannon had insinuated himself into her inner circle and was a Palin whisperer, advisor,
slash filmmaker.
Although Palin didn't run in the end - in many ways his efforts became a stepping stone
to his successful Trump campaign.
The tactics: to promote ideological allies combined with a ferocious media onslaught.
So that’s you there?
Thats me giving a nice fiery speech that day and you can see Steve Bannon in the background.
You see that withTrump., Bannon lurking in the background, pulling the strings.
I don't know if I like that parallel.
Afterwards Steve wanted to meet me.
He asked if I would consider running for Congress.
He has used Breitbart effectively to whip up the grassroots.
I know the Tea Party.
He got their tempers up and got them active.
Under Steve Bannon Breitbart ran highly provocative articles which appealed to the alt right,
a rebrand of the far right movement.
It includes white nationalists, many of whom publicly supported Trump's presidential campaign.
White nationalists share many sentiments with notorious white supremacists.
The articles on Breitbart spoke of an us and them America.
The website was also accused of pursuing a virulently anti Muslim agenda.
Many women too were outraged by some of the articles with headlines like "birth control
makes women unattractive and crazy"
He said all the racism and what have you would wash out.
That was his phrase.
See the light and drop those objectionable views.
But what was important to Bannon is that they were on his side.
When it came to tearing down members of the establishment.
So he welcomed white supremacists as part of his power things, a power struggle?
Don't know if he welcomed it but he certainly did not show he was troubled by it.
With the campaign they ran, they really opened the door for white nationalists to feel empowered.
And it does seem that all the advice he has been giving both to trump in the campaign
- not being a bridge builder but of doubling down in increasingly people’s fear and hatred.
And marginalising others.
In Donald trump, Bannon finally found his vessel.
Someone who shared his populist ideas.
But who also had the personal force to go out on the campaign trail and convince voters
and steam roll critics in a way Palin never could.
And steamroll he has done with the president’s chief strategist, insiders say, in the driver's
seat.
A flurry of executive orders,including an entry ban to the US for people from 7 predominately
Muslim countries, have caused outrage.
It was mr Bannon who apparently insisted that American green card holders be included in
the ban with critics saying he simply has a problem with Muslims.
But in a recent interview Mr Bannon rejected accusations that he's racist .
“I am not a white nationalist, I am a nationalist, I am an economic Nationalist," he said…
But such denials have done little to quieten his many opponents, who are alarmed by his
involvement in drafting executive orders.
There's also been uproar over a White House announcement that he will get a seat on the
national Security council - an unprecedented move for a presidential advisor.
He does not have experience in government or in national security.
To put someone who has clear track record as a white nationalist, which is the same
as supremacists, in the centre of national security for the country is quite troubling…
Even the conservative television host Glenn Beck, once a darling of the Tea Party, is
troubled by Bannon’s power and influence…
Breitbart is a platform for the alt right.
He is on record saying that.
He is on record defining the alt right.
He knows what it is.
He is a guy who wants to tear this system down and replace it with new system.
He is a frightening, - no he is a terrifying man
He has an incendiary image?
Of course he does.
That is tempered with the Bannon I know who is a far more subtle person than his manner
would suggest.
I think he likes that persona.
He's a thoughtful person.
Send in Steve Bannon.
In Saturday Night Live he's cast as the all the power Grim Reaper…
Hi Steve, you look rested.
In deeply divided United States, Steve Bannon is seen either as the man who will help save
America or destroy it.
Can I have my desk…
ne thing both sides do agree on - he will have a powerful, pivotal role in fate of the
Trump White House.