CPAC just isn’t what it used to be. And what it used to be wasn’t that much to begin with. But diminished, it is even less. Still, even small. it is not less than zero.
Former Vice President Pence, Speaker McCarthy and Minority Leader McConnell all took a hard pass this year. Ron DeSantis preferred to watch plants produce oxygen. Idaho Gov. Brad Little was the only Governor that didn't have other plans. And Matt Schlapp, a longtime Republican activist and the organizer of CPAC, was accused in January of groping a Herschel Walker staffer’s crotch. So there’s that.
And then there is the asymmetrical threat of Steve Bannon. As Rupert Murdoch is in a dark time, Bannon — and alternative and even, potentially, a more dangerous right-wing media figure — is in the ascent.
I know what you are thinking. CPAC, taking all of this information into account, is the perfect zombie-fungal environment to facilitate the rise of a Steve Bannon. What, though, are the particulars of this Ophiocordyceps parasitizing of CPAC? How did Bannon’s toxic spores take hold so fast? From the Fast Politics podcast with Molly Jong-Fast:
The Guardian's Political Investigations Reporter, Hugo Lowell: It was the Trump show, for real, I think. For the first few days, when Trump wasn't there it was really low key. And the biggest draw was Steve Bannon. And the last day was Trump. And when Trump was there, it was just Trump.
MJF: I wasn't at this CPAC which, you know, because, uh. But what I noticed was that it seemed more sparsely attended than usual. Do you think that's right?
HG: Yeah, look, I think the first few days when Trump wasn't there it was very sparsely attended. Even for some the keynote speeches for people who you think might draw big crowds of MAGA world. People like Matt Gaetz, people like Elise Stefanik, Nikki Haley, Michael Knowles. The auditorium was maybe at best 40% full. And I was watching Steve Bannon doing his show live, just outside the conference center. There were people in the crowds talking to themselves taking about Matt Gaetz is on, wanna see Matt Gaetz? and they were like no, why would we want to see Matt Gaetz. The real show is here..
I think that sort of encapsulates how even the MAGA members of Congress to the ultra MAGA Trump supporter, to them its not really as interesting as someone like Steve Bannon, who they see as the real kind of MAGA OG celebrity now
Molly Jong-Fast: You are blowing my mind here for a minute. .You're saying that Steve Bannon is more central to MAGA world than Matt Gaetz?
HL: Yeah, I mean, the two chants that you heard the most during CPAC was 'Trump Trump Trump,' or 'Lets take down the CCP.' And Lets take down the CCP is the kind of jingle attached music that Bannon plays into the intro and outro to his show. I think he really is ... he has taken the MAGA brand further right than even in 2016 and through the administration. And the members of Congress they were talking about policy, and how like Biden is bad. And I think the CPAC crowd gives appreciation for that. And you would hear the smattering of applause but what they were really there for was Trump and and anything beyond that I think that wasn't Bannon was a bit of a side show ...
This is sort of surprising in some ways and in others not so much. Every year since 2016 Bannon has grown in influence and power, separate from his former patron trump, as an evangelist in his own right in authoritarian MAGA world. In August 2017, Bannon was toast, fired and left for dead by Trump. That was his low point. The 45th President was tired of press leaks that were a well-known secret in Washington as being from Steve Bannon. For someone who allegedly detests the elite, Establishment press corps, no one loves the institution and courts it more aggressively than Steve Bannon (except, perhaps, his onetime boss, Trump; so there’s that). May we all find someone in this life that loves us like Trump loves the media.
Right before he was exiled from Trumpworld, Bannon had big plans of an international far right — and left — movement of the working class. Remember when Steve Bannon tried, in vain, to “re-align” the labor movement and the alt right in an “anti-elites” block? Yeah, good times. Bannon always thought far beyond the Trump brand of cult-of-personality. Oh yes, Bannon could grift better than the average grifter, but he was never in it just for the money or the power. Bannon did the rounds, aggressively courting Randy Weingarten in 2017, attempting to bring the American Federation of Teachers into the fold of an anti-Charter schools coalition. Why would Bannon be against Charter schools, you might ask? No reason other than the fact that the Charter School movement is largely backed by hedge funds, and thus delicious populist pabulum. Bannon, we cannot fail to note, came from Harvard and hedge funds, so there’s that. Weingarten recounted the meeting she had with Bannon at a Washington restaurant with The Intercept, doing us all a national service:
He was looking, Weingarten said, for some common ground that could assist him in realigning the two parties, his long-term goal in politics. “I think he sees the world as working people versus elites. And on some level, he’s thought about educators as working-class folks. But what he doesn’t do is think about the other side of educators, as people who fiercely believe in equality and inclusion. It isn’t an either/or philosophy. The [Martin Luther] King philosophy of jobs and justice is not the Bannon philosophy, let’s put it that way,” she said. “He’s trying to figure out where the friction is, and how to change the alignment. I think that’s really what he was trying to do.”
Weingarten saw, earlier than most elite, just how dangerous Steve Bannon could be in harnessing the forces that rage against inequality. She saw that even just in agreeing to talk to Bannon, in a space as innocuous as a restaurant, that he was taking advantage, looking for fault lines to “change the alignment,” or, at least, ways speak to the leftish mind. If that is at all possible. Bannon seeks, above all, more foot soldiers, more actual infantry to enact his “War Room” planning.
But back to CPAC. “Nikki Haley was heckled, Kari Lake wins a straw poll, Marjorie Taylor Greene lied about Volodymyr Zelensky, and DJT unleashed the usual firehose of bullshit,” is how Charlie Sykes of The Bullwark described this year’s sad, diminished conference. It was, in a sense, an anemic room made for Steve Bannon’s influence to multiply at bacterial — or, rather, fungal — velocity. From Tim Miller’s Triad diary of Day 1:
10:05: Walking through media row outside the hall. There’s a mob scene for Steve Bannon. Audience member talks about how Bannon’s War Room podcast “saved” them, after the stolen 2020 election.
All of this is to underscore how dangerous a man like Steve Bannon is to American democracy. Since early 2021, Bannon has operated an independent podcast/TV channel called The War Room. It is increasingly influential media outlet. “It’s still available in the far-right online ecosphere, and it’s streamable on various TV platforms, including Channel 240 of Pluto TV, but that seems like its own sad metaphor—War Room as a small, demoted planetoid, available mainly in the icier regions of the broadcast cosmos,” writes Jennifer Senior in The Atlantic, condescendingly, and missing the point entirely. “The whole operation has an amusing shoestring quality to it.” As if the fact that his program has low production values makes him any less serious a threat to the stability we have come to cherish.
Establishmentarians have underestimated Bannon for years. In 2018, The New Yorker invited him to speak at their cultural festival. “The schedule included a conversation between former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and the magazine’s editor in chief, David Remnick,” wrote Ruth Graham for Slate. “By midafternoon, high-profile festival participants including Jim Carrey, Judd Apatow, and Patton Oswalt had publicly pulled out, citing their objection to taking part in an event that ‘normalizes hate,’ as Apatow put it.” It should have ended there.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, American Candide
But, of course, it didn’t. Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist, finger a wagging, lectured The New Yorker about caving in to the leftish demands to keep a man as deeply dangerous to democracies as Steve Bannon from infecting more minds. She writes with all the haughty, overwrought idealism of a social sciences undergraduate:
The future of open societies will not be secured by like-minded people speaking to each other in an echo chamber, but by subjecting ideas and individuals from all sides to rigorous questioning and debate. This will expose bigotry and prejudice, just as it will reaffirm and refresh liberalism. That is the premise The Economist was founded on. When James Wilson launched this newspaper in 1843, he said its mission was to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” Those words have guided us for 175 years. They will guide our debates at the Open Future festival on September 15th. That is why our invitation to Mr Bannon will stand.
Swell and lovely, Zanny! What the world needs now are more “severe contests of intelligence” with right wing bigots using cultural forums to convert more minds and project their influence outwards! And the award for radical positive dumbness goes to — Our Zanny; be sure to take a vow. Because that is precisely the sort of tomfoolery that plays directly into the pragmatic, predatory authoritarianism of Steve Bannon. He wants to be invited into privileged rooms. If Bannon can convert a single new soldier in that room, he will take it as a step closer to fungal conquest. The fact that the conference was streamed to fresh viral hosts is just lagniappe. Bannon wants to take over the country by any means necessary, even if by violence. The notion that authoritarianism can be defeated by “severe contests of intelligence” is beyond laughable.
Since 2017 and after his firing, Bannon has become a bona fide martyr to the far right. This is greatly because he is underestimated. Bannon is the Don King of the far right, unkempt, braggadocious, but far from anything resembling an actual joke. It is as easy to get distracted by Bannon’s multiple Polo shirts as it is to be distracted by Don King’s electric afro. But he, like King, is a stone-cold predator. Steve Bannon is not to be tossed aside lightly, he must be thrown with great force!
In fine, he eats your hate. Bannon has managed to parlay his (brief) stint in the Trump White House and his “street cred” as an incubator of the grotty far-right in Europe, into what can only be properly construed as political martyrdom. In 2019, he was pardoned in one of Trump’s last acts as President. And by 2022, he was smiling when sentenced to four months in the pokey for criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring demands for documents by the committee investigating January 6th.
And now, in 2023, he is essentially the second biggest draw at an admittedly diminished CPAC. Steve Bannon has been falling ever upwards since Zanny Minton Beddoes stood athwart history and wagged her tapering thin fingers at him — and us.
Or maybe we should just have another “sever contest of intelligence”?
“The only American who might have successfully challenged the news dominance of Rupert Murdoch, negotiated successfully with Vladimir Putin, and overcome the media savvy of Donald Trump (without capitulating to their narcissistic and megalomaniacal tendencies) was CNN and Turner Broadcasting founder Ted Turner.” (The Media Ecologist)
“With an estimated $58.6 million box office tally, the Michael B. Jordan-directed sequel notched the biggest-ever opening weekend for a sports movie in film history. It’s a massive win for the box office and for Creed III, which earned stellar reviews and also gave the Rocky/Creed franchise its best-ever weekend at the multiplex.” (USA Today)
“Biden on Thursday backed a bipartisan Senate bill that would strengthen federal oversight of freight rail transporting hazardous substances (The Hill). The measure, known as the Railway Safety Act of 2023, is cosponsored by Ohio Sens. Sherrod Brown (D) and J.D. Vance (R). Pennsylvania Sens. John Fetterman (D) and Bob Casey (D), and Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri.” (The Hill)
An interview with Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer. (Christina Oxenberg)
“Paramount is exploring a potential sale of a majority stake in its BET business, which includes BET, VH1 and the BET+ streaming service, a source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter.” (THR)