2mo ago

Steve Bannon Says U.S. Has to ‘Increase Taxes on the Wealthy’ Even if They ‘Start Squealing’

www.mediaite.com Steve Bannon Says U.S. Has to ‘Increase Taxes on the Wealthy’ Even if They ‘Start Squealing’

Bannon said breaking away from some of the GOP's long-held economic positions could help Donald Trump's legacy survive for decades.

Did... did I just slide to a parallel universe? Do I get to meet Jerry O'Connell? What the hell is going on?!

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"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!
  https://youtu.be/NTw5wkS29Sc?si=UxEJlAZHVostFf4O
  
  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, they 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."

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