'Throw him in jail': Steve Bannon mocked for believing MAGA movement could rule US 'for a hundred years'

WASHINGTON, DC:  Former White House strategist and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign chair, Steve Bannon, thought that a group of Trump supporters, dubbed the 'Maga movement', "could rule for a hundred years" prior to the 2020 election and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

The Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf wrote in his new book, ‘Finish What We Started: The Maga Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy', referring to Bannon’s term for the political establishment, “Outside the uniparty, as Bannon saw it, there was the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which he considered a relatively small slice of the electorate. And the rest, the vast majority of the country, was Maga.”

“Bannon believed the Maga movement, if it could break out of being suppressed and marginalised by the establishment, represented a dominant coalition that could rule for a hundred years,” according to an excerpt from the book published by the aforementioned outlet on Thursday.

"Maga" is an acronym for Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

Steve Bannon’s association with Donald Trump explored in Isaac Arnsdorf’s new book

‘Finish What We Started: The Maga Movement's Ground War to End Democracy', written by Isaac Arnsdorf, will hit bookstores next week, according to The Guardian.

Steve Bannon, a businessman who gained prominence as the propagator of far-right ideology through his leadership of Breitbart News, served as the campaign chair for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and as his chief White House strategist in 2017.

However, following a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017, Bannon lost his post.

Despite this setback, he maintained a close relationship with the MAGA figurehead, particularly during the former POTUS's efforts to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

This effort concluded in the attack on Congress on January 6th, 2021, when Trump supporters, who were urged to "fight like hell" to block certification of Joe Biden's win, stormed the United States Capitol building.

The attack resulted in nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides. Over 1,200 arrests have been made, and hundreds of convictions have been secured. Despite being impeached for inciting the insurrection, Donald Trump was ultimately acquitted by Senate Republicans.

Despite facing 88 criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information, and hush-money payments, as well as multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over fraud and defamation, including a rape claim a judge called "substantially true," Trump handily won the GOP nomination for the upcoming general election in November.

Amid the escalating Trump-Biden rematch, Steve Bannon continues to hold a prominent position on the far right through his ‘War Room’ podcast, despite facing legal issues linked to contempt of Congress and alleged fraud, both of which he denies.

What did Isaac Arnsdorf write in his book about Steve Bannon’s beliefs?

According to Bannon, "the uniparty" is "the establishment (Bannon) hungered to destroy," as Arnsdorf put it. “The neocons, neoliberals, big donors, globalists, Wall Street, corporatists, elites.”

Arnsdorf wrote, “In his confidence that there were secretly millions of Democrats who were yearning to be Maga followers and just didn’t know it yet, Bannon was again taking inspiration from Hoffer, who observed that true believers were prone to conversion from one cause to another since they were driven more by their need to identify with a mass movement than by any particular ideology.”

Eric Hoffer, per Arnsdorf, was “the ‘longshoreman philosopher’, so called because he had worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks while writing his first book, The True Believer [which] caused a sensation when it was published in 1951, becoming a manual for comprehending the age of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”

Arnsdorf further elucidated on Bannon’s thought process, claiming that he “was not, like a typical political strategist, trying to tinker around the edges of the existing party coalitions in the hope of eking out 50% plus one. Bannon already told you: he wanted to bring everything crashing down.”

“He wanted to completely dismantle and redefine the parties. He wanted a showdown between a globalist, elite party, called the Democrats, and a populist, Maga party, called the Republicans,” adding. “In that match-up, he was sure, the Republicans would win every time.”

Internet reacts to Steve Bannon’s vision for MAGA movement

People online have weighed in on the ‘War Room’ podcast host Steve Bannon’s purported vision for the MAGA movement, which he had in the beginning before the January 6 attack on the Capitol building came to pass.

One person commented, "Well I guess that is a little less ambitious than some other fellow who wanted to rule for a thousand."

Another person asked, "Kinda like the Third Reich?"

Another person said, "Throw him in jail would you please!"

One person wrote, "The criminal right wing is always operating with a chip on their shoulder and a false narrative. They always believe their invented straw men enemies are real. Bannon said that he “wanted a showdown between a globalist, elite party, called the Democrats, and a populist, Maga party, called the Republicans." Unfortunately the Republicans are actually the globalist elites - wanting a global white Christian new world order. Biden is more of a union worker populist than the elitist criminal billionaire."

Another person quipped, "Sounds a lot like a little Austrian man with a moustache back in the 1930's."

One person remarked, "Well, Hitler wanted his Nazi Movement to rule for 1000 years. So perhaps this neo-fascist isn't as delusional as I thought..."

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.