Background

Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Doris (née Herr), a homemaker, and Martin J. Bannon Jr., who worked as an AT&T telephone lineman and as a middle manager. His working class, Irish Catholic family was pro-Kennedy and pro-union Democrat.

Education

Bannon graduated from Benedictine College Preparatory, a private, Catholic, military high school in Richmond, Virginia, in 1971, and then attended Virginia Tech, where he served as the president of the student government association. During the summers he worked at a local junk yard.

He graduated from Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 1976, with a bachelor's degree in urban planning. After graduation he joined the U.S. Navy, becoming an officer, serving on a destroyer, and receiving a post as a special assistant to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon. During his navy tenure in Washington, D.C., Bannon earned an M.A. in national security studies at Georgetown University. Having left the navy in 1983, he attended the Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1985).

Career

After graduation, Bannon earned a position in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs. Specializing in media and entertainment, Bannon relocated to Los Angeles.

After three-plus years with Goldman Sachs, he cofounded a financial firm, Bannon & Co., which focused on the entertainment industry. Among its clients were Samsung, MGM, and Polygram Records, along with Italian media magnate and politician Silvio Berlusconi. In the process of negotiating the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment from Westinghouse to Ted Turner in 1993, Bannon’s company received a stake in five television shows, including the still relatively new Seinfeld, which would eventually bring it a huge financial payoff. After Bannon & Co. was sold to Société Générale in 1998, Bannon continued to work in entertainment-related finance and acted as co-executive producer on the film Titus (1999), an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

In 2004 Bannon immersed himself more deeply in filmmaking itself, beginning a career as a writer, director, and producer of conservative-slanted documentaries with In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed. Among the documentaries that he made were The Undefeated (2011), a laudatory portrait of Sarah Palin, and Occupy Unmasked (2012), about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In 2012 Bannon and Peter Schweizer founded the Government Accountability Institute, a nonprofit organization that mounted investigations of prominent politicians with the intention of exposing wrongdoing, and distributed the results of its investigations through mainstream publishers and other media outlets, as it did with Schweizer’s inflammatory book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich (2015). Bannon had begun a friendship in the early 2000s with Andrew Breitbart, founder of the provocative, antiestablishment, conservative Web site Breitbart.com, and, when Brietbart died suddenly in March 2012 on the eve of a relaunch of the Web site, Bannon assumed the role of executive chairman, taking an active hand in directing Breitbart News’s editorial vision. With Breitbart, Bannon, who self-identified as a populist, provided a platform for the “alt-right” (alternative right) movement, a loose association of relatively young white nationalists (who largely disavowed racism but celebrated “white” identity and lamented the alleged erosion of white political and economic power and the decline of white culture in the face of nonwhite immigration and multiculturalism), white supremacists, extreme libertarians, and neo-Nazis. Breitbart’s critics characterized it as racist, misogynist, and xenophobic.

Under Bannon, Breitbart championed the insurgent candidacy of Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. In August 2016 Bannon became the executive director of Trump’s then-faltering campaign and was credited with bringing discipline and a stronger focus on messaging to it. After Trump surprised the political pundits and pollsters by defeating his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, he named Bannon senior counselor and chief White House strategist. Bannon’s appointment was cheered by Trump’s extreme-right supporters but condemned by many on the left and by some establishment Republicans, who expressed fears of the influence of the far-right fringe entering the White House. In the second week of the Trump presidency, Bannon was elevated to regular membership on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council, an appointment that brought criticism from many corners not only because of his inclusion as a political strategist in security meetings but also because the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence were no longer included as regular members of the committee. Early in April Bannon was removed from the principals committee in a reorganization that also reinstated the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence as permanent members.

For the first half-year of the Trump presidency, Bannon’s presence was among the most influential in the administration. He was widely seen as the driving force behind Trump’s controversial decisions to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change and to impose a “travel ban” on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries. Bannon’s relentless focus on economic nationalism, however, brought him into rivalry and conflict with other key advisers to the president as well as cabinet members, most notably senior adviser Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law) and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Criticism of Bannon from outside the administration grew louder after Trump responded slowly to and then blamed “both sides” for the death of a counterprotester at a demonstration by white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many observers saw Bannon’s presence in the White House as contributing to the legitimization of far-right fringe groups like those that had rallied in Charlottesville.

Even before the events in Charlottesville unfolded, there had been rumours of Bannon’s imminent departure from the administration. On August 16 The American Prospect published Bannon’s remarks made in a phone conversation with the liberal publication’s coeditor in which Bannon belittled other Trump advisers, dismissed white supremacist groups as “clowns,” and undermined the president’s recent bellicose warnings to North Korea in response to that country’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons. On August 18, 2017, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that “White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day,” though it was widely thought that Bannon had been forced to resign.

Almost immediately, Bannon returned to the helm at Breitbart, determined to use his position outside of government to continue advancing the agenda of Trump, with whom he still talked. Bannon also made known his intention to oust establishment congressional Republicans (including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell) by backing the candidacies of antiestablishment challengers in Republican primary contests. He jump-started this project by actively championing the candidacy of controversial former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore in the Republican primary election to choose a successor for the U.S. Senate seat representing Alabama that had been vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became U.S. attorney general.

Despite Trump’s surprising support for the Republican establishment’s candidate, onetime Alabama attorney general Luther Strange, Moore won the primary. During the general election campaign in December 2017, however, allegations surfaced that when Moore was in his 30s, he had not only romantically pursued a number of teenage girls but had also engaged in improper behaviour with some of them, including alleged sexual assault. Bannon prominently stood behind Moore, as did Trump, and both suffered significant political setbacks when Alabama voters rejected Moore and sent a Democrat (Doug Jones) to the Senate for the first time in more than two decades.

Far more damaging to Bannon’s political fortunes were comments that he reportedly had made about Trump’s adult children that were quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, in which White House insiders describe Trump as woefully ill-suited to serve as president. Most notably, Bannon reportedly characterized the meeting of Donald Trump, Jr., with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” In early January 2018 the outraged president lashed out at Bannon (whom he began calling “Sloppy Steve”), saying that Bannon had nothing to do with his presidency and that when Bannon “was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.” Bannon soon apologized for his remarks and called Trump a “great man,” but his political capital began disappearing quickly. The writing was on the wall for Bannon when Rebekah Mercer—daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, the longtime financial patron of Bannon’s political projects and part owner of Breitbart—distanced herself from Bannon’s “recent actions and statements.” By January 9 Bannon had been compelled to relinquish his position at Breitbart, and he lost his Sirius XM radio show.

Achievements

• 

  Steve Bannon went down ih history as an American political strategist and the primary architect of Donald Trump's successful campaign for president in 2016. He is a former executive at the controversial Breitbart News Network, which he once described as a platform for the alt-right, a loosely connected group of young, disaffected Republicans and white nationalists who rose to prominence on Trump's coattails.
  
  In 2017, Steve Bannon became one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Indian Runner 1991
  • Titus 1999
  • The Chaos Experiment 2009
  • Generation Zero 2010
  • Fire From The Heartland - The Awakening of the Conservative Woman 2010
  • Occupy Unmasked 2012
  • Sweetwater 2013
  • Clinton Cash 2016

Religion

Bannon was raised in a “blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats,” as he told Bloomberg News in 2015. He attended Catholic schools and went to Mass with his family as a child, but later flirted with various world religions while serving in the Navy. This included a period of practicing Buddhism. Bannon eventually returned to his Catholic faith.

Politics

While Bannon was growing up, his family had been oriented toward the Democratic Party, but his disenchantment with the presidency of Jimmy Carter led him to embrace Ronald Reagan and conservatism. Bannon also developed a deep-seated contempt for financial and political elites, both those on the left and those within the Republican establishment.

Bannon's political and economic views have been described by others as nationalist, right-wing populist, and paleoconservative. He self-identifies as a conservative. He rejects allegations that he is a white nationalist, calling white nationalists "losers", a "fringe element", and a "collection of clowns", and describing white supremacist Richard Spencer as a "self promoting freak" and a "goober". In 2018, Bannon said at a speech for the right-wing French National Front Party "Let them call you racists...let them call you xenophobes...let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor." Trump has previously referred to Bannon as "more of a libertarian than anything else", although at least one libertarian commentator has disputed this claim.

Bannon often describes himself as an economic nationalist, criticizing crony capitalism, Austrian economics, and the Objectivist capitalism of Ayn Rand, which he believes seeks to "make people commodities, and to objectify people." However, he has also stated that he generally considers himself a free market capitalist, believing it to be "the underpinnings of our society", while noting that he believes America is "more than an economy". He has referred to himself as a "proud Christian Zionist" in reference to his support of Israel; Christian Zionism is a belief some Christians hold regarding Israel and its accordance with Bible prophecy.

Bannon's strategic thinking has been influenced by Neil Howe's and William Strauss's Fourth Turning theory, which proposes that "populism, nationalism and state-run authoritarianism would soon be on the rise, not just in America but around the world. (... Once one strips) away the extraneous accidents and technology, you are left with only a limited number of social moods, which tend to recur in a fixed order. ... Forests need periodic fires; rivers need periodic floods. Societies, too." The book is said to have been a major influence on Bannon's film Generation Zero.

A former practitioner of Zen meditation, and a nominal Roman Catholic, Bannon's political thinking has been influenced by the politics of American populism exemplified by Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, and Trump; by Pope Pius XI's socio-political philosophy of subsidiarity, as expressed in the 1931 papal encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, defending that political matters ought to be handled by the lowest, least centralized competent authority; and by René Guénon's Traditionalism, extolling the social efficacy of spiritual ideas transmitted by "primordial" faith traditions such as Vedanta, Buddhism, Sufism, and medieval Christianity, which it argued were under attack by Western secularism. Bannon was particularly influenced by the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita and the ancient Chinese military treatise The Art of War. Bannon has also cited Alexander Dugin's Russian nationalist variant of Traditionalism called Eurasianism. Bannon has been described as a "policy intellectual".

Bannon told Michael Lewis in February 2018, "We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall. This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls." He added, "The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

Individual issues. Bannon has advocated reductions in immigration and restrictions on free trade, particularly with China and Mexico. He is in favor of raising federal income taxes to 44% for those earning incomes over $5 million a year as a way to pay for middle class tax cuts. He also supports significantly increasing spending on infrastructure, describing himself as "the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan". Bannon is opposed to government bailouts, describing them as "socialism for the very wealthy". He generally believes in reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy, declaring at the Conservative Political Action Conference he favored the "deconstruction of the administrative state". However, he does support increased regulation of Internet companies like Facebook and Google, which he regards as akin to utilities in the modern age. He opposed the merger between Time-Warner and AT&T on antitrust grounds. He was a strong opponent of the Paris climate agreement within the administration, successfully persuading the President to withdraw from it.

On overseas military intervention. He is generally skeptical of military intervention abroad, opposing proposals for the expansion of U.S. involvement in the War in Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, and the crisis in Venezuela. As White House Chief Strategist, Bannon reportedly opposed the 2017 Shayrat missile strike, but was overruled by Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner.

In Afghanistan, he supported a proposal by Erik Prince for the deployment of private military contractors instead of the U.S. military. He believes "there is no military solution" to the 2017 North Korea crisis.

Bannon has described U.S. allies in Europe, the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, as well as South Korea and Japan, as having become "protectorates of the United States" that do not "make an effort to defend (themselves)", and believes NATO members should pay a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense.

He also supports repairing United States-Russia relations and opposes upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

On the Middle East. Bannon strongly favors U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and was supportive of the approach taken by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis and the 2017 Saudi Arabian purge. He believes Qatar is "no less dangerous" than North Korea.

Bannon believes Iran, Turkey and China are forming a "new axis" to challenge the West, and has described Turkey as "the greatest danger facing the United States" and "far more dangerous than Iran".

Bannon reportedly speaks often with Trump donor Sheldon Adelson, and has been alarmed at a push for a renewed Middle East peace process. He has described Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a "terrorist". He has advocated giving the land in the West Bank to Jordan and in Gaza to Egypt.

On the UK. Although Bannon initially favored the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) in the United Kingdom, he later backed the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Bannon has called for the release of former EDL leader Tommy Robinson from prison, describing him as the "backbone" of Britain.

Bannon has also called for a revolt in the United Kingdom should the country adopt a soft Brexit, stating, "If I was in middle England and said this wasn't what I voted for I would rise up and make sure the guys in parliament knew it." When asked whether this should be interpreted as a "call to arms", he replied: "Absolutely".

Bannon has met with Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prospective candidate for the leadership of the country's Conservative Party, describing him as "one of the best thinkers in the conservative movement on a global basis."

Bannon has also urged Boris Johnson, another potential leadership contender, who Bannon said in July 2018 that he had known "over the last year" and was "very impressed" with, to challenge Prime Minister Theresa May. According to a Buzzfeed News report, Bannon was in private contact with Johnson during his visit to Britain that month, and the two men were previously in text communication during their respective tenures as White House Chief Strategist and British Foreign Secretary.

On Europe and Asia. Bannon is supportive of several European right-wing populist national conservative movements such as the Hungarian Fidesz, the French National Front, the Spanish Vox, the Dutch Party for Freedom, Alternative for Germany, the Italian Northern League, the Brothers of Italy, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, the Belgian People's Party, the Polish National Movement, and the Swiss People's Party.

Bannon has also praised the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government of Narendra Modi in India, and Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party government in Japan.

Views

Bannon has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks himself. His ex-wife claimed in a sworn statement in 2007 that Bannon made three separate anti-Semitic remarks when they were choosing a school for their daughters.

Quotations: "I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment."

"Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power."

"What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent."

"Cities like Richmond and Baltimore and Philadelphia have black mayors, have black city councils, have black police commissioners. How can it be systemically racist if these men and women today are actually in control of the city?

"The women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn't be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that's why they hate [conservative] women."

"It’s been almost a Camp of the Saints invasion into Central and Western and then Northern Europe."

"I am not about to have a twenty-nine-year-old bimbo criticize the people at this place for running something."

"Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to action."

"Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission."

"Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe. Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right?"

"When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think... A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society."

"He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be "whiney brats" and that he didn't want the girls going to school with Jews."

Membership

Steve served as the president of the student government association at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Personality

Bannon was known for his unkempt appearance, often showing up for work at the White House unshaven and wearing informal attire unlike his peers, who wore suits.

"Bannon gleefully threw off the strictures of the working stiff and adopted a singular personal style: rumpled oxfords layered over multiple polo shirts, ratty cargo shorts, and flip-flops - a sartorial middle finger to the whole wide world," wrote journalist Joshua Green in his 2017 book about Bannon, Devil's Bargain.

Trump political adviser Roger Stone once said: "Steve needs to be introduced to soap and water."

On his character: “He is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is – for example, Donald Trump – to get where he wants to go,” said Ben Shapiro, a former editor at Breitbart.

Physical Characteristics: Height - 5ft 11in (181 cm)

Quotes from others about the person

• "Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind." - Donald Trump
  
  "Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination." - Donald Trump
  
  "Steve had very little to do with our historic victory."- Donald Trump
  
  "Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue." - Donald Trump
  
  "No sane person would hire Steven Bannon for a job that included making the trains run on time." - Michael Wolff

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Pope Pius XI

• Politicians

  Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Trump

Connections

Bannon has been married and divorced three times. He has three adult daughters. His first marriage was to Cathleen Suzanne Houff. Bannon and Houff had a daughter, Maureen, in 1988 and subsequently divorced.

Bannon's second marriage was to Mary Louise Piccard, a former investment banker, in April 1995. Their twin daughters were born three days after the wedding. Piccard filed for dissolution of their marriage in 1997.

Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in early January 1996 after Piccard accused Bannon of domestic abuse. The charges were later dropped when Piccard did not appear in court. In an article in The New York Times Piccard stated her absence was due to threats made to her by Bannon and his lawyer.

Piccard and Bannon divorced in 1997. During the divorce proceedings, Piccard alleged that Bannon had made antisemitic remarks about her choice of schools, saying he did not want to send his children to The Archer School for Girls because there were too many Jews at the school, and Jews raise their children to be "whiny brats". Bannon's spokesperson denied the accusation, noting that he had chosen to send both his children to the Archer School.

Bannon's third marriage was to Diane Clohesy; they married in 2006 and divorced in 2009.

Father:

Martin Bannon

Mother:

Doris Bannon

Brother:

Chris Bannon

Sister:

Mary Beth Meredith

Brother:

Mike Bannon

Spouse (1):

Cathleen Houff Jordan

Spouse (2):

Mary Louise Piccard

Spouse (3):

Diane Clohesy

Daughter:

Emily Piccard

Daughter:

Grace Piccard

Daughter:

Maureen Bannon

president:

Donald Trump

(born June 14, 1946)

He is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

colleague:

John Podesta

(born January 8, 1949)

He is an American political consultant who served as White House Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton from October 20, 1998 until January 20, 2001 and as Counselor to President Barack Obama from January 1, 2014 until February 13, 2015.

colleague:

Kellyanne Conway

(born January 20, 1967)

She is an American pollster, political consultant, and pundit who serves as counselor to the president in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Friend:

Andrew Breitbart

(February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012)

He was an American conservative publisher, writer and commentator.

References

• Bannon: Always the Rebel
• Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising
• Defaming Steve Bannon: How Reactionary Liberals Lied and Ridiculed Stephen K. Bannon, the Counselor to the President of the United States of America
• Steve Bannon Exposed: A Political Biography Of The Man Behind President Donald Trump (History Exposed Books Book 1)
• The Truth about Steve Bannon: The Puppet Master in the White House? (German Edition)