Steve Bannon: “I’m a Leninist.” OK, But What Does That Mean in Practical Terms?

As we recall, Donald Trump’s ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon was hellbent on “dismantling the administrative state.” “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon told a writer for The Daily Beast, in late 2013. “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.”

Anarchy held a certain attraction to political extremists in the early part of the 20th Century, based on the belief that social order arises spontaneously to deal with ad hoc problems like house fires, crime sprees, and so forth.  But when this came to a head, and Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted in 1927, it was clear that our society would never be able to prove or disprove this theory.

In any case, there are more than a few problems with destroying the U.S. state as it exists in the context of the 21st Century. Insofar as I tend to see the world through the lens of environmentalism, I would simply point out that, left to its own devices, i.e., in the absence of government regulation, the private sector would dump so many toxins into our skies and waterways that our country would become uninhabitable in just a few short years.

We’ve seen a great number of alarming ideas in the last three years.  It will be nice when this is finally over.