Public Health Policy Reviews 32:
Democracies at Risk – The Impact of Steve Bannon’s Vision for the Americas and Europe.
Theatrical release poster for the 2013 film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, starring actress Jennifer Lawrence. The policy proposals advanced by former US President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and their authoritarian allies like Marine LePen in France demand our attention and critical thinking. They all will create a “Hunger Games” like reality regarding public health, welfare, and safety in the US and Europe. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
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NOTE: Nazia Saeed, a Human Resources professional living in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, contributed significant research and writing for parts of this article.
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Steve Bannon spoke in May 2018 about the “future of Europe” in Budapest, Hungary. Photo Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Yesterday, in Public Health Policy Reviews, we wrote about Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland of The Majority Report and their discussion of Steve Bannon’s impending prison term.
Judge Carl Nichols ordered Mr. Bannon to prison on June 6th after he lost an appeal to a federal court conviction for defying a subpoena issued by the US House Congressional committee investigating the January 6th Capitol riot. Despite his impending prison stint and an eight-year estrangement from Donald Trump’s inner circle, Steve Bannon still wields significant national and international influence.
Bannon is one of the unofficial national leaders of Mr. Trump’s populist Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement in the US. He also is connected to multiple far-right-wing nationalist political movements across Europe.
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President Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20th, 2017, at the US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Melania Trump, the former First Lady, stands to his right and holds the Bible he used during his swearing-in ceremony. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
As the 2024 presidential election in November approaches, MAGA surrogates like Steve Bannon are trying to make a case to conservative and independent voters for returning Donald Trump to the White House.
During his 2017 inauguration speech, Donald Trump promised to end what he called American carnage. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump declared.
However, Mr. Trump’s chaotic four-year term in office only magnified the economic inequalities, social divisions, and media-infused “culture war” politics currently threatening to tear the US apart. Think back to the end of the 2020 American Presidential election. When former President Donald Trump and his campaign lost the White House to Joe Biden, they claimed the vote count should stop due to their dubious claims of voter fraud.
The “Stop the Steal” campaign eventually led to the January 6th attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s MAGA political base. In addition, the Trump administration did an abysmal job leading the United States through the nationwide public health emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Steve Bannon in 2018. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Steve Bannon’s raison-d’être is the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
The practical application of “deconstruction of the administrative state” will be the dissolution of federal and state-level bureaucratic agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Education Department.
Agencies like the CDC and FDA provide the US government with essential research and response capabilities for tracking and eliminating infectious diseases like COVID-19 and the many other public health threats in the US. Without these capabilities, the safety and efficacy of vaccines, medications, medical procedures, food safety standards, water quality inspections, airline travel standards, and all the other regulations, workplace protections, and building codes that make America function will be compromised.
Public health risks for the US population will increase immediately and exponentially without the research capabilities and regulatory oversight of all these agencies and many other bureaucracies.
Federal and state-level bureaucratic agencies are also responsible for administering social welfare programs that support millions of Americans.
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An elderly man holding an AFSCME union sign over his head at a Social Security rally in Senate Park, Washington DC, in February 2013. Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and so many others provide crucial financial and medical assistance to the elderly, disabled, and low-income individuals.
Dismantling the “administrative state” will lead to the defunding and erosion of these programs, increasing poverty and health disparities. Again, the result of Steve Bannon’s desire to disassemble and reconstruct the federal bureaucratic apparatus will severely undermine the nation’s ability to respond to public health crises caused by food shortages, water quality issues, drought, flood, blizzard, or any other federal or state-level emergencies.
Yesterday, we explained that Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and their allies in Congress hope to replace the federal bureaucracy with national business associations, private philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, private education initiatives, military academies, and private prisons.
The economic power and national influence of religious organizations in the US are critical to Mr. Trump and the “MAGA” movement. Evangelical Christians are the most enthusiastic supporters of former President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
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By Edward Cisneros on Unsplash.
American Evangelical Christians are a more formidable force in US politics than the liberals, leftists, atheists, anarchists, and LGBT community.
Moreover, they view secularism and progressivism as having launched a 60-plus-year radical left-wing assault to expel Biblical values from America and its major institutions. The Evangelical movement in America believes a second Trump term in the White House will abolish the “unholy” secular American tradition of separation between the state and Christian religious authority.
Image by Kalhh from Pixabay.
Bannon is forging allies with far-right-wing politicians and organizations across Europe to ensure an international authoritarian political order. He has made inroads with leaders like Victor Orban in Hungary, Georgia Meloni in Italy, and Marine LePen in France.
Marine LePen and her right-wing “National Rally Party” are poised to take control of the French government during the impending “snap” election at the end of June.
Orban, Meloni, LePen, and many other leaders are forming alliances with Steve Bannon to challenge the US-dominated conventional political norms and the status quo economic order imposed by the European Union (EU).
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I enjoyed listening to you on the Majority Report. Thanks for calling in and sharing. I have a similar background as you and am also a former Trumper.
Came here from Majority Report's Youtube Channel and I'm also from Buffalo.
Keep us the good work, here! Looks good.