White nationalist policies appear in Trumps America
This white-nationalist perspective renders many otherwise incomprehensible
prescriptions suddenly legible
Hussein Ibish
Washington is finally noting Donald Trumps stunning reversals and how little of his maverick candidacy is being reflected in White House policies. Yet one terrifying consistency between his campaign and administration is usually still overlooked: the white-nationalist reconceptualisation of immigration policy under attorney general Jeff Sessions.
Trumps volte-faces are indeed dramatic, and by no means all bad.
On foreign policy, he is suddenly confronting Russia and embracing China, which he has exonerated of currency manipulation. He charged into a new Middle East military campaign, but against the Bashar Al Assad regime, rather than ISIL, in Syria. Nato is no longer obsolete, its indispensable. So is the export-import bank, which shouldnt be eliminated after all. Even NAFTA, formerly the worst trade deal ever, should be tweaked, not scrapped.
On domestic policy, Trumps proposed budget reflected virtually none of his populist promises to the working class and instead dutifully regurgitated a small-government conservative wishlist. Hes still trying to gut the health care protections he solemnly vowed to preserve. Amid no sign of his promised massive infrastructure programme, major cuts are planned to existing spending.
The federal hiring freeze has been abandoned for a smarter plan. Unemployment statistics were completely phoney, but now are suddenly accurate. Meanwhile, the Washington swamp not only hasnt been drained, its been generously irrigated. And Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellin no longer needs to be ashamed of herself. She can probably even stay on, since he suddenly likes and respects her.
The narrative of Trumps political adolescence suggests the rising influence of relative moderates led by two key advisers: Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Gary Cohn, chairman of the National Economic Council. They are described as having sidelined Steve Bannon, Trumps chief strategist.
Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps chief strategist, isnt just angry. Hes a bundle of rage, lashing out at globalising elites supposedly on behalf of the working class, while trumpeting white nationalism and promoting ethnic and religious bigotry.
Given his apparently deep influence on Trumps thinking, rhetoric and policies, Bannons wrath must be taken seriously. And he has a narrative explaining it. Unfortunately, it may be the biggest extended non sequitur in modern American history.
Bannon tells whats supposed to be a moving saga about the betrayal of decent working-class Americans by heartless villains from the globalising elite.
This experience, he recently told The Wall Street Journal, completely redefined his political thinking: Everything since then has come from there, he insists. All of it.
So, what happened? His father, Marty Bannon, worked for 50 years for the American telecommunications giant, ATT. In the process, he accumulated about $100,000 worth of company stocks.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Marty Bannon, now 95, watched the stock market collapsing with mounting dread. Panicked by dire warnings from clownish TV commentator Jim Cramer, he rashly sold these stocks at a considerable loss.
Marty Bannon did not consult his son, Steve, who was a Goldman Sachs investment banker for many years, or another investor son. He just saw some nonsense on television and made a terrible decision.
As the Journal put it: His son Steve says the moment crystallised his own anti-establishment outlook and helped trigger a decade-long political hardening.
Bannon told the paper: The only net worth my father had beside his tiny little house was that ATT stock. And nobody is held accountable? Theres no one in jail.
So far so good. It is indeed a repugnant scandal that the American middle and working class was fleeced to bail out banks deemed too big to fail and that the culprits of this debacle were in no way held to account.
The problem is the radical disconnect between any meaningful lessons to be drawn from the fathers financial ruin even though Bannon has more than enough money, acquired during his own stint as a globalising elite, to look after his dads needs and the political attitudes the son says it informed. Is the Trump administration that Bannon guides pushing to punish, or even just restrain, these financial elites? To the contrary, Trump and Bannon have rewarded an unprecedented number of bankers and financial industry bigshots with senior government positions.
Are they moving to protect working Americans and ordinary investors from financial exploitation? To the contrary, they are seeking to scrap an Obama administration regulation requiring financial advisers and brokers to act in their clients best interests regarding their retirement accounts.
And they are trying to undo as much of the Dodd-Frank legislation, passed in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 fiscal meltdown to prevent such abuses from recurring, as they can.
Bannon is supposedly animated by the fleecing of his father. But he and Trump are doing everything possible to lift restrictions on the very banks responsible and remove what little protection the Marty Bannons of this world have from fiscal predators. If they can also be stripped of their health care to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, all the better.
The writer is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
