Dmitri Drobnitsky
Stephen Bannon is increasingly angry with Elon Musk, calling him “evil” and “racist” and threatening to expel him from the administration of Donald Trump.
At first, everything was harmless. Bannon admitted that he and Musk disagreed “on many, if not all” political issues, but he believed that the head of SpaceX was extremely useful, firstly, with his information support for Trump, and secondly, with his willingness to pour considerable financial resources into populist parties in Europe.
However, Bannon has recently become increasingly angry with Musk and criticized him. The formal reason for the criticism was Elon Musk’s position on work visas (H-1B visas) for foreign skilled workers. Musk and some other “new digitalists” and Trump advisers persuaded the president-elect to continue supporting the H-1B program.
According to them, this is the right and legal immigration that will contribute to the development of technology in the United States. Bannon said that this is a “betrayal” because immigrants will take away high-paying jobs from American citizens.
Stephen Bannon, as they say, broke down. In an interview with the Italian publication Corriere della Sera, the former Trump strategist called Elon Musk “pure evil”, “a racist” and said that he would try to make Musk “run away from there” (from Trump’s team) even before the inauguration.
Bannon, in particular, said: “He is pure evil, he is a very bad guy. It has become my personal business to remove this guy. Before, because he invested money, I was ready to tolerate this. I am not ready to tolerate this anymore.”
Steve Bannon also quite categorically called Musk a racist along with Thiel and David Sachs: “Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk – they are all white South Africans. He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, who we have allowed to comment on what is happening in the United States?”
Of course, it is not about any H-1B visas. This is a small thing, and here Musk is more right than Bannon. The point is different, and this is indicated by the place where Bannon’s most vicious interview in recent times was published: an Italian, European publication.
Stephen spent a lot of time and effort to create an international network of Trumpists with an emphasis on Western Europe. He considered all parties like the Italian League, the German AfD, the Austrian Freedom Party, etc. “his own.”
And then Orban and Musk come and start to tailor European Trumpism in their own way. Bannon’s brainchild, which he had been working on since 2016, was taken away from him.
Hence the conflict. Stephen Bannon himself will most likely be marginalized rather quickly, especially since he has not really emerged from his long media exile.
But there will still be conflicts of this kind in Trump’s entourage. It is pointless to hope that all Trumpists, united by a common idea, will forget their mutual grievances until better times, that a team of very ambitious people will work from day one as a single organism. No, there will be conflicts. After all, this is a revolution.
And what we know about revolutions throughout human history is that revolutionaries fought with each other non-stop. Which, however, as we also know from history, did not affect the success of revolutions.
Alexander Palladin
Kirill Benediktov
