Steve Bannon

To artists and cultural workers, the present task is to research and understand the processes in which propaganda and propaganda art construct our current reality. Propaganda is, in essence, the performance of power, the employment of various infrastructures—in the realms of politics, the economy, media, and the military—to construct a new normative reality. Considering that there is no reality absent from power, one has to question whether there is ever a politics without propaganda. But not all powers are alike, and thus propagandas in the plural might differ and conflict as well. The powers of the War on Terror and Bannon’s international alt-right are fundamentally different than those of popular mass movements, from Occupy to Black Lives Matter, pan-European platforms such as DiEM25, or the stateless democracy of the Rojava Revolution in northern Syria. They might not be able to avoid performing a propaganda of their own, but theirs is one that proposes an egalitarian narrative about the reality we live in and the world we can create collectively

Our reality is defined, in part, by a propaganda struggle. “Propaganda” here should not be understood as a singular term, since this propaganda struggle results from various competing propagandas in the plural. Various performances of power each aim to construct reality according to their interests, resulting in overlapping claims that shape the arena of the contemporary. What visual forms are taken by these manifold propagandas and the realities they aim to create? What kind of artistic morphologies and cultural narratives does the propaganda (art) struggle bring about?

This paper argues that one key characteristic of the new American populism is its orientation toward global military confrontation with “Islam.” The paper focuses on texts by Michael Anton, Stephen K. Bannon, including Bannon’s film Torchbearer (2016). Comparing their ideological work to Alexander Dugin’s writings on the global order, the authors organize the comparison around the contextual similarity between American and Russian rightwing thinkers.  There are substantive affinities, but more important is the similar relation between textual production and imperial context. We conclude by arguing that these new authoritarian movements and regimes combine coherent ideological projects with deliberately chaotic, even incoherent statements and interventions.

When Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former adviser, spoke at the conference of the Japanese Conservative Union, he praised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling him a “Trump before Trump.” Bannon is not the only Western right-winger to admire Japan. Simone di Stefano, leader of Italy’s neofascist Casa Pound, is dreaming of an alliance between Italy, Russia, and Japan. And for Jan Moldenhauer, an ideologue of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, when it comes to immigration, “Japan is the alternative.”

Between Phallic and Other ​ Jouissance​ : Trump/Anxiety/Transgression This paper critically engages Lacan's two classifications of ​ jouissance​ ​ in order to consider how both contribute to a discussion of today's political environment. ​ ​ The argument presented here works in three stages. It begins with the suggestion that Lacan's first theory of ​ jouissance​ , the phallic, presents a system of perverse enjoyment that functions in tandem with anxiety generated by the Symbolic in Seminar X: Anxiety ​ (1962-63). In positing that anxiety operates as a conditional in the coordinates of phallic ​ jouissance​ , I here argue that the structure of anxiety represents a framework of enjoyment fundamentally linked to the Name(s)-of-the-Father, which I suggest leads us to a better understanding of Donald Trump's popularity. In weighing the problematic equation of enjoyment as a transgression that pivots off of anxiety, the second tier of my argument proposes that, in considering phallic jouissance​ in relation to contemporary politics, it is clear that another form of enjoyment must be desired. In discussing this possibility, I will turn to Lacan's alternative to phallic ​ jouissance​ —​ his late theory of " other " ​ jouissance ​ in ​ Seminar XX: Encore ​ (1972-73)​ ​ suggests an ethical approach that does not need to transgress in order to enjoy. However, the problem here is that Lacan states that other jouissance ​ cannot speak itself; because this form of enjoyment is outside of the Symbolic it has no language. That said, in considering one of Lacan's seminars to follow, ​ Seminar XXIII: Le Sinthome (1975-76), the final stage of my argument suggests that this late seminar nests a third term that synthesises both " phallic " and " other " forms of ​ jouissance​. To that effect, this paper will conclude by suggesting that this underdeveloped " third term " can be read of as prefacing a form of ethics wherein jouissance ​ can be experienced without the need for a transgression of the Symbolic and that,​ ​ especially in light of recent political events​ , ​ this elaboration of desire​ ​ can and must be strengthened. To begin, I would like to put forth a co-extensive proposition that the inauguration of desire initiated by the Name-of-the-Father at the Oedipal stage burgeons into the ​ jouissance​ Lacan will later designate as " phallic " , and this ​ jouissance​ begins in ​ Seminar X: Anxiety​ (1962-63). We might safely argue that the subject's first anxiety is one of castration, and as Lacan writes in ​ Seminar IV: The Object Relation (1957-8), this process occurs in order to insure the dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. In the preoedipal phase the infant perceives their mother as the principal desiring subject, and subsequently attempts to become and identify itself as the object of desire that he/she does not know the mystifying source of (the Imaginary phallus). This is soon followed by the inauguration of the Name-of-the-Father, which asserts itself as " having " the phallus that the mother desires, forcing the child to give up its attempt to be the sole object of its mother's ambiguous desire, acquiescing to the

We learned quickly after its announcement that Trump’s Muslim and refugee travel ban Executive Order emerged mainly from the mind of political strategist Steve Bannon, who appears to exceed the power of even Karl Rove when Rove held a similar position in the George W. Bush administration, where Rove allegedly planned and later destroyed voluminous evidence of criminality.  Shortly after Bannon ironically mocked the media in the media: “The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work,” Trump appointed Bannon to the National Security Council, which decision Nancy Pelosi derided as “dangerous.”  But given Trump’s steady reliance on the advice of Bannon correlating with the steady descent of Trump’s polling numbers, is Bannon a (witting or unwitting) modern Messalina-manipulating-Claudius who pushes the system so hard that it breaks, revealing Trump as “fundamentally dishonest” and recklessly endangering the nation and possibly democracy?