Stephen Bannon once kept a whiteboard in his office where he conspiratorially connected Hollywood films to Satan

Stephen Bannon thinks Lord of the Rings proves there is a God.

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

published 24 April 2017

In the beginning, there was Hollywood. Long before Stephen Bannon ever joined President Trump in the White House as chief strategist, the conservative firebrand navigated the glitz and glam of Southern California no less conspiratorially than he did his later tenure at the helm of Breitbart.

Bannon's films weren't exactly Finding Dory; think more along the lines of documentaries about eugenics, Hitler, and clones. But in 2005, he seemed "emblematic of a new wave in Hollywood, a group that intends to clean those media pipes with pictures that promote godliness, Pax Americana, and its own view of family values," The New York Times' James Ulmer wrote in a profile of Bannon.

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In the Times article, Ulmer said that Bannon had told him, "We're the peasants with the pitchforks storming the lord's manor." Ulmer recalled, "He was always making these grand, hyperbolic analogies between good and evil, the culture of life versus the scourge of death that, in his view, Hollywood had become. Hollywood was the great Satan."Ulmer met with Bannon at his Santa Monica office, where Bannon had written the names of some recent movie releases on a whiteboard. Ulmer reported that Bannon had said, "On Ash Wednesday, The Passion of the Christ is released theatrically, and on Sunday, Lord of the Rings — a great Christian allegory — wins 11 Academy Awards. So here you have Sodom and Gomorrah bowing to the great Christian God." Ulmer recalled, "I was watching him draw all these configurations and connecting lines about the Beast and Satan, and half of my brain was saying, 'This guy's a comic stitch,' and the other, 'He's really off the deep end.'" [The New Yorker]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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