Bannon's radical vision

The Trump whisperer is organizing a populist revolution

Steve Bannon.
(Image credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Laugh at Steve Bannon. Go ahead. Snigger at his grizzled, unkempt, soup-kitchen mien and his multiple layers of XXL dress shirts. Roll your eyes at the ogre's vainglorious rhetoric. "I'm never backing down," Bannon said after appearing in court this week on contempt charges for defying a subpoena from the House's Jan. 6 special committee. "We're taking down the Biden regime." Who's we? The populist, nativist movement Bannon helped launch and shape a decade ago through the gleefully racist, misogynistic, and rabidly anti-immigrant website Breitbart. In 2015, Bannon harnessed that movement to a New York City real estate mogul named Donald Trump. He's "a blunt instrument for us," Bannon explained.

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.