Whether you loathe Steve Bannon or just dislike him, you have to give him credit for espousing an ideology that is surprisingly consistent and coherent. He is a pure Reactionary, and his cocktail of walls, tariffs, social legislation, isolationism, and targeted tax cuts is directed directly at rural whites.
Bannon’s problem, in the final analysis, was that Trump didn’t buy into the part of the vision that applies to the economy. Trump is proud of being a businessman, admires other successful businessmen, and genuinely believes in the PBP concepts of tax cuts and deregulation. He also seems to understand the transactional nature of the support he gets from PBPs. As a result, his program is the familiar one of regressive tax cuts for business and gestures for the Reactionary base. What sets him apart from his predecessors is the frequency and the violence of the gestures, not the fact that they exist.
Can Bannonism survive? His dismissal from Breitbart, presumably at the behest of its wealthy patron, suggests not. While the Reactionaries are the biggest GOP faction, they don’t represent a majority of the party, much less the country as a whole. The financial and voting support of the PBPs is just too important; Trump realized that, even if Bannon didn’t. As a result, Bannon was compelled to support cranks and fringe figures even before he broke with Trump.
What would it take for Bannonism to revive? A charismatic leader with limited ties to business, but a strong understanding of the desires and fears of the elderly and poor white workers; an economic disaster; and the evolution of the Democratic Party into a socialist party that truly threatens the interests of businessmen to the extent that they would support a Reactionary over a Democrat even if it means trade wars and limits on immigration.
If that sounds a lot like Germany in 1933, that’s not a coincidence.