Steve Bannon Documentary, 'The Brink', Will Leave You Cold

By Dilip -
NB: These open conspiracies are now operating with impunity. Meanwhile the mass media is so compromised that the global scheme to promote ultra-chauvinist governments is allowed to g by without investigation and reporting. Much like the manner in which the criminal justice system in India has been manipulated in co-ordination with compliant media managers and craven op-ed writers... From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise, backed by billionaire oligarchs (they  include our own Great Leader, by the way). Those interested may look for an article by Hannah Arendt in 1945, titled The Seeds of a Fascist International, published in Jewish Frontier 1945; and republished in Essays in Understanding, 1994: DS

 Steve Bannon Documentary, 'The Brink', Will Leave You Cold
There is plenty of evidence of the kind of man that Steve Bannon wants people to think he is in The Brink, Alison Klayman's fly-on-the-wall documentary about the former Trump advisor and Breitbart chairman. He speaks about himself in the third person, reels off phrases like "no whining, no tears", reads quotes from Abraham Lincoln where the former President speaks about being under threat by his enemies, and has a framed poster of the Gadsden flag, where a rattlesnake sits above the words 'Don't tread on me'. Bannon was, he assures us, the deciding factor in Trump getting elected.

Alison Klayman: 13 months of watching Steve Bannon
Alison Klayman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, begins The Brink, her fly-on-the-wall documentary about ultra-nationalist Steve Bannon, with his thoughts on the Nazis.
Trump to Johnson, nationalists are on the rise – backed by billionaire oligarchs - George Monbiot

This mythic status is something that has been reinforced by a Time Magazine cover proclaiming him "the great manipulator", and endless think-pieces lauding him as an evil genius, the subtext being that the latter claim softens the former. What makes The Brink so compelling is that it doesn't trouble itself too much with wrestling the mask off this villainous genius, instead letting Bannon gradually reveal himself on his own shows the human underneath is much more frightening
The documentary finds Bannon in the wake of being fired from the White House and follows him as he tries to unite global populist movements across the world in the run up to the 2018 midterm elections. Over the course of the documentary he suffers a series of set-backs: Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who he backed, loses in the senate election; Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury publishes inflammatory comments he reportedly made about Trump; he is fired from Breitbart, and finally he loses the financial backing of the Mercer family.

The only people who really make him squirm during the documentary are Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain and The Guardian's Paul Lewis. It's interesting to note that both of them do so by repeating his words to him, stating the clear implications of what he has said and not allowing him to wriggle out of answering by pressing the same questions on him. Drawing up a guide for the rest of the media to follow similar steps when interviewing evasive politicians would be no bad thing.

Although Bannon jokes that "this movie is going to crush me," in reference to the footage that he's flying in private jets and dining in luxury restaurants, he doesn't seem genuinely worried that anyone will question his man of the people credentials. y posing as a renegade under siege from "fake news" and a "globalist agenda" he has turned his crusade to spread populism into a defensive reaction from being attacked. It's the same mentality that he's used to whip people into believing that immigrants or abortion are threatening their way of life in America; a lit match thrown with a shrug and a smile that, by the end of The Brink, leaves you cold.
https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/film/a28301590/steve-bannon-documentary-the-brink-review/

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