WAR FOR ETERNITY

A breathless account, with thick coats of conspiracy theory, of the doctrines that drive Steve Bannon.

Teitelbaum, whose previous book, Lions of the North (2017), focused on nationalism and anti-immigration activism in Nordic countries, is an ethnomusicologist who has long reported on the radical right. He characterizes his latest book as something between ethnography and investigative journalism. To write an ethnography, an anthropologist has to get inside what used to be called “the native’s point of view.” To his credit, the author digs deep into the foundations and guiding documents of the ideology that guides Bannon, the author and champion of such things as Donald Trump’s border wall and the Muslim ban. That ideology is what Teitelbaum characterizes as “a bizarre underground philosophical and spiritual school with an eclectic if minuscule following throughout the past hundred years”—i.e., Traditionalism, always capitalized. “When combined with anti-immigrant nationalism…it was often a sign of a rare and profound ideological radicalism.” While at Harvard, Bannon, by Teitelbaum’s account, read libraries full of esoteric religious and philosophical texts that figure into the doctrine; if there’s an Illuminati-ish feel to the investigation, it’s no accident. The author traveled far and wide to talk to the Traditionalists, who include nationalists, racists, anti-immigrants, and outright kooks as well as surprisingly thoughtful acolytes—Bannon, when not blustering, among them. It takes some reading between the lines to see how Traditionalism works in action, but one element is the widely shared thought that Europe ought to break up into little states. Thus Brexit, whose advocates might be surprised to locate its origins in the view held by a Russian nationalist (and advocate of Ukrainian genocide) that “a Europe fractured into smaller units would…disperse and weaken the power emanating from the United States.”

A provocative book that, if correct, helps explain the ways of Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro, and other demagogues.