the best for the country.”)
In The Face Of Evil had a bombastic Biblical fl avour, describing
Communism and fascism as two faces of ‘The Beast’ which must be opposed
by brave, Christian Americans like Reagan. Ironically, two of Bannon’s
biggest directorial infl uences, Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl, both
worked for The Beast. “I think he used [Riefenstahl’s] technique of fear,
which you can see in that movie,” Jones told The New Yorker. “He has
none of their aesthetic sophistication,” says Ann Hornaday, fi lm critic
for The Washington Post. “He’s using whatever techniques they invented
or refi ned as a cudgel. Formally speaking, his movies are negligible.”
Bannon may also have drawn inspiration from a contemporary
fi lmmaker. In 2004, while Bannon was fi nishing his Reagan movie, Michael
Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 became a cultural phenomenon, reaping almost
$120 million at the domestic box offi ce and turbo-charging opposition to
the Iraq War. “Conservatives saw that Michael Moore was having a real
effect with his liberal documentary fi lm so there was a scramble on the right
to emulate that and a lot of funding from rich donors,” says Green. Bannon
could reasonably expect to attract heavyweight support by posing as the
conservative answer to Moore.
Bannon’s movie made a relatively puny $110,577 and failed to impress
critics: the New York Post called it “so over the top that it almost plays
like a parody”. Nonetheless, it made him a star in the small world of
conservative Hollywood, an informal under-the-radar network that
included Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight and James Woods.
Rich and well-connected though he was, Bannon appeared to relish the
role of the feisty underdog who challenged the smug liberal establishment.
“The idea that he was this hard-charging, oppressed minority fi gure being
stifl ed and censored by the secular liberal culture of Hollywood would have
fi t perfectly into Bannon’s image of the world and everything that was
wrong with the culture,” offers Green.
In The Face Of Evil coincided with the launch of the conservative
Liberty Film Festival. That was where Bannon, who won Best Documentary
Film, met Andrew Breitbart, a far-right provocateur who was even more
opinionated and aggressive than he was. Breitbart wanted to bypass
Washington to “change the cultural narrative” and Bannon was happy to
help with money and advice. He also met David Bossie, a Clinton-hating
former Republican operative whose advocacy group Citizens United rushed
out a slapdash riposte to Moore called Celsius 41.11. These three men
would be instrumental in the rise of the new, virulent strain of conservatism
that produced fi rst the Tea Party movement and then President Trump.
Over the next decade or so, Bannon wrote and directed another eight
movies about subjects including Barack Obama (The Hope & The Change),
the fi nancial crisis (Generation Zero) and Sarah Palin (The Undefeated).
His signature style combines hectic montages of archive footage with
interviews with prominent conservatives to create a breathless, hyperbolic,
apocalyptically urgent narrative about a Manichean struggle between
good and evil. “He’s resourceful,” says Hornaday. “He has social capital
that he can leverage to make things happen. But I didn’t see evidence of
him growing as a fi lmmaker. I think he found a formula that worked for
him and he stayed in that lane.”
Bannon was preaching to the choir. Although the feeble box-offi ce
receipts of Bannon’s movies didn’t refl ect their success on YouTube, none
seemed to have any signifi cant impact on the general public.
“Bannon is captivated by the history of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s,”
suggests Green. “Propaganda fi lms had a powerful effect on popular
sentiment back then. But I don’t see a lot of evidence that these fi lms
have succeeded as propaganda.”
But even if he fl oundered in becoming the Michael Moore
of the right, Bannon was doing just fi ne. In the editing suite, he
honed his ability to create emotionally persuasive images.
Collaborating with Breitbart, he learned how to manipulate
the mainstream media with outrageous political stunts. Networking
at conservative gatherings, he made powerful friends such as Palin,
Bossie and Robert Mercer, the right-wing hedge-fund billionaire
whom he called ‘The Godfather’. Grassroots activism, big money, t
he media. It was all coming together.
ON 1 MARCH 2012, four days before the relaunch of his website
Breitbart News, Andrew Breitbart suffered a fatal heart attack. Bannon
became the company’s executive chairman, pumping out bellicose right-wing
propaganda. “We call ourselves the Fight Club,” he told The Washington Post.
The Mercers also invested in a fi lm company, Glittering Steel, a data
analytics operation, Cambridge Analytica, and Peter Schweizer’s research
group, the Government Accountability Institute. The GAI moulded dense
think-tank research into gripping dramas to feed to the media. “We work
very long and hard to build a narrative, storyboarding it out months in
advance,” the GAI’s Wynton Hall told Joshua Green.
Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash, alleging corruption in the Clinton
Foundation, came out in 2015. A Glittering Steel movie version, written by
Bannon, debuted at Cannes the following year. It was Bannon’s last movie
and his most effective: Clinton Cash was released in fi ve major US cities and
led Bloomberg Businessweek to call Bannon “the most dangerous political
operative in America”.
“Stylistically, it was very much in the Bannon vein,” says Hornaday.
“Keyed-up, edgy, alarmist. What it lacked in solid proof of malfeasance it
made up for in suggestive images, edits and music choices that led the viewer
to think that something horrible happened with the Clinton Foundation.”
To keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House and advance his own
political agenda, Bannon needed a charismatic populist outsider. He had
already been let down once. “He had his eye on Palin being the one and
that’s why he made The Undefeated,” says Hornaday. “I feel like he saw
Trump and realised, ‘Oh my goodness, he could go all the way.’ He