Flemming Rose, the former foreign editor of Jyllands-Posten, recounts meeting Steve Bannon last May. He writes: Bannon isn’t a Leninist in the ideological sense. Quite the opposite. But his conviction that the way to a better world sometimes necessitates blowing things up sounds alarmingly Leninist.

What disturbed me the most in our conversation was Bannon’s apparent belief that violence and war can have a cleansing effect, that we may need to tear down things and rebuild them from scratch. He made it clear he had lost faith in Europe as secularism and arriving Muslim immigrants had eroded traditional Christian values as the founding pillar of our civilization. Losing the Christian faith, in his view, has weakened Europe ― it’s neither willing nor able to confront Islam’s rising power and some European Muslims’ insistence on privileged treatment of their religion.

Bannon is of the belief that, if Europe is to be saved, there is no way to avoid armed conflict. The power of Islam cannot be stopped by peaceful means. In short, Bannon told me in no uncertain terms that the West is at war with Islam. [Continue reading…]