Steve Bannon’s recent tirade against Elon Musk marks more than just another skirmish in the endless MAGA wars. Fresh from a four-month prison stint and seemingly liberated from any remaining loyalty to Donald Trump’s inner circle, former MAGA mastermind Bannon has positioned himself as the potential leader of a permanent alt-Right opposition to the President-elect’s newly forged alliance with Silicon Valley.
In his first major interview since release, Bannon branded Musk âa truly evil guyâ and vowed to have the tech billionaire ârun outâ of the White House by inauguration day. Bannon’s fury centres on Muskâs advocacy for H-1B visas, which allow companies like Tesla and SpaceX to hire skilled foreign workers. But his complaint runs deeper than immigration policy. âThis thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system being gamed by the tech overlords,â Bannon told Italy’s Corriere della Sera. âThey use it to their advantage. The people are furious.â
The forceful language suggests this isn’t merely the grievance of yet another spurned insider â many such cases, when it comes to Trump â but rather the opening salvo in what could become a broader ideological revolt against the dramatic pivot toward the tech industry.
The timing of Bannon’s broadside is also significant. Trump has just tapped Indian-born tech executive Sriram Krishnan as his AI advisor, continuing a pattern of appointments, including a George Soros protege as Treasury Secretary, that has alarmed nationalists and populists in his base. This followed Trump’s June statement on the All-In podcast that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign graduates.
For Bannon, who once saw himself as the intellectual architect of Trump’s populist revolution, these moves represent more than just policy shifts. They suggest Trump has fully embraced what Bannon calls âtechno-feudalism on a global scaleâ. His attacks on Musk’s South African heritage (âWhy do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?â) indicate a willingness to wage unrestricted warfare.
The broader MAGA ecosystem is already showing signs of strain. When Musk’s X platform recently demonetised several prominent Right-wing accounts critical of his immigration stance, it sparked immediate accusations of censorship from figures like Laura Loomer and Ryan Fournier. Preston Parra, head of ConservativeOG media, declared that âthe REAL backbone of the Right wing and MAGAâ wouldnât stand idle while âSilicon Valley dweebsâ stole their movement.
Bannon, despite his diminished status, remains a prominent figure. His War Room podcast maintains influence among the far-Right grassroots. And his recent prison stay, where he claimed to have learned that black and Hispanic men hate Kamala Harris, can only enhance his credibility with MAGA supporters of colour and the movement’s most militant wing.
More importantly, as a wounded veteran of the previous decadeâs MAGA wars, he enters this fight with little left to lose. Previous clashes with Trump saw Bannon eventually bend the knee. But his recent rhetoric is that of someone ready to burn every bridge. His prediction that Musk âwon’t fightâ because he has âthe maturity of a little boyâ reads less like political commentary and more like an experienced professional wrestler cutting a promo on a rival.
The irony is that Bannon’s crusade against tech industry influence might actually serve Trump’s interests in the long run. By positioning himself as the voice of authentic MAGA resistance, Bannon could give Trump space to pursue his new coalition-building while maintaining credibility with the base through periodic gestures of defiance and contrarianism.
Yet there’s also real risk here for Trump. If Bannon can rally enough serious far-Right figures beyond mere online provocateurs like Nick Fuentes and Laura Loomer around opposition to H-1B visas and other tech industry priorities, he could create genuine headaches for the incoming administration. His threat to have Musk ârun outâ of the White House by inauguration day may be bluster, but his ability to make the tech mogul’s life difficult is very real.
The coming months will show whether Bannon can transform his personal grudge into a genuine movement. Regardless of the outcome, his rebellion highlights the inherent volatility of Trumpâs attempted fusion of Silicon Valley dynamism with MAGA populism. It turns out that even the most loyal courtiers have their breaking point. If nothing else, we may be witnessing the birth of a permanent alt-Right opposition to Trump 2.0.
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SubscribeYou mean Steve Bannon is causing controversy. How shocking. If anyone can legitimately be called alt-right, it’s Steve Bannon. I can’t imagine many of the millions of people who voted for Trump even knew about this issue before Trump and Musk brought it up. I remain unconvinced this H1B visa issue will resonate with the common voters, for whom opposition to immigration is defined by the chaos at the border and importing massive numbers of low skill labor, not tech companies bringing in Asian coders.
This is an example of how American politics works. There are factions within the parties, and factions within those factions, and they’re always trying to find some issue that resonates with the public to enhance their own status and criticize other factions. Bannon and others need some issue to criticize Trump because they’ve been excluded from this administration, and this is the first thing to come along. If it doesn’t work, they’ll probably find something else. Further, the other side’s media has every incentive to greatly overstate any internal factional conflict within the other side. Sowing conflict among your enemies is a viable strategy since ancient times. It doesn’t always work though. Only time will tell whether this is a real dragon or just a windmill.
” I remain unconvinced this H1B visa issue will resonate with the common voters, for whom opposition to immigration is defined by the chaos at the border and importing massive numbers of low skill labor, not tech companies bringing in Asian coders.”
The “common voters” are very much aware that the H1B visa system has been gamed for a few decades to cut corporate payroll & maintain an overworked, disempowered workforce who have no rights to challenge organizational exploitation.
We have a separate visa system for serious geniuses & other experts–and fine: I’m all for it, as long as we’re aware that highly talented Chinese immigrants will be blackmailed into govt & corporate espionage by their home country. But H1B visas are routinely used for basic coding positions (for which there are many fully qualified recent American grads who can’t find jobs) as well as various admin positions. Worse, highly qualified, experienced, up-to-date American tech workers who reach their mid-40s, don’t have obvious DEI signal value, or need reasonable hours b/c they’re trying to raise those children that Musk keeps being mysteriously baffled that Americans aren’t having, are laidoff to keep insu costs low. They often have to train their H1B replacements, then remain un- or underemployed.
And the vast majority of these positions go to the 20-something Brahmin class sons from India. They benefit from the slave labor from lower castes in their own country, then use corrupt H1B visa mills to obtain 12 hr/day coding jobs at 75% of decent American wages. But w/ no other family costs here, they can send their American dollars back to India so that their family maintains its Brahmin status.
The only “competitive” edge these workers provide is that they’ve got all of the cheap or free gendered & slave labor of India, to then work here in America at wages that cannot meet the average Americans’ expenditures. WE don’t have a caste of near slaves whom we pay pennies & who sleep in shacks in our backyards; WE don’t expect women to get PhDs (which many Indian women do, here, & then they quit their jobs to raise kids). WE can’t trade off the benefits of a home country w/ caste exploitation & medieval gender arrangements where Mothers & wives & sisters & daughters, however educated, do all of the domestic & childrearing labor, unpaid, so the Brahmin son only has to code 10 hrs a day to be the star. WE don’t have intergenerational affordable housing. WE can’t fly to a home country for some cheap expenses (free healthcare, better for Brahmin class) & then purchase other things here. WE have burdens of college debt, medical debt, taking care of ill relatives, requiring both spouses work–that we bring to the table when negotiating for a job.
Indians of the Brahmin class collaborate w/ corporatist profiteers who care less about Americans than their portfolio to exploit the H1B visa system. The Indian families I’ve gotten to know in my high tech, highly educated metro area are hardworking, committed, decent people, & how they raise their kids made my high expectations a lot easier, since my kids would look at theirs & realize they actually had a modicum of free time. But they most definitely use their cost-cutting opportunities in their country of origin to gain a competitive advantage over natives here.
This is very hot button issue where I live, apart from the growing rage at the importation of slave labor & a govt-subsidized voting bloc by bicoastal elites who don’t feel threatened or economically harmed, w/ their gated communities & assets. Those college educated voters upon whom the DNC has counted are fed up. Now that we’re allowed to speak out loud about deporting illegal migrants, you’re going to see a lot more family-age adults speaking out about not being able to support a family on one wage (as a highly educated professional) b/c of how importation of Indian, Pakistani, & Chinese moderately skilled labor has hollowed out opportunities for millions of American STEM grads.
I respect your point of view here. Clearly this issue runs deeper than I thought, at least in certain places. We should all remember our individual experience and perspective gives us subtle biases. My perspective is that I live in rural Kentucky, Trump country to be sure, and I can’t see this being all that important or relevant to the locals, outside of the few who really are motivated by racism.
Reading your reply has definitely given me pause though. I had been under the impression that H1B’s were a method of atttracting strategically significant foreign talent, entrepreneurs, inventors, researchers, and so on; something analagous to the German scientists who fled the Nazi regime in the 1930’s and later contributed greatly to American scientific and technological dominance. If you’re right and this is not about geopolitical competition but rather about lowering labor costs, this issue is not what I thought it was. It does seem this would be the same sort of issue that populists complain about, importing foreigners and offshoring jobs to lower costs, albeit applied to a much narrower and more affluent class of people. If this is the case, it seems a strategic approach would be required where the US targets these visas towards areas where there is a significant shortage of labor and it impacts consumer costs. I’m thinking we could stand to have a few more doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.
Be that as it may, I still question how much of an issue this will be with Trump’s core support in middle America that don’t follow politics as closely as we Unherd subscribers do. Much of Trump’s support comes from middle America. He and Musk know that. Republicans aren’t going to win any of the coastal states that dominate tech anyway. The only red state I can think of that boasts much of a tech sector is Texas, and I have to imagine the border dominates their immigration concerns for obvious reasons. Trump is also a lame duck. He can’t run again, so he may be less responsive to voters in general. I feel that even if the issue is as you describe it, Trump and Musk have made a political calculation that they can afford to take such a stance based on the facts of where Trump’s support and Republican support in general comes from.
I don’t dispute that Musk and the tech bros are pushing this issue for their own benefit and the benefit of their industry. As I’ve stated before, the reasoning for billionaires to get on board with populism is because they should recognize that it is coming with or without their approval and they can either support the people and gain a few concessions or get bulldozed by a wave of populist rage Musk has sensibly chosen the former, and probably made a calculated political decision that they this issue is one that they can preserve some of their globalist advantages without running afoul of many voters. Trump support and Republican support in general is so heavily slanted towards rural and non college educated voters, they reason they can get away with this. Very few Republican districts are heavily tech oriented these days and most coastal states are solidly blue. It’s actually a point of possible alignment between tech moguls, uneducated laborers, and rural dwellers. Education was the best predictor in this election of which candidate was chosen. Trump overwhelmingly won the uneducated voters who aren’t competing directly with anybody on an H1B visa and overwhelmingly lost the educated urbanites who do.
So basically, I agree with you in principle, but the political realities of this situation likely will allow Trump and Musk to do what they want with few real political consequences. This is why I hope for a Democrat populist. The populist cause is a matter of the 99% vs. the 1%, so really both parties and both candidates should be embracing populist causes according to their constituencies. On this issue, Trump is being consistent to his base political support. The Democrats are still pushing globalism. We need a left leaning populist like Bernie Sanders, who would definitely take up the cause of the college educated Americans you mention, as he did in 2016 when he made student loan debt forgiveness a major part of his platform. When both parties have populist factions that stump for populist causes of their respective voter bases, it will be a major step towards restoring national popular sovereignty and making laws that protect the people from the excesses of the super rich.
” Cost cutting advantage”? Hardly. The reverse in fact.
Are you aware that the Indian constitution reserves 65 per cent of all jobs and schemes as well as all educational institutions for lower castes?
And that most Indian women work?
The reason why those visas are given are because it’s cheap labour to profit the Companies which hire them.
As an honest Indian taxpayer I would like to see the money spent by us in financing the education in STEM subjects of these visa seekers remain within India, instead of profiting business empires in the USA.
Not to speak of the severe crises which many Indian parents face in seeing their kids wipe out their life savings by going to study abroad, and then never return.
We would be glad to see a ban on those visas.
I have my differences with Bannon, although he has always struck me as an intelligent man. Still, if he is attacking Musk, I am right behind him.
The Trump coalition was always going to unravel. You spray promises all over the place and the inherent contradictions will eventually come back and bite.
Bannon isn’t going to pipe down. It’s personal. He’s going to call out that Musk in it for himself, and the danger for Trump is he calls out the obvious favouring of the Billionaire Club over the MAGA base that is going to flow as they all genuflect at the altar and hand over some money to Daddy.
And in just a few weeks House Reconciliation almost certainly going to have to make some difficult choices – favour the Billionaires by prioritising the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts – ÂŁ4trillions worth, or fund the rest of Trump promises including deportations centres and Sheriff Joe’s.
The self-cannibalisation of the Trump coalition only just started.
V predictable. Only those distracted too much by being chucked ‘red meat’ in slogans won’t have seen it’s inevitability. But that was the intention.
More wishful thinking. Bannon was ditched by Trump a long time ago and has no constituency of his own – other than guys like you desperate to convince yourself that the old regime is coming back. It’s not. You got too greedy.
Bannon vs Musk is simply the new edition of the long-time Republican problem of the base vs the donors.
The Democrats donât have that problem: base and donors in that party have the same progressive priorities and mostly the same agenda. Fortune 500 CEOs say the same Woke nonsense and are for the same policies as a blue-haired teachersâ union organizer.
(That unity also gives Democratic Party leaders much more operational power. Democratic leaders can force their nominee off the ballot, something that mere donor-puppets McConnell, Ryan and McCarthy tried and failed to do in 2016 and 2024.)
For years âgood bidniz climettâ Republicans feigned interest in base priorities like abortion and small government; but once in office it was all tax cuts and deregulation for corporations, plus servicing the needs of the Imperial City. That fell somewhat apart in 2016 and has only grown more fractured since. Only the huge presence of Trump has kept it together.
Musk in 2024 reasserted the prominence of donor Big Money in the national populist movement. He and his friends, including Vivek, are not interested in the National Question, having their own bigger visions they want the Trump administration to facilitate.
Bannon represents the base, which saw that tactic work to hollow-out the Tea Party movement in 2010 and is determined not to see a repeat. Either money serves the people or the people will be the servants of money.
And only in the former case will the GOP exercise real power.
If you listen to some of Bannon’s ideasâthis being just one of themâthe issue with the “Musk and Trump alliance” becomes clearer. Bannon often highlights that the U.S. system is fundamentally based on corporations, whereas the Chinese system is centered on the state for example. The conflict arises because Musk, an immigrant and someone who is pro-immigrant, represents something that challenges the perception of many Americans.
Americans generally don’t mind U.S.-based corporations operating government functions; however, they are uncomfortable with the idea of someone who isn’t born in America holding significant influence over the country. This appears to be the primary issue. Bannon’s stance is also tied to his opposition to immigrants taking jobs that he believes should be reserved for Americans, jobs that Musk relies on to maintain his profit margins.
Speaking of profit, Bannon’s criticism of Musk extends to how profit itself is framed. Bannon critiques profit as a form of socialism, where wealth is concentrated among those at the top (there is no loss or risk), while the labor and production that generate the profit function under capitalism and suffer the losses of the top tier! This perspective highlights a larger issue that Bannon implies but does not explicitly focus on in this discussion.
Some might dismiss these arguments, attributing them to the nature of internet discourse or modern politics. While Trump might hold the title of president, recent history shows that presidents often wield limited power. The true dynamics of power, especially in the internet age, are shifting toward a more decentralized and equal distribution, hence Trump presidency. This raises critical questions about how influence and authority are exercised in today’s political and economic landscape.
Ultimately, the central issue in American politics is whether capitalism remains viable. Corporationsâwhose goals often prioritize profit, even through war or the production of weaponsâare increasingly at odds with the need for security and stability (populism). A safe and secure culture may, in fact, foster more innovation than a system driven purely by profit and worse by exploitation of their own people.
This debate underscores a foundational conflict: corporations versus populism.
It should be mentioned that Adam Smith, called at times the father of modern economics and modern capitalism, hated corporations and considered them to be anti-competitive organizations that were formed by governments to advance national interests and accumulate geopolitical power. I myself would like to see the corporation abolished altogether, and ironically, I’d probably get called a socialist for making such a suggestion. Well, not on Unherd, but a vast majority of other places. Corporations have become such an accepted part of the scheme that most people aren’t even aware how much their very existence conflicts with the ideals of free markets and open competition.
You sound like a socialist….