A Marriage of Arsonists
People may be cheered by the fact that Bannon hates Musk1 and vice-versa. And, if Steve Bannon believes the things he is saying about Musk then he is absolutely right. Musk's hatred of labor and environmental laws, his emotional instability, his narcissism, his love of inequality are all a direct threat to the people and values Bannon claims to support. Bannon wants an isolated ethnically and culturally fixed state, Elon Musk does not. Bannon wants the rich to pay taxes to support that state, Elon Musk never does. Neither, for that matter does Trump but that does not mean that they will all really fall apart.
As JD Vance correctly put it the survival of their group depends on the fact that they "hate the right people" or in their case, the same ones. And that mutual hate is what holds them together. They hate what they define as non-MAGA values (which change day to day). They hate out groups like BLM, poor immigrants, and gay people, as well as any laws that protect the "other side." They hate labor, fraud, and environmental laws that limit their profits or frauds, and they hate the "woke" prosecutors and administrators who enforce them.
But the dollar, they seem to hate the dollar most of all.
What truly unites both Bannon and Musk is a goal of breaking the dollar and replacing it with a digital gold standard, Bannon because he believes it will break American Power2, Musk because he owns a lot of gold. Trump's plan to create a digital bitcoin reserve, and remove regulations on crypto, is a step to this end. Trump once rightly called Bitcoin a scam3, but now he is in on the game, and plans to make everyone else pay the price.
Together this group is a solid, if toxic, marriage, hell-bent on destroying much and trolling all the way to the bank. They will not abandon it lightly, not until the last woke bastion has fallen. So, just as it is fun to watch them fight one another that is no substitute for us acting forcefully to identify and rescue what we really want to save.
EDIT: Since publishing this original essay Bannon appears to have been exiled from the island. He publicly claimed he would take out Musk, now he is going on interviews restating his fealty to Trump. It sounds very much like the divorce has happened.
But while Musk has kicked Bannon to the curb his union with Trump remains strong. Unlike Bannon, both Trump and Musk are transactional to the core, and unconcerned with what happens to others. In short, they are true arsonists.
If Bloomberg reporting referenced by Bill Bishop here is correct and Musk also becomes the CCP-chosen owner of TikTok that too may affect Bannon’s level of trust. Or it may be spun as just another case where the wealthiest man is stepping in to buy a “woke” platform and save it for everyone. Either way of course, Musk wins.
That being said, however much Bannon hates musk he lacks the leverage or the desire to really force him from Trump’s orbit, at least not yet. Bannon and his followers are axiomatically in the tank for Trump. They have already given him their votes, their donations, and their dollars for his merch. They have nothing left. Musk has billions and he has Trump’s attention in a vice through his hold on X. In the short term neither is going away, and the hate that binds them remains strong.
The idea that a return to the gold standard would facilitate free trade, limit government, and reduce public debt (as opposed to just taxing the rich and regulating the marketplace) has been the stuff of politics for a long time and has always been well-supported by the gold miners. But as Karl Polanyi has pointed out the original gold standard did none of those things. Neither will a digital one. Indeed the rigid instability it created exacerbated inequalities and triggered a global crash. Those who claim they wish to prevent unnecessary war would do well to avoid the economic system that supported the first one.
For more on the literal scammers guiding Trump’s crypto “policy” I recommend this well-researched article from The Intercept. It notes that Trump is turning to people to literally used his brand for a pump and dump. Clearly he has no concerns with scams, even those done in his name and from which he does not profit (directly).