spicion that Steve Bannon, President Trump’s Chief Strategist, is the one behind many policies that the president is trying to enact. People are concerned that Bannon’s influence over these policies hold him in a higher position, virtually making him the actual president of the country

I’ve read many opinions based both on hard facts and on pure, irrational fear. However, despite having formed my own opinion, I couldn’t write a satisfactory article on Bannon because I felt a bit overwhelmed by the notion of a man like Bannon in a position of power.

This uncomfortable sensation of being overwhelmed changed when I came across this quote from Bannon.

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon said to the Daily Beast. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

For those unaware, Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and one of the founders of the USSR.

As The Guardian explained, “Two days after Lenin seized power in Russia almost exactly a century ago, he began an assault on the press.”

“Lenin depended on constant conflict and drama,” The Guardian added. “He deliberately used shock tactics. He was nearly always domineering, abusive and combative and often downright vicious. He battered opponents into submission with the deliberate use of violent language, not because he was personally vicious – he wasn’t – but as a technique ‘calculated to evoke hatred, aversion, contempt … not to convince, not to correct the mistakes of the opponent but to destroy him, to wipe him and his organization off the face of the earth.’”

So, a strategy of using abusive and vicious language to create constant conflict, drama and shock… Sounds familiar, right?

This is a strategy commonly used by the alt-right movement.

The alt-right movement has found a haven in Breitbart, a website Bannon managed before joining Trump’s cabinet. The website caters to people who are not satisfied with the current state of the world. Translation: people who are unhappy with the inevitable rise of multiculturalism.

They claim to be disgusted by the political correctness that  journalists, entertainers and politicians are consumed with. That idea is an easy and safe banner to hold because most people, in varying degrees, dislike the excesses of the PC police.

So, alt-right sympathizers aren’t really racist, homophobic, anti-semitic and xenophobic, right? They’re simply against the political correctness that has plagued society.

By using the excuse of simply being against PC culture, the alt-right tries to deviate themselves from unpopular titles like white supremacy and neo-Nazi. Such phrases prove inconvenient to their purposes.

This insidious approach reminds me of a quote Heath Legder’s, “Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos.”

Bannon was true to his words. He proved to be a Leninist when he told the New York Times that, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen. I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party.”

In your case, Mr. Bannon, we will be. Proudly.