Reminder: “MAGA Populists” Are Deeply Complicit in the Rush to War with Iran

There is a destructive and deeply stupid myth that the MAGA/populist wing of political conservatism is at war with the neocon/establishment wing. Don’t fall for it.

It has now been four days since Israel, not content with merely carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, launched unprovoked attacks on Iran. There is reason to believe that the Netanyahu government is attempting to carry out regime change against the Islamic Republic, as opposed to merely its stated goal of destroying Iran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration, and Trump himself, seems fairly lackadaisical about the prospect of direct U.S. involvement in such a project – which, to put it mildly, is not encouraging. The risk of an all-out regional war is now greater than ever.

Interestingly, as Politico (among other outlets) reported, Trump’s grassroots supporters are not happy about this. “The entire situation is infuriating the MAGA base, whose leaders had been imploring Trump to stop Israel in recent days.” This represents a key, and potentially hopeful, difference between the otherwise terrifying moment we’re in and the post-9/11 rush to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Back then, the Vietnam syndrome had been “kicked,” and Americans, shocked by 9/11 and whipped into a frenzy by the Bush administration’s propaganda, were out for blood. Today, none of that applies. Virtually the entirety of the American population, including most of the political right, are in no mood for U.S. involvement in another protracted Middle East war. This puts them starkly at-odds with the neoconservative wing of the Republican leadership, who have long desired regime change in Iran, and would happily sacrifice American troops to accomplish it if they were able to get public opinion on their side. Where this contradiction between the base and the neoconservative leadership will lead is an open question, but many have noticed that the two camps are not aligned on this issue.

What many have missed, however, is that Trump’s base is also not aligned with Trump himself, and more importantly, the intellectual leadership of the MAGA movement. There is a stubborn narrative about MAGA which says that Trump, as well as those who espouse his “right-wing populist” ideology (Steve Bannon, et al.) are instinctively anti-war, or at least “isolationist,” and that the neoconservative/establishment wing of American conservatism is constantly trying to steer an otherwise resistant Trump movement back toward military interventionism.

There is at least some truth to this. Trump was always skeptical about the war in Afghanistan, was cool towards the Iraq War while it was being waged (and very critical of it in retrospect), and has been known to express reservations about getting involved in certain other conflicts. Responding to someone describing the potential for China to invade Taiwan, Trump reportedly exclaimed, “Taiwan is like two feet from China. We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it.”¹

But for the most part, the “Donald the Dove” idea is nonsense. Trump was extremely hawkish during his first term, and often had to be restrained by members of “the establishment” surrounding him. On North Korea, Trump began asking the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, about striking the country pre-emptively, according to Bob Woodward’s book Fear: Trump in the White House. Dunford was so spooked by this that he apparently appealed to Lindsay Graham – arguably the worst person to go to on issues like this, but no matter – to get Trump to back down. Later, on learning about a chemical weapons attack in Syria in April 2017, the origin of which was then and remains to this day disputed, Trump reacted by immediately blaming Bashar Al-Assad, and by ordering his Secretary of State, retired General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, to assassinate him. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump screamed at Mattis over the pone. After hanging up, Mattis – no pacifist – immediately told his staff, “we’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” Mattis and others in the national security establishment repeatedly had to talk Trump down from his idea of assassinating Assad. Trump also massively accelerated Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, as well as his reliance on covert operations raids. He also upped Obama’s support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war against the people of Yemen. Famously, Trump was hawkish towards China, and contrary to endless reams of Russiagate nonsense, was also very aggressive towards Russia, with NPR anointing him the “toughest ever” on Russia.

One could provide countless more examples like this, but perhaps the most relevant for our purposes was Trump’s overwhelming hostility to Iran. During his first term, Trump infamously withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” This move was fiercely opposed by the other signatories to the deal (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the rest of the European Union) as well as arms control experts. Trump followed this up by randomly assassinating General Qassim Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force. This outrageous action constituted an unambiguous act of war on Trump’s part; the only reason it didn’t lead to a wider conflict (which Trump likely wanted) because the ever-restrained Iranians chose not to over-react. In addition to the rest of the world, both the withdrawal from the JCPOA and the assassination of Soleimani were opposed by virtually all of the “establishment” figures in Trump’s administration. But both actions were ardently supported by the neoconservatives – and by the MAGA “populists” – in his administration.

Indeed, on the issue of Israel and Iran, the neoconservative and MAGA/“populist” wings of the conservative movement were and are in lockstep agreement. To see the evidence of this, consider John Bolton and Steve Bannon, the figures from Trump’s first term who arguably represent the “extremes” of both trends. Bolton is a lunatic neoconservative, who remains to this day an unrepentant defender of the Iraq War, and who routinely writes op-eds encouraging the pre-emptive bombing of nuclear-armed North Korea as well as Iran. When it comes to neoconservatives, it would be hard to get more extreme than Bolton.

Bannon, on the other hand, is a “right-wing populist,” who is said to represent the working class,² and who would thus be expected to oppose foreign military entanglements. And indeed, to some extent Bannon was opposed to military actions during his time in the first Trump administration. According to Woodward’s Fear, Bannon was (like Trump) skeptical of a continued American troop presence in Afghanistan, wary of attacking North Korea due to the high risk of mass casualties, and angry when Trump twice bombed Syria, which he saw as pointless.

But dig a little deeper, and it becomes apparent that Bannon and those in his ideological orbit aren’t exactly peaceniks. They are opposed to certain conflicts, which is very different than being opposed to all or even most of them.

When Bannon first met Trump in 2010, he lectured him on the existential threat posed, in his mind, by China. According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, Bannon was “obsessed” with China, which he absurdly compared to Nazi Germany – just one more piece of evidence (not that we needed any) that MAGA’s “intellectuals” aren’t exactly brilliant historical thinkers. Indeed, his obsession with China aligns Bannon with other supposed populists like Tucker Carlson, who is also “a rabid anti-China hawk,” as foreign policy analysts have routinely noted.

Two other countries that Bannon has long been obsessed with are – revealingly, given our present situation – Israel and Iran. Indeed, Bannon and his ilk have been deeply complicit in bringing us to the precipice of war with the latter.

Bannon has long been an ardent supporter of Israel. He boasted that he was “a proud Christian Zionist” during a 2017 speech at the right-wing Zionist Organization of America (other speakers at this event included luminaries like Trump’s ally Sebastian Gorka and Trump’s then-ambassador to Israel, David Friedman). During his speech, Bannon praised Trump’s billionaire, pro-Israel donor Sheldon Adelson, as well as Trump himself, on the grounds that Trump was “the strongest supporter of Israel since Ronald Reagan.” Bannon claimed that “We’re leading an insurgency movement against the Republican establishment, [and] against the permanent global class in Washington, DC,” an odd set of claims to make, given that “the Republican establishment” and “the permanent global class in DC” aren’t exactly hostile to Israel or Zionism.

Well into Israel’s genocide, Bannon continued to espouse a militant Zionism. At the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), he was asked by an Israeli attendant, “What do you think about foreign aid to Israel? Is it a strategic partnership?” Bannon replied,

Israel is a partner of the United States. But people in Israel gotta understand something. The number one enemy to the people in Israel are American Jews that do not support Israel and do not support MAGA. Okay? MAGA and the Evangelical Christians and the traditional Catholics in this country have Israel’s back; they have the Jews’ back. The biggest single enemy to the Jewish people are not the Islamic supremacists, the biggest enemy you have is inside the wire: progressive Jewish billionaires that are funding all this stuff. They are the number one enemy and the people in Israel have to set that right. Because MAGA has your back, traditional Catholics have your back, and Evangelical Christians have your back. We will always have the back of Israel, but I gotta tell ya, you have an enemy inside the wire.

It would be difficult to provide clearer proof that the biggest supporters of Israel are also the biggest antisemites than this. Despite Bannon’s well-known antisemitism (he once complained to his ex-wife that he “didn’t want” his daughters “going to school with Jews,” and has been known to occasionally give a Nazi salute or two), he continues to be honored by conservative Zionist groups. According to the Times of Israel, another Zionist organization, “Israel365,” which serves as “‘Israel’s voice in the MAGA movement,’ and which caters to an evangelical Christian audience…host[ed] an event in Dallas where…it…proudly fete[d] Bannon as the guest of honor.” Rabbi Tuli Weisz, Israel365’s founder, gushed, “We are grateful to Steve Bannon for using his voice and his War Room [podcast] platform to help the Jewish State achieve Total Victory and are proud to honor him this Saturday night as a Warrior for Israel.” In case there was any doubt about Bannon’s stance, Weisz clarified that “Anyone who listens to Bannon, knows that he is a Warrior for Israel, and is frequently even criticized for being the most pro-Israel voice in the movement.” Furthermore, the organization’s executive director, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki (known as “the MAGA rabbi”), is “a frequent guest on [Bannon’s] ‘War Room’” podcast, and has boasted of his “close personal friendship” with Bannon.

In keeping with his staunch Christian Zionism, Bannon, like the neoconservatives he and MAGA supposedly dislike, has long fretted about Iran. Both before, during, and after his time in the first Trump term, this led him to collaborate quite closely with…John Bolton. If there was a real “populist”-neocon split dividing the conservative movement, one would expect these two men to be mortal enemies. But Bannon and Bolton were in fact close allies, in and out of government, especially on the issue of Iran.

Prior to either man taking a position within the first Trump administration, Bannon routinely invited Bolton as a guest on his War Room podcast at the overtly racist Breitbart outlet, where they chummily fantasized about regime change in Iran. According to Wolf’s Fire and Fury, it was Bannon who first began the push for Trump to appoint Bolton to the position of National Security Advisor – a position Bolton would eventually occupy. Bolton essentially confirms this in his memoir The Room Where it Happened, writing, “I knew senior Trump campaign officials like Steve Bannon…from prior associations, and had spoken to them about joining a Trump administration should one happen.” Bolton also notes his gratitude “for the considerable support [he] had among pro-Israel Americans (Jews and evangelicals alike)…and conservatives generally” while contending for a position with the Trump administration. These, of course, are the exact same groups that support Trump, Bannon, and Israel.

Around this time, both Slate and Vox reported that Bannon and Bolton were allies, which the first twenty-five pages of the latter’s memoir definitively confirm. They also revealed that Bannon (then a special advisor to Trump) had asked Bolton (at the time, still a Fox News contributor) to draft a plan for the U.S. to exit the JCPOA. It was this plan which was later used to implement the unilateral American withdrawal.

According to Woodward’s Fear, during National Security Council meetings, Bannon would push back against the “establishment” on the importance of traditional alliances. This makes sense, since the MAGA movement is known for its skepticism of “the liberal international order.” However, the reason Bannon hated the idea of allying with the Europeans was that they, unlike Trump, thought Iran had been complying with the JCPOA and wanted to remain in the agreement. In other words, Bannon’s criticism of the international order as it then existed was that it was constraining Trump’s ability to act belligerently toward Iran.

When Bannon was fired by Trump (ironically, for having been a major source for Wolff’s Fire and Fury), Bolton demonstrated his affinity for his “populist” colleague, tweeting, “Best wishes to Steve Bannon as he departs the White House and returns to the private sector. Thank you for your service to our country.” Soon after, in December 2017, when the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy, Bannon was reportedly angry that it was too soft on Iran, again per Woodward’s book.

In a February 2018 interview with GQ, Bannon linked his hawkishness towards China with his hawkishness towards Iran, stating, “What we’re seeing today is China, Persia, and Turkey — three ancient civilizations — coming together to form a new axis.” Again likening China, and now Iran, to Nazi Germany, via the term “axis,” Bannon went on to opine that this group was “confronting the Christian West and also a big part of Islam that is tied to the West. You’re starting to see this form every day like in the 1930s. You’re starting to see it crystallize more and more.” (The “big part of Islam tied to the West” was likely a reference to the fanatical regime in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, which are major allies of the U.S. and Israel, as well as the progenitors of much of the Wahabi extremism that Bannon & co. claim to be so concerned about.)

It is also worth noting that both Bolton and Bannon were strongly backed – and the latter heavily funded – by the billionaire Mercer family, who were among Trump’s many wealthy donors. Bolton was also supported by Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire and fanatical Zionist who supported Trump’s first run for president, and whose wife Miriam donated $100 million to Trump’s 2024 run.

As with Bannon, Bolton was eventually fired by Trump. Unlike Bannon, who quickly made amends with Trump, Bolton has been fiercely critical of him – but on the grounds that Trump is incompetent, not because of any major disagreements on foreign policy. Trump, Bolton, and Bannon agree with one another far more than they disagree. As Bolton reported in his memoir, after helping prepare then-candidate Trump for his first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump told him, “You know, your views and mine are actually very close. Very close.” Later, in discussions about Bolton joining his administration, Trump harped on this theme: “You know, you and I agree on almost everything except Iraq.”

It's hard to take the idea that Trump and MAGA are somehow antiwar restrainers seriously when Trump, Bannon, Gorka, and other leading figures in the movement are Zionist lunatics who want to take out Iran before moving on to China. That Steve Bannon, the ideological leader of MAGA, and John Bolton, the epitome of neoconservatism, got along so well (and for all we know, continue to do so) should give people who promote this line of thinking considerable pause. It might be argued that, leadership aside, at least the grassroots base of MAGA are opposed to the war with Iran Trump seems keen on starting. But even that is dubious, given that so many die-hard MAGA types seem to be Zionists - both the Evangelical Christian and Jewish variety.

In recent days, Steve Bannon has been critical of the idea of American involvement in an Israel-Iran war. Given the history just reviewed, we may be forgiven for doubting his sincerity. At the end of the day, however all this plays out, we must not forget that people like Bannon, as well as other faux-populists like Tucker Carlson, play a critically important role in maintaining American empire as it currently exists. Their purpose is to act as escape valves for genuine anger among grassroots American conservatives. They will consistently, dutifully ensure that that anger is safely contained, and that it is never funneled into a political movement that might actually challenge the Republican Party, let alone capitalism or imperialism. No matter how much Bannon claims to represent working people, or Carlson makes a show of (correctly) deriding morons like Sean Hannity or Mark Levin as “warmongers” (where was this when Carlson was a Fox News host?), they will never encourage their followers to break with the GOP, whether Trump or anyone else is at the forefront of it.

1. I say “reportedly” because this outburst has not been definitively confirmed, because it goes against Trump/MAGA’s general hawkishness toward China, and most of all because it suggests that Trump has a command of basic geography.

2. Which, in conservative parlance, is code for “socially conservative white men.”