LOL! There's An Actual Civil War Breaking Out On The Far Right

The worst people in the world are fighting for control and whoever wins, we lose. Unless...no one wins.

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Welp! That was kind of predictable. Actually, it was extremely predictable. Elon Musk has officially worn out his welcome among the high priests of MAGAland and now they’ve declared war on him:

In an escalation of discontent among the highest-profile far-right followers of Donald Trump, his former adviser Steve Bannon has called Trump’s newest favorite, Elon Musk, “racist” and a “truly evil guy”, pledging to “take this guy down” and kick him out of the Maga movement.

Laura Loomer and a bunch of MAGA talking heads are furious with Musk and his fellow tech bro oligarchs and, darn it!, they’re just not going to take it anymore!

I, for one, am quite giddy about the whole thing. It’s quite literally what I’ve been hoping for. Open warfare between factions on the right. The nastier, the better. I want them to go full scorched earth on each other and there‘s a very good chance I will get my wish because this is for all the marbles. Whoever wins gets to control Trump which means they get to control the entire country. There will be no half-measures here.

I know it gets used to death but, come on, what scene better suits the moment?

If you missed the drama and you’re not sure why the worst people in the world are squabbling, it ostensibly has to do with H-1B visas and how the tech bros support them and MAGAland does not.

H-1B visas allow tech companies to hire foreign workers at a fraction of the cost of American workers and abuse the shit out of them. After all, if the workers complain, the companies will just yank their visas and send them back, usually to a country with crushing poverty. It’s a form of indentured servitude and since most tech bros aspire to be feudal lords, they love this.

MAGAland hates H-1B visas because they oppose all forms of immigration, legal or otherwise. ‘Murika first! Musk told them to go fuck themselves and MAGAland got deeply offended. Wasn’t Musk supposed to be their apartheid champion? What the actual fuck, dude?!

But this fight isn’t really about H-1B visas. Not really. It’s about who controls Trump, the puppet king, and whose vision of America comes to pass. Not all flavors of fascism are the same. If they were, the KKK and neo-Nazis would be good buddies. Usually, they hate each other.

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The funny thing here is that Steve Bannon, THAT Steve Bannon, really is going all in on calling Musk and the other tech bros racist:

Bannon further widened his aim to attack Musk’s fellow tech giants Peter Thiel and David Sacks for having South African heritage.

“He [Musk] should go back to South Africa,” Bannon said. “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

It’s impossible to overstate how deeply racist Steve Bannon is. One time, just for fun, I wrote an article pairing comments from Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s cesspool, The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s open sewer, and The Daily Stormer, a literal neo-Nazi website. I challenged readers to tell me which comments came from the neo-Nazis.

No one could. There was no difference. That’s who Steve Bannon is.

So when this motherfucker calls Elon Musk a racist, he’s not wrong but, bitch, please. That’s like Bill Cosby being outraged that Donald Trump sexually assaulted women. Maybe sit this one out, buddy. Disingenous doesn’t really cover it.

But I want them to fight. Make it loud and ugly and keep it going as long as possible. The longer they’re tearing at each other, the less time and energy they have to destroy everything else. Fascists always end up turning on each other because no one is ever pure enough for them. Usually, they last a little longer than this but who am I to complain?

The irony of this is that what Bannon is really mad about is that Musk walked in and took over a movement Bannon spent years building. Which is exactly what Trump and Bannon did to the Republican establishment a decade ago. The GOP didn’t really understand the monster it had built and lost control of it.

Now the same thing has happened to Bannon. He, perhaps, didn’t really understand Trump. Or perhaps he thought he could manipulate him long enough until America was the white nationalist police state of his dreams. But Trump has no core ideology. He believes in nothing but money and power. Literally nothing else.¹

This is why Trump always bows and scrapes before dictators. Not because he believes in their fascist ideology but because of the power that ideology grants them. There is not a single dictator Trump does not love, regardless of how they run their country. Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Xi Jinping, it’s irrelevant. He craves their approval and their wealth and their absolute power. Elon Musk does not rule a nation but he’s the richest man in the world and his power is beyond that of most heads of state. Trump cannot help but crave Musk’s approval in hopes he will be lifted up to those lofty heights.

Steve Bannon has nothing to offer to compare to that.

This is why if I had to make a bet…I’d say Bannon is going to lose here. Musk, like Trump, does not believe in MAGA at all. He believes in what will make him richer and more powerful. That’s it. I mean, Musk is a racist piece of shit to be sure. He’s a libertarian which means he believes “some people” are inherently better than others. “Some people,” of course, meaning “heterosexual white men.”

But, really, it’s all about Musk and what he wants, just like Trump. They both understand that Republican voters are easy to manipulate and that racism is just a tool to rile up the rubes. They may not like Those People but they don’t really care about making America white again. It makes for a good distraction, of course, but if it gets in the way of making money? Bannon’s white nationalism is going to lose every single time.

Bannon’s only real avenue here is to convince Trump that Musk is a personal threat to him. Trump is a well-documented narcissist who, like all dictators and wannabes, cannot tolerate competing power centers. This is why Trump is trying to consolidate all of the power of the executive branch in the Oval Office. There can be no independence in an autocracy.

It’s why he wants the military to be filled with boot-licking loyalists. It’s why he wants Congress to be nothing more than a rubber stamp. It’s why he will go after the courts next. I promise you, Trump plans to start firing judges despite the fact it’s absolutely illegal for him to do so.

This is the playbook of all autocrats.

But Musk has so much power, he practically has his own gravity. And he’s been flaunting it nonstop since the election. So much so that Trump has been “joking” that he’s tired of Musk being around all the time. Except Trump doesn’t have a sense of humor and he doesn’t joke. Sooner or later, he’s going to get tired of Musk the co-president. Or Musk will make demands of Trump like he’s a flunky and Trump will remember that he’s the President of the United States, making him the most powerful man in the world, regardless of how much money Elon Musk has. Once that dynamic shifts, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Musk to regain the control he currently has.

And then the real fight begins because the world’s richest man will not tolerate being cut off from what he feels belongs to him. Bannon may not win this fight, but it’s entirely possible Musk will end up in a brawl with Trump anyway because the White House cannot contain both of their egos. There simply isn’t room and at the end of the day, Trump is president. Musk is not.

These are venal, small, petty people who will destroy themselves. We just have to make sure they don’t destroy everything and everyone around them in the process. In the meantime, grab a seat and a giant bucket of popcorn and enjoy the show. Watching monsters tear each other apart is always fun because no one deserves it more than they do.

There are 294 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

1. Unless you count revenge and sexually assaulting little girls.