Steve Bannon, inmate number 05635-509

As you read this, I’d like you to take a moment to consider:

Where are you sitting? Are you at home? In your favorite chair or spot on the sofa? Maybe you’re reading this on your phone waiting for an appointment, or you’re still in bed, or munching on a snack, or having a coffee at a non-Starbucks coffee house.

Are you comfortable?  What will you be doing after you read this?  Shopping?  Cooking? Reading something else? Visiting friends or family?  Talking on the phone? Watching something on Netflix, listening to a podcast, going to the theatre or a movie?

Just breathe in for a moment and appreciate all the choices you have.  

Choices that inmate number 05635-509 no longer has, for the next four months.

Stephen K. Bannon, one of the premiere forces for freedom – a titan, actually, in the effort he has expended every day, for years and years, in numerous capacities – is sitting in a federal prison as a target of one of the most heinous displays of political persecution ever seen in this country.  

Everything to do with the January 6th Committee, from its premise, to its formation, to its composition, to its actions then and subsequently, and to its Stalinesque – even Kafkaesque – actions towards those whom the Democrats – under whose watch the events at the capitol occurred without adequate security –  has decided are its enemies, all of it is beyond the bounds of what America is, what our independent judiciary was meant to be, what this nation of laws, not of men, has always stood for.

There is not one step in the process from a subpoena investigating Steve Bannon’s conversations regarding January 6th to his mandate to “Surrender” himself at the Federal Prison in Danbury, Connecticut, that has been legitimate on its face and in its actions.

Not one.

Steve, therefore, is a political prisoner, in the United States of America. He is a casualty, in fact, of World War III, wherein all tactics can be brought to bear to subdue and subvert those seen as the enemy.  

It’s easy to say “he just should have” testified to the committee he believed to be illegitimate, a sham, a charade among the whole constellations of charades to do with the 2020 election.  

But have we not learned that “just” this or “just” that is exactly how we’ve gotten into this quagmire, this swamp of a 4th-world nation, into the morass of corruption in which we are sloshing about?  The whittling away of freedoms through compromise after compromise – it’s just a mask, just 3 weeks, just a vaccine, just shutting down beaches – simply consider for a minute if someone had told you 10 years ago all the things that our friends and neighbors have complied with, that have become the norm, that we don’t even think twice about, and you can’t help but realize how far we’ve fallen.  

Steve Bannon’s opting to await a legal decision regarding whether or not he must comply with the subpoena was well within legal bounds; given Eric Holder and others’ similar refusal to testify without consequence, this is just another of the countless incidents revealing a bifurcated justice system, one that is weaponized against us, and forgiving of them.

Over the years, in conversation and in emails, we in the AFA community applaud those who have sacrificed everything to create this country, to build it, to strengthen it.  From the men and women on the Mayflower, to the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, to those who fought the Revolutionary War, then subsequent wars on behalf of these great United States and allies fighting tyranny, we celebrate them, their heroism, their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families.

And throughout history, we have others we look to who have been courageous in the face of evil.  For me, Sophie Scholl has always epitomized such courage. A young university student in Munich, she was also part of the White Rose anti-Nazi organization which spoke out against the war.  In 1942 she was caught distributing leaflets at the University of Munich, was arrested, tried for high treason and executed by guillotine.  Her story is told in this film which you can also watch on Amazon.

Obviously, we’re not there. Posting the wrong thing on social media may bring deplatforming, not decapitation, but increasingly we are seeing people thrown in jail for wrongthink, and how many are in prison over January 6th without being charged?  

My own purpose in what I do, though, is to speak out against the silencing, the shunning, the censorship, before it gets to the Sophie-Scholl stage, which is why AFA celebrates those people who stand up with courage to those why would silence them, and us.

Steve Bannon is obviously one of those being silenced due to his effectiveness in standing up to tyranny, to the Marxist-Globalist-anti-American, anti-freedom forces and entities and who gives voice to all who feel similarly.  His War Room show is a premiere source for information and a platform for activists, for authors and speakers and analysts and all those fighting, in some way, for the freedoms that are emblematic of this nation.

In addition to his consistent stand for America first and for the American people, now, right now, he has been displaying – modeling, actually – warrior behavior of a kind we seldom see. 

Referring to his then-impending imprisonment, he has noted that he had served his country in his 20s serving for four years in the Navy on a destroyer, and now, his is also serving his country, in his 70s, spending four months in a federal prison.  He has displayed nothing but ferocity, patriotism, fearlessness even in the face of incarceration.  His War Room shows preceding his “surrendering” at the prison in Danbury bear watching to take heart from, and to LEARN from, his attitude, his perspective, his courage even as he’s heading into four months of punishment for his boldly pro-American stance, for his own proud voice and for the platform he gives to others similarly engaged in the preservation of our freedoms, our values, our precepts.

Yes, we hark to the past for warriors who stood strong and sacrificed so much, but what we have, right here, right now, in Steve Bannon, inmate number 05635-509, is a warrior in this modern-day war, in, as he has noted, World War III.  

The day before the hearing where Judge Nichols was to decide whether Steve would remain free until his appeals were exhausted – as had previously been claimed – or whether he would have to “report” to prison earlier – put another way, whether Nancy Pelosi would be successful in her locking up this powerful voice in an attempt to silence him – I felt a strangling chill like I hadn’t felt since the Covid lunacy.  

The outcome of the hearing was unclear: would the judge stand by his prior decision, or would he demand Steve’s immediate surrender?  That idea seemed perfectly within the bounds of possibility: if they were going to incarcerate him, why not start right then and there?  “Come with us, Mr. Bannon” and away he goes.

This thought – that the next day Steve Bannon would disappear into the penal system as a political prisoner – was unfathomable to me.  Such an occurrence would, I was sure, inspire such a revolt the likes of which we haven’t seen. The “posse,” the hundreds of thousands of War Room and Bannon devotees surely would not just let this happen!  We’d been good, we’d been quiet, through the past several years. But this? This would be too much.

We have watched at Peter Navarro has been serving his similar sentence in a federal prison in Florida. We have watched as Simone Gold served her sentence in prison, and as John Strand continues to serve in jail.  And of course, the threat of literally hundreds of years of prison has been hanging over President Donald Trump.  And we watch as those on the Left walk free. 

But demanding that Steve Bannon now report to prison… surely that would be the last straw.

I imagined an uprising, and that terrified me.

But also, I imagined NO uprising, and that terrified me, too.

I didn’t know which filled me with more horror: an outpouring of rage in reaction to this lunacy, or a silent complacency, a flurry of outraged voices but then an adaptation to the “new” reality” of even Steve Bannon in prison.

Rather than demand his immediate imprisonment, the judge mandated that Steve “surrender” himself to the federal authorities on July 1st, giving him, and us, time to prepare.  

Bannon’s exhortations to us to stay in the fight, to be the “Next Man Up,” to stand in the breach, to not let War Room be silenced despite the Left’s best efforts, brought a focus and a mission to efforts for the coming months, and his insistence that we not “waste time” writing and sending him “missives” that he promised to not read also helped us stay active. As he promised to fight every minute of every day to battle the Marxist globalist anti-Americans, so too did he want us equally engaged.

And now, whenever I hear people’s rationales for not doing something in furtherance of the goal, I just think: And Steve Bannon is in jail.  And all we ask of you is to do what you can to spread the word about World War III and the damage that is being wrought, the destruction of this nation we know and love.  Steve Bannon is in jail.  Steve Bannon is in jail, a political prisoner; the fiercest freedom fighter is now living with supremely curtailed freedoms, and all we ask is to be worthy of the sacrifice that he is now making.

 

Steve Bannon is on the Advisory Board of the American Freedom Alliance and we are honored that he supports the work that we do, as we support the effort and sacrifice that he expends every day in service of this great nation.  AFA Stands With Bannon, and looks forward to his participation in our events when his freedoms will have been restored.