After US President Donald Trump removed his chief strategist Steve Bannon, the Washington Post quoted a person close to Bannon as saying, “Steve doesn’t care. He’s going to support the president and push the agenda, whether he’s on the inside or the outside … No matter what happens, Steve is a honey badger.” Wait, what?
YouTube sensation with 83 mn views
The honey badger is a fearless carnivore that stars in a viral YouTube clip called ‘The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger.’ In it, the animal chases jackals, climbs a tree to gorge on a snake, survives a cobra bite and eats it head first. Meanwhile, the narrator extols its core virtue: “Honey badger don’t give a s***”
The badger ‘don’t care’
“Most who watch it probably find it fairly amusing—and plenty gross. But for Bannon, the video and its furry hero were something else: an inspiration,” writes Bret Stephens in his NYT review of Devil’s Bargain— Joshua Green’s book on Bannon. In fact, Breitbart—the aggressive conservative news outlet that Bannon has now returned to—has the honey badger as its unofficial mascot
Steve Bannon in the Kali Yuga
Bannon is a fan of Rene Guenon, who believed “ancient religions like Vedanta and Sufism, were repositories of spiritual truths wiped out by secular modernity,” writes Green. “Like Bannon, Guenon was fascinated by the Hindu cyclical time and believed the West was passing through Kali Yuga—when tradition is wholly forgotten.”