These are the alarming parallels between the views of Steve Bannon and those held by Islamist jihadis

The enemy for Bannon is secularism. This, he believes, is responsible for progressively diluting pure Christian ideals with all sorts of modern and postmodern ideologies

Steve Bannon emerges from an elevator at Trump Tower. He is now the most influential individual in Donald Trump’s administration (Getty)

At the time of Trump’s unexpected election victory, there was much speculation over who would really run the US Government, given the incoming President’s notorious lack of patience and attention to detail. Now that question has been answered: this White House is Steve Bannon’s.

The one element that unites every executive order and every speech the President has given since assuming office is the Bannon world view. So if we are to understand the trajectory of this new American administration, we need to invest some time in trying to understand Bannon, his outlook, and where he plans to take us next.

Having studied radical Islamists for more than a decade, as I started to look into Bannon’s perspective and philosophies I started to notice significant parallels between the two mindsets. According to Bannon, based on his responses to a series of interviews granted in recent years, our world is in the midst of an epic battle. It is a battle between good and evil, and the force of pure good is the Christian civilisation that was bequeathed to the West over 2000 years ago. Bannon’s belief is that this Christian society, the greatest civilisation known to man, has been eroded, corrupted and brought to the brink of destruction over the last several decades.

He rests the blame for this decay on several shoulders. First on the list are crony capitalists. Bannon has stated that he believes capitalism is no longer working as it should. Where it was once imbued with a Christian philanthropic ethic, in which gains were shared among the community – presumably the Christian community – it now appears to be driven purely by personal greed.

The next enemy for Bannon is secularism. This, he believes, is responsible for progressively diluting pure Christian ideals with all sorts of modern and postmodern ideologies, as well as a general openness to other cultures and perspectives.

Secularism is the enemy within; radical Islam is the enemy without. It is a direct challenge to the Christian ideal and so represents a grave existential threat to it. Similarly, the Chinese with their lack of Christian culture or values are singled out too – particularly as the Chinese economy is on the rise.

Like the Islamist radicals I have studied, Bannon’s perspective is based on a genuine desire to create a better society for his chosen few. The problem, however – again, just like the problem for the jihadi – is that he is very selective in who he wants to help. Bannon puts his ideal, and his people, on a pedestal while all else are considered unworthy.

A further parallel is the way in which both Bannon and Islamist jihadis are completely oblivious to the fact that the greatest transgressors of their own ideals are among themselves. Islamists believe in the importance of following the guidance of the Quran, yet their own behaviour contradicts more Quranic teachings than that of almost any so-called Western “infidel”.

Similarly, while Bannon may be right to point the finger at the evolution of capitalism into something soulless and self-serving, he himself made millions working in Goldman Sachs and is now working with Donald Trump, who has employed a team of similarly aggressive capitalists around his cabinet table.

Bannon is also invested heavily in the media that he attacks so vociferously. By making his money this way – even off programmes such as Seinfeld – he has done more than most to promote the modern secular way of life; and all to make a quick buck for himself in the process.

Where his attitudes merge most closely with those of the radical Islamist, however, is on strategy. Both see conflict as the only way to win. In an interview last year Bannon stated unambiguously, “We’re going to war in the South China Sea ... there is no doubt about that”. A few months before that he stated, “We’re clearly going into, I think, a major shooting war in the Middle East again.”

Note the recent declaration by Trump’s national security adviser that Iran was officially now “on notice”, as well as the US Defence Secretary’s newly inflammatory remarks over the weekend about Chinese presence in the South China Sea.

Soon after Trump’s election victory, historian David Kaiser wrote about his own session with Bannon in which he interviewed him about a theory known as the Fourth Turning, which had taken Bannon’s interest. The theory involves the way in which America seems to go through a giant crisis every 80 or so years; and each time the crisis has resulted in a major paradigm shift for the country.

During this meeting, Kaiser refused to be drawn on whether a fourth such crisis was underway now. Kaiser wrote: “More than once during our interview, he [Bannon] pointed out that each of the three preceding crises had involved a great war, and those conflicts had increased in scope from the American Revolution through the Civil War to the Second World War. He expected a new and even bigger war as part of the current crisis, and he did not seem at all fazed by the prospect.”

This apparent blood thirst for an epic philosophical and cultural struggle is what finally and indelibly bonds Bannon to the radical Islamist.

The most dangerous people are those who cannot locate their demons within themselves and instead see them everywhere they look. The frenetic activity we are experiencing from the Trump administration is already feeling to many like a prelude to something altogether more grave. What we are witnessing is a drum beat.

Now we know who is really running the White House, it is time to be vigilant and perhaps start to plan proactively for the horrors that – if we take Bannon at his word – may well lie ahead.

Russell Razzaque is a London-based psychiatrist and author of ‘Human Being to Human Bomb: The Conveyor Belt of Terror'