It seems it’s not enough for Bannon to be busy Nazifying everything, he’s a Catholic Nazi, and he’s not a happy camper about the almighty church’s descent in ugly, ruthless power, having been at least somewhat defanged in recent centuries. Not enough, to be sure, as the church is constantly seeking ways to impose its particular brand of brutality, such as now buying hospitals everywhere, in order to impose a compleat lack of autonomy on women, and the “outreaches” in places where the church can handily refuse medical or other help unless someone agrees to convert, and making sure they lie their unholy asses off about life-saving contraceptives, like condoms. Even largely defanged, the Catholic church continues to do as much damage and harm as possible. That’s not even getting into all the child molesting the church handwaves, nor their ongoing protection via shuffling about of rapists. Even though I don’t think Pope Francis is all that different from his predecessors, to many Catholics, it’s seems he’s viewed as close to heretical – globalism! And making noises about caring for the poor. That sort of thing just isn’t on for those who are more than attached to all the wealth the church is sitting on.

At the root of things is the fact that the pope gave the boot to Raymond Cardinal Burke, a theological reactionary and a guy who was born 500 years too late to be the high cleric of his dreams. This touched off a major squabble with the Knights of Malta. They’re serious power brokers within HMC even though they dress like Albanian ushers and despite the fact that just talking about them makes me start hearing “Hail, Hail Freedonia” in my mind. Burke was their chaplain.

There’s a genuine rebellion brewing in HMC, holy obedience be damned, you should pardon the expression. And today, The New York Times adds a bizarre—but completely predictable—bit of information to the story of that rebellion.

In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed themselves as unjustly ostracized by out-of-touch political elites. “When you recognize someone who has sacrificed in order to remain true to his principles and who is fighting the same kind of battles in the cultural arena, in a different section of the battlefield, I’m not surprised there is a meeting of hearts,” said Benjamin Harnwell, a confidant of Cardinal Burke who arranged the 2014 meeting.

Just as Mr. Bannon has connected with far-right parties threatening to topple governments throughout Western Europe, he has also made common cause with elements in the Roman Catholic Church who oppose the direction Francis is taking them. Many share Mr. Bannon’s suspicion of Pope Francis as a dangerously misguided, and probably socialist, pontiff… For many of the pope’s ideological opponents in and around the Vatican, who are fearful of a pontiff they consider outwardly avuncular but internally a ruthless wielder of absolute political power, this angry moment in history is an opportunity to derail what they see as a disastrous papal agenda. And in Mr. Trump, and more directly in Mr. Bannon, some self-described “Rad Trads” — or radical traditionalists — see an alternate leader who will stand up for traditional Christian values and against Muslim interlopers.

If it wasn’t clear already, it should be now. Stephen Bannon, the last descendant of House Harkonnen, is not someone who wants to “disrupt the elites,” or whatever techie garbage he likes to toss around. He wants to establish himself at the head of a new, worldwide authoritarian elite that will reach into every institution and that will demolish any of those institutions that stand in the way of what he wants. The man is a political thug, and Burke is a theological thug. Marriage made somewhat lower than heaven.

Given the rise of nazism and fascism across the globe, and the fascist grip firmly on uStates, it will pay to watch just where this unholy as fuck union is going to lead. Nowhere good, that’s certain, but when you combine this with the ongoing efforts to quash dissent, we are facing very dark days, and we need to gather our courage and commit to giving voice to every single wrong, every single outrage. Given the Catholic Church’s willingness to be corrupt as all hells, combining that corruption with what now taints many governments, along with the church’s unquenchable thirst for power…regardless of what people think, there are plenty of evil assholes in the church who will happily collaborate with nazis and fascists.

Full story at Esquire.