Keith Koffler: Steve Bannon’s Catholic Upbringing ‘Informs His Sense of Fair Play’ and ‘Honey Badger’ Philosophy

WhiteHouseDossier.com editor Keith Koffler told Breitbart News Daily on Monday that one of the most surprising discoveries when he was writing his new book about Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon, Bannon: Always the Rebel, was the strong role religion played in forming Bannon’s ideology.

“I don’t think people necessarily understand Bannon as a religious man,” Koffler said. “His Catholicism and his adherence to Judeo-Christian values informs a lot of his thinking, I think, in several ways.”

“First of all, personally for him, he at a certain point in his life – which is revealed in this book – was drinking too much. He told me about it and discussed it with me. I don’t think he was an alcoholic. I think he was quite functional, but he knew it was interfering with what he was doing,” Koffler revealed.

“And so he actually went back to his Catholic upbringing – he went to a Catholic school – and used some of the Catholic text, medieval Catholic text, that talked about getting away from the problems of the day, focusing yourself, getting away from your weaknesses, and praying and focusing on God, focusing on your religion and love for God, and getting away from the mundane, even if the mundane is your sort of personal problems – whether it’s drinking too much, or whether it’s being criticized,” he recounted.

“Within that, some of the people that he read – St. Ignatius, Thomas à Kempis, one of the early Jesuits that he liked, Gerard Grub. These people talk about sort of centering yourself, and there are regimens that he used to stop drinking, essentially – almost like his own 12-step program that he used, but basically it was through prayer,” Koffler said.

“He told me that he uses it even today, every day, and it helps him reflect. It helps him think, ‘Where do I want to go with Breitbart?’ It gives him time for essentially a religious meditation where he thinks about his life. Not only does it keep him away from negative things, but it helps him think about the positive,” he explained.

“Also, by removing the mundane – you at Breitbart, you guys are very brave. You come in for constant criticism. I’m sure you show up at a party and people say to you, ‘Oh, you work at Breitbart? You must be this and that.’ You, Alex, and several of the others have been there for years because you believe in what you’re doing,” he said.

Koffler even found theological roots for Bannon’s feisty motto, “Honey Badger Don’t Give a S**t,” which he argued “comes from Catholicism and these religious texts he was viewing; they taught him to worry more about the sublime and less about the little things that are going to prod you day by day.”

“Also, obviously, it informs his sense of fair play and the economy and that average people who go to church and try to do the right thing should have some of the benefits of this economy, and not just the elite,” he said.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.

LISTEN: