Steve Bannon’s Lawrence of Arabia 'side-show' analogy is a dud

 

Steve Bannon’s “side-show” reading of the Arab Revolt parrots imperial myth, ignoring how Britain’s failures made that revolt decisive, and how Lawrence himself admitted it was a calculated swindle.

One of the greatest untold geopolitical stories of the modern era is how a former settler-colony that developed into a hegemonic superpower saved its former Imperial master from existential geopolitical disasters. How the United States provided salvation for Britain in two world wars and then inherited and maintained its former master’s imperialist global interests, especially in the Arabic-speaking region of West Asia, aka “Middle East” during the 20th century is a phenomenal story in itself.

Alongside this secular salvation, the United States maintained the foundational geopolitical mythology about the British presence in the Arabic speaking world. This particular mythology is based around the imperial agent T. E. Lawrence (aka “Lawrence of Arabia”). He is considered to have led the Arabs to freedom from Ottoman Rule in the “Arab Revolt” during World War One. Lawrence chronicled his adventures in his classic book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Steve Bannon, the former advisor to President Donald Trump, is the latest to fall gullibly for this foundational mythology in an interview with world-renowned journalist Tucker Carlson. Bannon is an advocate of “America First”, a strategy which calls for the prioritisation of United States interests instead of forever foreign wars, which are considered to mostly serve foreign governments. He recently drew an analogy of his interpretation of “America First” priorities with the “Arab Revolt” campaign during World War One. He told Carlson,

“I said to quote Thomas Edward Lawrence from the Seven Pillars of Wisdom what they told him at the time when he showed up at Cairo’s military headquarters. They said, “Look, the Middle East is a sideshow to the main event, the Western Front”. And the Arab revolt is a sideshow to a sideshow. And I said, “The Middle East right now for us with everything geopolitically going on and the economic war with China…The Middle East is a sideshow and the Israel issue is a sideshow to a sideshow.”

Bannon is loyally rehashing the lines from one of the opening scenes of David Lean’s film adaptation of Lawrence’s book. In this spectacular film, the actor Donald Wolfi,t who plays Lieutenant-General Archibald Murray growls the following:

“If you want to know my opinion, this whole theatre of operations is a side-show. The real war’s being fought against the Germans not the Turks. Not here, but on the Western front…in the trenches…And your “Bedouin Army” or whatever it calls itself – would be a side-show of a side-show.”  (more...)

Steve Bannon’s Lawrence of Arabia 'side-show' analogy is a dud