"What Time It Is" by Dr. Naomi Wolf

What Time It Is - Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf (substack.com):

The Imprisonment of Stephen K Bannon

"On July 1, 2024, the US detained its most prominent political prisoner; its most obvious political prisoner probably since the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in World War 2.

On July 1 2024, podcaster, entrepreneur, former Navy officer, and political advisor to President Trump, Stephen K Bannon, “surrendered”, in his words, to authorities, to begin serving four months’ incarceration at Danbury Federal Prison.

FCI — Federal Correctional Institution - Danbury, in Danbury, Connecticut, is a serious prison. The handbook, which all inmates receive, reveals a range of minute restrictions on liberty, and even on any adult decision-making, that characterizes strict incarceration.

Stephen K. Bannon, now one of the loudest and most powerful dissident voices in America in our time, will have no access at all to the internet, according to FCI Danbury inmates’ handbook.

Could that one condition alone, be the actual end-goal of this sentence, so assiduously sought? (As I have pointed out elsewhere, from my experience in the world of aides around President Clinton and VP Gore, everyone advising the President and VP relied on the protections of executive privilege, and they do so to this day. Mr Bannon is being treated with a shameful double standard).

The myriad restrictions on every aspect of an inmate’s daily life, at FCI Danbury, reveal that while this is a “minimum security prison”, there is at that facility an approach to incarceration that is mentally wearing and “institutionalizing”.

Looking at these prison regulations, one can see from where the global mental torture of COVID-era “lockdowns” — the minute regulation of time, space, decisions, options — may have derived. (“Lockdown” itself is a prison-derived term).

Mr Bannon will receive a set number of “points” a month for visitors, and each visit uses up these points. He will need to submit to authorities, in advance, a list of visitors, and fill out forms for each; each visit will need to be approved. Points are used up for metrics as random-seeming as the distance the visitor travels.

Mr Bannon will be awakened at six am every day, and if he oversleeps, there will be disciplinary action. He can possess no more than twenty postage stamps at a time. He will be able to shop at the commissary, but with a limit of $360 per month. Visits restrict human contact from family members: “Kissing, embracing and hand-shaking/holding are allowed only upon arrival or departure.”

In force for all but ten minutes a day is “controlled movement”, which is not clearly defined in the handbook, and can only be imagined by those of us outside the prison; inmates within it, are permitted “open movement” for just ten minutes a day.

Running and jogging are not permitted at all.

There are five inmate counts a day.

Phone calls are limited to 15 minutes each, for a total of 300 minutes a month.

Can we hear from Steve Bannon? Can we hear from him at all?

“Inmate Correspondence with Representatives of the News Media:

An inmate may write, following Special Mail procedures, to representatives of the news media when specified by name and title. The inmate may not receive compensation or anything of value for correspondence with the news media. The inmate may not act as a reporter, publish under a byline, or conduct a business or profession while in BOP custody. [Italics mine]. Representatives of the news media may initiate correspondence with an inmate. Correspondence from a representative of the news media will be opened, inspected for contraband, for qualification as media correspondence, and for content, which is likely to promote either illegal activity or conduct contrary to BOP regulations.”

Interestingly, there is a rich offering of educational opportunities in this prison. Bannon can take martial arts, use the legal library, receive subscriptions, learn ESL or complete a GED, get religious instruction, and accomplish any number of other educational tasks.

He can send snail mail.

However, Bannon’s voice has been effectively silenced, by FCI Danbury, for the critical next four months; months which just happen to overlap with this make-or-break, do-we-survive-as-a-free-nation-or-die, Presidential race.

The Warroom “Posse” cannot mass in the visiting room. They can’t see him. His globally successful podcast cannot broadcast his actual voice, as I understand the prison regulations.

Mr Bannon can’t even follow the Presidential campaign, via online news. He can’t tweet. He can’t livestream. He can’t record for later transmission.

His mass-movement-mobilizing, unyielding, Constitution-defending voice has been cut off from the flowing lifeblood of journalism and of politics: from the digital world.

The thousand and one restrictions that circle his every action round, in the next four months, will require tremendous fortitude to resist psychologically. His physical incarceration seems like a secondary outcome of what seems to be the primary goal of his sentence — that is to say, the removal of Steve Bannon from the stream of public conversation, public guidance, public mobilization; and from the public resistance to the murderous globalist plans for us all.

So let me say this:

Where the hell are you, everyone?

Where are you, Conservatives? Libertarians? Independents? Hell, where are you, liberal Americans?

Anyone, anyone, who claims to care about an open society and due process of law?

Where are you, “freedom-lovers”?

Where are you, alt-media?

Do you not realize what time it is?

I look at the reaction to Bannon’s imprisonment — which is, with the exception of a few horrified podcasts and a handful of distraught articles in the alternative press, a non-reaction — with astonishment.

I am amazed that millions of ordinary citizens who should know better, and thought leaders who should know better, and elected officials who should know better, all seem blithely unaware of the lessons of history.

Do you think that if you ignore what has happened to Mr Bannon, that you will be spared?

I have been warning since 2007, in my book The End of America, about the sequence of steps that tyrants always take, in order to close down an open society. Since 2020 we are, in the US, at Step 10 of the “Ten Steps to Fascism” — that is, at the point of enduring emergency law.

We have, as the whole world saw during the recent Presidential debate, that true symbol of a Banana Republic: a puppet leader.

But in the last few months, the hallmark final events signaling a murdered democracy have started to unfold in earnest.

This is the stage of the physical mopping-up of the opposition." .......

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