# Steve Bannon — "I want to bring everything crashing down" > [!quote] "Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment." > — Steve Bannon, attributed by Ronald Radosh, November 12, 2013 > [!warning] Disputed > Single-witness attribution by historian Ronald Radosh (recounted 2016); Bannon says he does not recall it and no recording exists. Snopes rates the attribution unresolved. The on-record, undisputed companion is Bannon's "deconstruct the administrative state" (CPAC 2017). See Verification below. ## Context Historian Ronald Radosh recounted this exchange in an August 2016 Daily Beast piece, saying [[Steve Bannon]] made the remark at a book party in his Capitol Hill townhouse on November 12, 2013, after describing himself as "a Leninist." Bannon has said he does not recall the conversation, which is why this receipt is filed as **disputed** — the attribution rests on one named witness's account, not a recording or contemporaneous note. ## Why this matters Whether or not the exact words were spoken, the "Leninist" frame became one of the most influential lenses for understanding Bannon's project: the goal is not to govern within institutions but to demolish them — to "deconstruct the administrative state," as he put it on the record at CPAC in 2017. The quote is the popular shorthand for the right's destructionist, accelerationist wing, which treats the existing [[Administrative State]] as the enemy to be torn down rather than captured. Useful as a receipt precisely because of the dispute: it documents both the attributed ambition and the standard pattern of later non-denial deflection ("I don't remember"). ## Verification - **Source:** [Ronald Radosh, The Daily Beast, August 22, 2016](https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-trumps-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist/). - **Dispute:** [Snopes rates the attribution unresolved](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bannon-leninist-destroy-state/) — Radosh stands by his account; Bannon says he does not recall it. No recording exists. - **Status:** Single-witness attribution; **disputed**. The on-the-record, undisputed companion is Bannon's "deconstruction of the administrative state" (CPAC 2017). ## Related quotes - [[Steve Bannon - flood the zone with shit]] — the method; this is the stated end the method serves.