STEVE BANNON: SPREADING IN EUROPE WHAT BROUGHT US DONALD J. TRUMP

…Steve Bannon in his terrace suite in Rome

In the Interview: “Bannon ripped the "opposition party media" just as does President Trump.”

If you thought that you had seen the last of President Trump’s former Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, you are just kidding yourself.

Many Americans are not aware that Mr. Bannon has been touring Europe and giving anti-European Union (EU) speeches to any far-right group that will listen.

In an Italian TV interview Bannon told the interviewer that, “European nations need to take back decision-making from an overbearing European Union government”.  Bannon today, is a member of a Brussels-based group that is providing polling, data analysis and messaging to help nationalist parties across Europe.

Fortunately, many of the media in Europe already have Bannon’s number, and he gets asked many annoying questions in most of his interviews.

In this particular interview, he was asked: “Do you actually believe in anti-fascism values?”

Bannon’s annoyed response was a sigh, and then, not hiding his annoyance he said:  “We’re the anti-fascists”.  He then proceeded to lecture the journalist on the definition of fascism.  He did this to a journalist whose nation was ruled for 21 years by the dictator Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party.

“The problem is,” he said, “you deal in a world of no facts, okay, and all you are is spoon-fed: ‘Oh, these guys are fascists.’ ” He ripped the "opposition party media and people like yourself, sitting there sanctimoniously telling Trump voters: Not only is Trump a racist, but you’re a racist. Not only is Trump a fascist, but you’re a fascist. ”

The interview ended, a little awkwardly as the camera shut down.

Then Bannon brightened immediately, shook the reporter’s hand and said, “Thanks, guys.”

Bannon had a large entourage when he recently spoke at Atreju 2018.  This is a conference of right-wing activists in Rome, and someone on the TV crew said maybe next time he could come to their studio for an interview

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“Yeah, we can do that; I’d love to do that,” Bannon said, while standing in his suite on his private terrace high above the Piazza del Popolo.

More than a year after being forced out as the White House Chief Strategist, Bannon, the combative former Breitbart News Chief was a key architect of President Trump’s America First doctrine.  He has now set his sights on igniting that brand of nationalism in the rest of the world.  And he’s starting his quest in the EU.

He argues that nationalist and populist forces, inspired by Trumpism, are poised to claim political power in capitals from Pakistan to Japan to Australia, Brazil and Colombia, and he says he’s going after all of them.

He’s already made plans for Australia for five days in November, then Singapore over Thanksgiving, and he’s had invites from Israel and Egypt.  But first, it’s to go after Europe, where Bannon started the week here in the Italian capital before heading to the Czech Republic, Hungary and beyond.

“We’re open for business,” Bannon says. “We’re a populist, nationalist non-governmental organization (NGO), and we’re global.”

This globe-trotting role is a re-invention of Mr. Bannon.  This occurred after being ousted from the White House in 2017, then being kicked out of his former CEO position at Breitbart and losing the lucrative financial backing of the billionaire Mercer family.  And all of this occurred because of the publication of “Fire and Fury,” a book that painted an ugly portrait of President Trump, and Bannon was the author’s main info source.

At the center of this global effort is The Movement, which was formed last year by Belgian right-wing politician Mischael Modrikamen.  Bannon formally joined The Movement this summer.

Steve Bannon had earned many millions as a Goldman Sachs banker, and he said much of the far-right group’s financing comes from his own pocket.  But the plan is that most of the funding will be from European donors who he has of course, declined to identify.

In a series of interviews with The Washington Post, Bannon said he is trying to build The Movement into a “connective tissue” that offers nationalist and populist political parties across Europe, the US know-how in polling, political messaging and “war-room” strategy for responding immediately to political attacks.

So far, the results in Europe for The Movement have been mixed. Some on the European far right have expressed either indifference or no interest in Bannon and his cause.  Fortunately, many establishment Europeans have dismissed him as the stubble-chinned huckster that he really is, and that Mr. Bannon is overstating the strength of the European right-wingers.

Bannon continues to exaggerate his Trump experience and is finding it hard to translate it to the world stage, especially in Europe.  That’s because President Trump has disrupted so many long-standing European alliances and is deeply unpopular in Europe.

Bannon’s European critics say he is misjudging Europe’s appetite for any American offering advice to those parties that have deep historical and political differences.

As expected, Bannon’s arrival in Europe sparked immediate reaction.

Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, said at an Italian political conference: “Dear Mr. Bannon, Go home. If you want to be a tourist, be a tourist. It’s better for you to keep quiet.” At the same event, another European Parliament leader, Antonio Lopez-Isturiz, rightly called Bannon “a dangerous extremist” and a “disgraced ideologue” trying to destroy the European Union with “cheap nationalism.”

Bannon also received a response in the Italian press.

“When sovereignists let themselves be maneuvered from abroad,” read a headline Monday in Il Giornale, a conservative newspaper, in a story raising serious skepticism about Italian parties signing up with Bannon.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the self-described “communist daily” Il Manifesto on Monday blasted Bannon’s ideas about Europe as “a simplistic re-reading of human society and of the last ten years of globalization.”

Bannon says that: “The unusual coalition-of-extreme government in Italy shows that populists and nationalists on the left and the right can put aside old dogma and govern together against immigration, for strong borders and in the economic interests of middle-class and working-class people.”

“If it works here, the revolution will spread,” he says.

As he did in the Italian TV interview, Bannon has run up against questions about fascism in a nation with painful memories of it under Benito Mussolini. The questions are mainly about whether nationalism and populism, if unchecked, can lead to authoritarianism and suppression of political opposition as it was with Mussolini

In Rome, in a tent filled to standing-room only, several hundred people cheered as Bannon climbed to the stage and picked up a wireless microphone.

He fixed the audience with a hard stare and his jaw muscles were visibly clenching.  He then launched into a speech that sounded a lot like a Trump rally speech, but it was tailored for an Italian audience.

He hammered all his favorite phrases and themes: "Party of Davos. Corporatist elites. Central bankers". The people who preach that “You’re all racists and xenophobes and nativists.  The same ones who caused the 2008 financial crisis, then bailed themselves out at the expense of the working class.”

That of course, brought big applause.

But Bannon was just getting warmed up and was pacing the stage.

“You are the backbone of society. You are the glue,” he told them.

“The scientific, managerial, engineering, financial, cultural elite detests you and everything you stand for,” he warned. “And they will stop at nothing, including targeting and destroying your leaders, including coming after you.”

And the crowd ate it up.

One attendee, who asked not to be identified, said it was no surprise that Bannon was beloved at a conference of far-right activists. “It’s like you ask people to a party and then ask them if they like you,” she said.

Bannon took questions, then was whisked back into the security bubble to sit for another Italian TV interview, then another half-hour of questions from a couple of dozen English-language reporters.

The emcee said the first question would go to CNN.

“Let’s start with the haters!” Bannon said, with a big smile toward the CNN reporter. He was apparently trying to make a joke. But Bannon is, as is Trump today toward CNN, and later Bannon was back to bashing the “opposition party media” which is most of the mainstream media except Fox.

Afterward, the police and security guards led Bannon and his crew back to an awaiting Mercedes, which was still surrounded by cameras.

Then the next morning, the Bannon entourage would head for the airport. On the schedule: a private jet to Prague for meetings, then on to Budapest for meetings over dinner, then back to Rome after midnight.

Bannon is attempting to spread the cancer that brought us Donald Trump.  Based on the reception he is getting, we may be in for another episode of what has brought us the uprisings of the other authoritarian nations around the globe.

It’s not very pretty now, and it could get very ugly later on.

Copyright G. Ater  2018