Stephen
K. Bannon during the early weekend in Rome and Milan, explained his modest
efforts to build a vast network of European populists to demolish the
Continent’s political establishment.
“All
I’m trying to be,” he said, “is the infrastructure, globally, for the global
populist movement.” Only months ago, Mr. Bannon was forced out of the
White House and Breitbart News, the alt-right news empire he helped make
into a political force, for the sharp criticisms of President Trump’s children
attributed to him in a book. “He’s lost his mind,” Mr. Trump said at
the time.
But
now Mr. Bannon, the architect of Mr. Trump’s populist campaign message and the
president’s former chief strategist, has returned with an International
Nationalist Populist mission.
On
Saturday, he headlined the annual conference of France’s far-right National
Front in the northern city of Lille, where he was introduced by its leader,
Marine Le Pen. People with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s itinerary suggested
that he might meet on Sunday with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor
Orban, but Mr. Bannon declined to say whether or not he would, only
saying that he admired Mr. Orban as a “hero” and “the most significant guy on
the scene right now.”
In
Zurich, Mr. Bannon had a “fascinating” meeting on Tuesday with leaders of
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party.
But
it is Italy, where populist forces smashed
the country’s establishment by combining to win more than half the
vote on Sunday, that Mr. Bannon has turned into his de facto headquarters.
He
declined to name whom he had met, other than to describe them as a broad array
of politicians, operatives and investors. Aside from the occasional
coffee at Campo de’ Fiori or photo-op at Piazza Navona, Mr. Bannon has been
holed up in hotel rooms, taking meeting after meeting.
In
Rome, he stayed at the luxurious Rafael hotel, where Bettino Craxi, the
face of Italy’s corrupt establishment and mentor to Silvio Berlusconi, was
pelted with coins in 1993 by an angry mob as he departed the political scene.
In
Milan, he sat in a room at the grand Principe di Savoia, opposite a copy of
Titian’s portrait of the Duke of Mantua, a master of intrigue in
Renaissance Italy and a longtime sufferer of syphilis, surrounded by red damask
wallpaper. Jams were on a room service cart, and a copy of a book titled
“Headlines All My Life” was on the desk.
Duke of Mantua
He
sipped sparkling water and described a grand vision for a global populist
future.
In the United States, Mr. Bannon said, he is working on a project
to create a think tank to “weaponize” populist economic and social ideas.
He
sees that work spreading to Europe, where a proliferation of populist websites
in the image of Breitbart News, either owned by him or others, will spread
those ideas, under his guidance. As a final component, he wants to train
an army of populist foot soldiers in the language and tools of social media.
(Stephen
K. Bannon took Zurich by storm Tuesday, addressing a sell-out crowd,”
began Breitbart’s
article on the speech.)
But
Mr. Bannon, who said he was paying for the trip, said he was weighing whether
to buy a name-brand outlet, like Newsweek or United Press International, or to
start a new one, or to connect entrepreneurs with capital or invest himself.
“Whether I do it or a local entrepreneur does it,” he said, “there are going to
be these populist nationalist news sites that pop up in the next year on line.
That will only take these things to the next level.”
Finally
and the only positive outcome of this trip might be that he has become
fascinated with crypto currencies and how they can help populist movements, the
subject of a speech he gave in Zurich this week.
In preparation for the
speech, organized by Die Weltwoche, a conservative Swiss magazine, Mr. Bannon
said he visited the town of Zug, known as Crypto Valley for its bustling
cryptocurrency industry. He was impressed.
“If
Brussels and the European Central Bank is worried about Italy going to the
lira, their concerns should be that all these communities and states are going
to crypto,” he said in Milan.
