Bannon Takes On Europe, Populism and Cryptocurrency

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.