Steve Bannon ‘gladiator school’ for alt-Right politicians given new lease of life
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Steve Bannon’s plan to turn a medieval monastery into an alt-Right “gladiator school” was given a new lease on life on Thursday when an Italian court threw out a series of legal challenges against it.
Mr Bannon hatched the plan a few years ago to convert the 800-year-old Trisulti Charterhouse, in the mountains east of Rome, into an academy for leading exponents of the nationalist, populist Right.
He was supported by his British acolyte, Benjamin Harnwell, a former political secretary to a Conservative MEP. The pair dreamed of schooling their disciples in conservative Catholic values and teaching them how to defend the Judeo-Christian roots of the West.
But the plan became mired in political controversy, local opposition and years of legal challenges. Mr Harnwell was accused of failing to pay the rent on the 13th century monastery, neglecting to maintain it and fraudulently engaging in the tender process for the lease.
He was evicted from the monastery in 2021, with his removal hailed as a victory by Dario Franceschini, the then centre-Left culture minister, and Nicola Zingaretti, the governor of Lazio region.
After a long legal battle, however, the charges were thrown out by a court in Rome on Thursday.
“This case has been rolling on for four years,” said Mr Harnwell after the court handed down its decision. “The culture ministry arbitrarily and unilaterally annulled the lease and kicked me out. They knew the accusations they were making against me were false even when they were making them.”
He claimed that centre-Left politicians “could not bear to have Steve Bannon’s gladiator school under their noses. They just wanted me out”.
Mr Harnwell, who is originally from Leicestershire, said he will now discuss with Mr Bannon whether to revive the project.
“The academy for Judeo-Christian West will definitely go ahead. But whether it goes ahead in the monastery, or even in Italy, we are not sure,” he said.
If he does try to establish a boot camp for far-Right activists, he may again face protests from locals and activists, who expressed distaste for the plan when it was first mooted.
The judge in the case now has 90 days in which to deliver her “motivazione” or reasoning for the outcome of the case. The Italian state then has 45 days in which it can launch an appeal.
Despite his legal ordeal, Mr Harnwell remains a supporter of Mr Trump, insisting that despite the multiple criminal cases he faces and allegations that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a coup d’état, the tycoon is “100 per cent fit for the presidency”.
He said that although Mr Trump and Mr Bannon had “famously fallen out”, they were now back on speaking terms.
Mr Bannon remains a highly controversial figure. In October 2022, he was sentenced to four months in prison and ordered to pay a $6,500 fine after being found in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the investigation into the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol.
He helped articulate the “America First” Right-wing populism and opposition to immigration that came to define Mr Trump’s presidency.
In 2020 he was banned from Twitter after suggesting that Anthony Fauci, the US government’s infectious disease expert, and Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, should be executed and have their heads put on spikes outside the White House. “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes,” he said during a live broadcast of his podcast, War Room.
