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Why Doesn’t Steve Bannon Matter in Europe?
From The Atlantic [theatlantic.com].
“I think you do a very dirty job in Europe,” Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher and author, told Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, during their debate yesterday at the Athens Democracy Forum. “All these movements which you are trying to help, they are not so happy with it.”
The debate, moderated by the New York Times journalist Roger Cohen, is among several appearances [theatlantic.com] Bannon has made across Europe over the past year in his quest to create a movement aimed at supporting nationalist, anti-establishment parties ahead of the European Parliament elections in May.
Yet after all that time, Bannon has little to show for his efforts. Though many far-right parties have made significant gains, further establishing themselves as permanent fixtures on the European political stage, the far-right surge that was expected didn’t come to pass [theatlantic.com]. (This was reaffirmed in subsequent elections across the Continent, where although some parties underperformed, they at least demonstrated their relatively high electoral floor.)
“We are winning,” Bannon nevertheless insisted in his combative back-and-forth with Lévy, referring to far-right parties in Italy, France, and Britain. “We are going to win.”
Even if populist and nationalist forces are establishing themselves in Europe, though, it’s not clear that Bannon has had anything to do with it. Indeed, his Brussels-based think tank—known simply as the Movement—has largely been a stillborn effort, stymied by limited buy-in from European partners, as well as stringent laws [theguardian.com] barring financial contributions from foreign sources. A separate effort to establish a so-called alt-right academy to train the next generation of nationalist populist leaders faced its own challenges this week when the school was barred from the ancient Italian monastery in which it was to be housed.
Gladiator School for the Alt-right. Was there not a line in the move, "Airplane", where a pilot asks a young boy, "Do you like gladiator movies, Jimmy?" Explains a lot.
