Bannon's "Gladiator School" For Alt-Right Gets Thumbs Down

Derelict coplayer and man in search of a balcony Steve Bannon has been trying to establish a "gladiator school for culture warriors" in Italy (insert Mussolini reference here).  The project was to attract budding populists fascists from all over Europe and the world and train them in the fine arts of populist mob violence fascist politics.  The future of the "school," to be located in the Trisulti monastery, was full of promise last December, but it appears to be doomed now due to =spoiler alert= fraud.

The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon’s plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right.

Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery, but now will have to search for another spot. [snip]

Italian newspaper Repubblica reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. The letter had the signature of an employee of Danish bank Jyske, but the bank said that employee hadn’t worked there for years, and called the letter fraudulent.

That a project associated with Bannon (eg., like Trump) would end badly and in the justice system shouldn't surprise.  But this is just the latest setback for Trump's former sloppy Svengali:

... His funding of extremist parties ended before it even started last year, after the Guardian revealed that foreign donations, like the ones the millionaire was planning to make, would break electoral laws in a dozen European countries.

We've been fortunate, so far, that these would- be Caesars of the far right are the bumbling grifters they are.  But, they also don't give up.  They'll adapt and resurface.  They're relentless, and so must we be.

(Photo: The Eminence Grease; Joel Saget/ AFP/Getty Images)