This Is How Steve Bannon’s Platform Mobilizes the Populist Camp in the West

Despite a suspended prison sentence, Steve Bannon, the former adviser to former US President Donald Trump, continues his propaganda project. Bannon adopts an ideological-political task aiming to mobilize the Western populist camp on the European and American sides of the Atlantic.

Bannon broadcasts his right-wing anti-globalization ideas through a political podcast under the name War Room. He heralded Trump's return to the presidency and recently intensified his media campaigns, hoping to help Republicans sweep Congress in the US midterm elections scheduled for November 8.

October 22, a US court imposed a four-month prison sentence on Bannon for his refusal to cooperate with a House committee's investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

 

Conspiracy Theory

Bannon heralds Trump's return to the presidency and intensifies his campaigns in support of Republicans in the midterm congressional elections

He announced that he intends to appeal, suspending the execution of the sentence. Therefore, he was able to leave the court and showed on cameras his "respect for the judge's decision." However, he emphasized that November 8 will be the day of judging the illegitimate (Joe) Biden regime, referring to the midterm elections in which Democrats may lose their majority in Congress.

Bannon (69 years old - born in Virginia) continues to raise dust about the legitimacy of Democratic President Joe Biden's victory in the presidency, stressing that Trump will win the battle for the American presidency in 2024.

He considers, through his speeches and comments on the War Room, that Trump, at this point in history, is the only person with the right qualifications to lead the nation.

Through his platform, whose popularity increases as the congressional renewal elections approach on the eighth of next November, the former senior Trump adviser on strategic affairs insists on rejecting criticism directed at him in Europe and the United States, considering his platform as a tool for propaganda and disinformation, and it turns into a dangerous haven for the far-right movement, where conspiracy theories and racist tendencies across the platform are relatively free to air.

 

Stop Supporting Ukraine

Playing on feelings, as the trend of Western populism in general, Bannon's platform warns the public that the stay of the Democrats in power means more expenses for Americans. It stresses that the Republicans would reconsider America's role in the Ukrainian war. They would stop spending billions of dollars on wars not of primary importance to Americans.

For Trump's former adviser, what is happening in Ukraine is a border conflict in Europe, and the Europeans have to solve it themselves. His podcast considers cutting money and weapons from Ukraine a top priority.

Echoing the word "if" that populists are good at, Bannon asserts that only Trump can face the economic and geopolitical crisis, and he is the only qualified person to lead the nation today. For him, if Trump was the president today, Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have thought of military action(in Ukraine, for fear of what Trump would do, adding that "these difficult times require a strong leader."

In the context of his relationship with the European far-right and the incitement against the elites of the ruling continent, Bannon says that if the Europeans had listened to what Trump said, they would have avoided a lot today.

The former adviser to Trump recalls what the latter said to the Europeans in 2018 before the United Nations General Assembly: "Do not let Russia control your natural gas," in his opposition to the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.

 

European Extremism

Steve Bannon was early involved in remarkable activism on the European scene to link the populist and far-right currents in Europe with those of the United States. Steve Bannon, like many on the Old Continent, believes that cooperation between populists on both sides of the Atlantic is necessary to enhance the chances of attracting voters, leading to power on both sides.

Bannon, a co-founder and chairman of the far-right media Breitbart News, has on several occasions faced European pushback for his interventions. However, this did not prevent him from succeeding in attracting attention between 2018 and 2019 through his rapprochement with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the French presidential candidate for the far-right Marine Le Pen, as well as the expansion of his activities towards the Scandinavian, German, Spanish, and Italian far-right.

Prior to the Italian elections that took place last September, Bannon went out to his audience via the War Room Rome podcast, hosting his former British partner, Benjamin Harnwell, with whom he sought to establish the so-called Political Academy of the Christian-Jewish West, in the monastery of Trasulty near From Rome, to produce an extremist type of young populist politicians in the West.

In the podcast, Bannon heralded that Italy will be at the forefront of the populist wave in Europe, promising similar broadcasts in other European elections.

Bannon's relationship with the Italian fascist movement is not secret but rather rooted in his ally, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who won the last elections and will form an Italian government that will be an extreme populist.

Bannon is a permanent guest at Meloni's party events while she participates in Bannon's rallies in the United States. Today, with Meloni's coming to power, Bannon returns to his dream of establishing his academy in Rome.

Thus, the idea of ​​the interdependence of extremism on both sides of the ocean is the focus of Bannon's attention, which he confirmed in his Podcast on October 11 (Podcast 6 days a week), considering that the wave of populism and nationalism is on the rise in Europe, and this, in his opinion, benefits the wing American, and vice versa.

Indeed, the years after Trump's accession to the White House (2016) witnessed an expansion in the activities of the European populist right, and its popularity escalated, which raises the ceiling of its ambitions towards power, such as the case of Rome and the influence of the Swedish far right in policymaking in Stockholm.

Some Europeans accused Bannon of interfering in the 2019 European Parliament elections in favor of the far-right. Moreover, the Breitbart news website was very active during the Brexit campaign in 2016.