Let’s not allow Steve Bannon and ‘conservatives’ to legitimize extremism in Europe

Let’s not allow Steve Bannon and ‘conservatives’ to legitimize extremism in Europe (opinion)

Steve Bannon, the former adviser to US President Donald Trump, recently won a legal battle with Italy’s culture ministry to set up a far-right Catholic political academy, a “school of gladiators” in his words, in an 800-year old monastery. Although the Italian ministry said it would appeal the decision, for now the academy is moving ahead. Benjamin Harnwell, founder of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which will run this nationalist academy, suggested in a recent interview that their intention is to shape the worldview of future populist leaders.

This Academy for the Judeo-Christian West, which will provide courses on politics, philosophy and economics (initially online and with US-based teachers), represents an additional far-right challenge to liberal and progressive values. The idea is to influence conservative thinking in the church and to counter Pope Francis’ pro-migrant — as well as what some have deemed a “liberal”—approach, as Bannon told NBC. But Bannon’s aim, it seems, is mainly to legitimize nationalism and right-leaning xenophobia, bolstering them with a radical, far-right philosophy.

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Immigration and Islamophobia: Breitbart and the Trump Party

[2018] Steve Bannon goes to war with the Pope

Just as few realize how left-wing Bannon can be, few realize how his Catholicism is at the core of his politics. He still attends mass regularly. Bannon is convinced that capitalism is not working any more because we in the West have jettisoned the Judeo-Christian values that stopped the bosses and the bankers treating people like commodities. To reverse this, these values – and not necessarily a belief in God Himself – are enough.
— Read on spectator.us/steve-bannon-war-pope/