COURT JUNKS BANNON BID TO ESTABLISH POPULIST ACADEMY IN ITALY

Italy’s top administrative court has ruled against a conservative think tank affiliated with former White House adviser Steve Bannon over its use of a 13th-century hilltop monastery to train future populist leaders, a decision Bannon denounced Tuesday as a politically motivated “joke,” Nicole Winfield reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The Council of State ruled that the Culture Ministry was correct in canceling the concession it had given to the Dignitatis Humanae Institute or Human Dignity Institute.

The court found that the institute had lied when it bid for the lease of the monastery in 2017, claiming it had qualifications to run it that “subsequently were shown to be not true.” The ruling overturned an earlier decision by a regional administrative tribunal that had sided with the institute.

Buoyed by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and the rise of nationalist sentiment in Europe, Bannon and the institute had launched plans to establish an academy to train populists and nationalists at the 13th-century Trisulti monastery, an abbey surrounded by a forest in the province of Frosinone south of Rome.

Bannon had said he would bring in teachers and raise money for the academy, which had been dubbed a “gladiator school” for the alt-right. But local residents objected and ultimately the Culture Ministry, under the leadership of the center-left politician Dario Franceschini, sought to revoke the lease, alleging a host of irregularities that the institute denied and that lower courts rejected.

Bannon faces fraud charges in the United States, with prosecutors alleging he fraudulently profited to the tune of millions from a fundraising campaign to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.

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