Bannon’s export business
Out of the White House, Steve Bannon set out to franchise Trumpism abroad — a European populist alliance, a monastery “academy” for nationalists, a hand in Latin America’s far right. Real, documented, and mostly a flop.
Bannon is the would-be impresario of the far-right international: he tried to build the alliance, the training pipeline, and the cross-border strategy in the open. Documenting it honestly means crediting what was real — and noting how much of the grand ambition collapsed.
What this page is about
After leaving the Trump White House, Steve Bannon set out to export the movement. In 2018 he launched “The Movement,” a Brussels-based effort to unite Europe’s nationalist and populist-right parties into a coordinated bloc ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, courting figures like Italy’s Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Nigel Farage. He also backed a plan to turn a former Italian monastery, the Abbey of Trisulti, into an academy for training nationalist and populist politicians, run by the Christian-right Dignitatis Humanae Institute.
Most of it failed. European far-right parties largely kept their distance from The Movement, and it faded; the Trisulti academy never opened, and the institute was evicted from the abbey in 2021 for unpaid bills (its former chairman was later jailed for corruption). Bannon extended the project to the Americas, aligning himself with the Bolsonaro movement and the region’s Trump-friendly right. This page credits the documented efforts and states plainly that the ambition outran the results.
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Bannon's export business.
Out of the White House, Steve Bannon set out to franchise Trumpism abroad — a European populist alliance, a monastery 'academy' for nationalists, a hand in Latin America's far right. Real, documented, and mostly a flop.
The alliance, the academy, and the Americas
'The Movement': a Brussels bid to unite Europe's populist right — that fizzled.
FACTIn 2018 Bannon launched 'The Movement,' a Brussels-based effort to weld Europe's nationalist and populist-right parties into a coordinated bloc ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, publicly courting Italy's Matteo Salvini, France's Marine Le Pen, and Nigel Farage. It drew headlines and alarm — and little durable structure: European far-right parties largely kept their distance, legal and organizational obstacles piled up, and the project faded well before it could reshape the 2019 vote. The ambition was real and openly stated; the result was close to nothing.
The monastery 'academy': training nationalists at Trisulti — until the eviction.
FACTBannon backed a plan to convert the Abbey of Trisulti, a former Italian monastery, into an academy for training future European nationalist and populist politicians, operated by the Christian-right Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI). Reuters reported in 2018 that Bannon helped craft the curriculum, and Cardinal Raymond Burke said Bannon would help lead the project in 'the defense of what used to be called Christendom.' It never opened: DHI was evicted from the abbey in 2021 for non-payment of bills, and its former chairman, Luca Volontè, was sentenced to four years in prison for corruption over bribes funneled to the institute. A vivid emblem of the whole export project — grand plan, seedy financing, collapse.
Latin America: the Bolsonaro connection, and the tie to this hub's other cases.
SOME SMOKEBannon extended the project to the Americas, publicly aligning himself with the Bolsonaro movement — describing Eduardo Bolsonaro as 'The Movement's' representative for Latin America — and boosting the region's Trump-aligned right. The self-described advisory roles and public alignments are on the record; the operational depth is harder to pin. It connects directly to this hub's flagship, Fernando Cerimedo, and to the manufactured-'stolen-election' method that runs from Brazil 2022 back to the U.S. in 2020. We grade the public alignments as FACT and treat the deeper coordination as attributed — a real thread to pursue, pinned case by case rather than asserted.
The impresario who mostly couldn’t
Bannon is the connective figure of the far-right international — the strategist who tried to weld the operatives, the ideas machine, and the elected leaders into one project, and mostly couldn’t. Cataloguing his efforts, failures included, is how you map the network without inflating it: the alliance he wanted is aspirational, but the ties, the money, and the shared methods he moved through are documented. He sits beside CPAC International, Atlas Network, and Fernando Cerimedo as the four faces of the same phenomenon in the Far-Right International hub.
Questions worth taking seriously
If it mostly failed, why cover it?
Because the attempt is the evidence. Bannon openly tried to build a coordinated far-right international — the alliance, the training academy, the Latin America arm — and the effort, its funders, and its collapses are documented. Mapping a network means recording what was tried and how it turned out, not just what succeeded. Reporting the failures is also what keeps us honest: we’re not claiming a functioning global machine, we’re showing the real, flawed attempt to build one.
Is this guilt by association with foreign parties?
No — it’s Bannon’s own documented projects and statements. “The Movement” was his Brussels organization; the Trisulti academy was a plan he backed and helped design (per Reuters); his Latin America role he described himself. We attribute the deeper, harder-to-verify coordination rather than assert it, and we don’t impute foreign parties’ actions to him. The through-line is what he built and said, on the record.
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