Steve Bannon’s School for Far-Right Populists Can’t Be Evicted From an 800-Year-Old Italian Monastery, a Court Rules

Steve Bannon’s far-right
Judeo-Christian organization has won the latest legal battle in its
quest to establish a school
at an 800-year-old mountaintop monastery in
Italy. But now, the
Italian Ministry of Culture, which has sought to oust the
organization for over a year now, is hitting back with criminal
charges.

Following a hearing held earlier
this month, three
administrative judges ruled this week that the ministry has no
right to revoke the 19-year lease of the monastery that it awarded
over two years ago to Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief
strategist, and his partner Benjamin Harnwell, a former aide to a
conservative British member of the European Parliament. The verdict
was first reported by The Art Newspaper.

The ministry has been trying to
evict the duo ever since they announced their plans to turn the
complex, an ornate abbey built by Carthusian monks in the 13th
century, into an educational facility for far-right “modern
gladiators” called the Academy for the Judeo-Christian
West. Billed as a kind of boot camp for populists, the academy
will offer courses in history, philosophy, politics, and theology
to 250 to 300 students at a time.

The judges declared that the
ministry failed to seek an annulment of the contract within the
allotted time period. They were also not convinced by the
ministry’s claims that the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI), the
name of the organization founded by Bannon and Harnwell that is
behind the school, made “false and mendacious” statements in its
lease application.

“I am very satisfied with this
result. Now I hope to be able to carry out the monastery’s
restoration project in accordance with the program we presented,”
Harnwell told TAN, noting that his academy will launch
remote learning programs beginning next month. 

This week’s ruling is the latest
in a string of victories in the Italian courts for Trump’s former
chief advisor. After the Ministry of Culture initially annulled the
lease in October of last year, Bannon and his partner
won an appeal in an
Italian administrative tribunal in December, which effectively squashed the ministry’s
efforts. Then the decision was upheld
in February in the
country’s highest administrative court.

But the Italian government is
not backing down. To revoke the lease, the judges said in their
ruling this week, the ministry’s allegations against the DHI must
be proven in a criminal court. So within 48 hours after the ruling
came down, the Attorney General’s office in Rome informed the DHI
that the organization is now facing criminal prosecution over its
supposed contractual crimes. 

For the Ministry of Culture, the
relationship with Bannon and the subsequent episodes in court have
drawn numerous public critiques from local leaders and media. The
ministry did not respond to Artnet News’s request for comment, but
informed TAN that it planned to appeal the most
recent verdict.   

“We stood by the monastery, the
community and Italy during this pandemic when it would have been
easy to walk away,” Bannon said in a statement released through
Harnwell. “We now launch the program of learning and training that
will make the world more prosperous, more secure, and more healthy
for everyone.”

The post Steve Bannon’s School for Far-Right Populists Can’t
Be Evicted From an 800-Year-Old Italian Monastery, a Court
Rules appeared first on artnet News.