Steve Bannon Wins Case To Set Up Italy Political Academy

[appalachiablue]

Source: NYT/Reuters

ROME -- Steve Bannon, the former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has won the latest phase of a legal battle with Italy's culture ministry to set up a right-wing Catholic political academy. The ministry said it would appeal the regional court's decision. The court ruled for the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, which Bannon backs, against a previous decision that blocked the school starting up in an 800-year-old monastery south of Rome.

"We stood by the monastery, the community and Italy during this pandemic when it would have been easy to walk way," Bannon said on Wednesday in a statement issued through the institute's founder, Benjamin Harnwell, in response to Tuesday's ruling.

The Culture Ministry, which owns the property, said on Wednesday it would appeal the decision to a higher tribunal known as the Council of State. Bannon, a Catholic, was helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course aimed at right-wing Catholic activists at the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West in the town of Trisulti.

Many residents opposed the school and last year the ministry withdrew a 19-year lease, citing violations of contractual obligations. The institute appealed to the regional tribunal saying the move was politically motivated...


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/27/world/europe/27reuters-italy-bannon.html

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[Turbineguy]

1. Mussolini returns but

with book learnin'!

[abqtommy]

4. Hmm...the Italians knew what do do about Mussolini. I don't think Bannon has ever read the last

chapter of THAT book!

[NEOBuckeye]

6. Bannon is like the guy who read one chapter out of Mein Kampf and the Book of Revelation

And thinks he knows everything.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. ah nothing like a christofascist finishing school for authoritarian apparatchiks.

[5X]

3. He screwed up with dotard so he is going to try and be advisor to the Pope. n/t

[FakeNoose]

17. There are some extremely wealthy ultraconservatives over there

Stevie-Boy is looking for another patron now that Robert and Rebekah Mercer have fired him. It looks like he's found one, but I'm betting it's not the Pope.

[DBoon]

5. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Bannon's ideal is 16th Century Spain.

[ancianita]

7. He's a parasitical opportunist of Italy's weakened position right now.

His toxic creation won't last, even if there are white supremacists in Italy who'll back him.

[Lonestarblue]

8. Bannon has called for a new Holy War to wipe out the Muslims.

Perhaps he sees this political academy as his first training ground to develop the troops who will lead the war. We should remember that Bill Barr is also a right-wing Catholic who has been quite ruthless in bending the law to fit his wants. We should not underestimate people like this who will use any means to achieve their goals.

“In remarks to a 2014 conference at the Vatican, Bannon warned his Christian audience, "We're at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict."

"We are in an outright war against jihadists, Islam, Islamic fascism," Bannon continued. He likewise condemned "the immense secularization of the West" and the increasing secularism among millennials.

Bannon stressed that "the people in this room, and the people in the Church" must "bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the Church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting that will literally eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000 and 2,500 years."

From https://www.alternet.org/2017/01/steve-bannon-christian-holy-war-islam-donald-trump-capitalism-secularism-atheism/

[moose65]

9. That is like the most bizarre headline I've seen today!

Bannon (like Trump) doesn't seem like he knows or cares much about religion and monasteries and all that monk stuff.

To me, Bannon always looks unkempt and hungover, like he's just done the walk of shame, slinking home at 8 am wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday.

[czarjak]

10. The Leninist Catholic or the Catholic Leninist?

[rockfordfile]

11. The fascist pos should be arrested. You would think they would remember from history.

[Mc Mike]

12. First, he should be excommunicated by Pope F.

Second, the Pope's Office of Doctrine chief should send the Swiss Guard over to the ''Academy'', to clean it out. With extreme prejudice.

[Canoe52]

13. Who knew that "right-wing Catholic political academy" was even a thing?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Machiavelli? All his successors? Some of his predecessors?

"right-wing Catholic political" is almost a tautology. Certainly nothing to be surprised about.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Harnwell now faces a criminal prosecution

The judges concluded that the ministry had failed to act within the prescribed time limit for the annulment of public contracts. The verdict is an embarrassing defeat for the Italian ministry of culture which had argued that the time limit should not apply because the DHI made “false and mendacious” statements in its application for the lease, an allegation which the administrative judges say the ministry failed to provide evidence for.

The judges further noted that the ministry of culture’s allegations against the DHI need to be proven in a criminal court before the lease awarded to the religious group can be revoked.

This morning, the DHI’s founder and director, Benjamin Harnwell, received notice from the Attorney General’s office in Rome that he is now facing a criminal prosecution into the alleged irregularities. He denies any wrongdoing.
...
One of Italy’s leading cultural property lawyers, Maurizio Fiorilli, who has served as deputy attorney general and who is not connected to this case, noted in an email sent to The Art Newspaper before yesterday’s ruling that the fight to oust the DHI from the monastery was “triggered by local public opinion…and [subsequently] assumed a political dimension after a local politician took an interest in the case.” However, “the move to annul the lease [granted to the DHI] is strictly juridical and the administrative judges must decide solely on the basis of juridical and not political criteria”.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/steve-bannon-wins-first-major-battle-for-medieval-monastery-italy-launches-criminal-case

[Yeehah]

16. Just call it an insane asylum and lock up all the kooks there

Cut Bannon's rations to bread and water.