Collepardo, Italy
Bannon booted: Citing fraud in the tender process, Italy has revoked a lease on a 13th-century mountaintop monastery that Steve Bannon had planned to use as a “gladiator school” to train a new generation of nationalist and far-right leaders.
The former White House chief strategist was reportedly paying $112,000 a year to rent the Certosa di Trisulti monastery through the Human Dignity Institute, a conservative Catholic organization. But Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reported last month that a letter from a Danish bank, used to guarantee the lease, was forged. Bannon’s Academy for the Judeo-Christian West was intended to teach some 250 to 300 students at a time how to defeat secularism. Locals had protested against the school. Bannon said the controversy over the bank document was “just dust being kicked up by the Left.”