After leaving the White House one year ago, Steve Bannon began popping up in the strangest places. In London, where he called ex-English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson “the backbone of this country”. In Paris, where he told the far-right Front National that “history is on our side and will bring us victory”. In Rome, to clap hands with Matteo Salvini, the far-right candidate turned deputy prime minister.

What is Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, up to? “All I’m trying to be,” Bannon told the New York Times in March, “is the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.”

A lot of people think that’s a prohibitively irresponsible pastime, apparently. The announcement Monday that Bannon had been invited to headline a forthcoming festival hosted by the New Yorker magazine was met with a punishing backlash, as a wave of other headliners vowed to withdraw in protest, threatening the festival with collapse. Within hours, editor David Remnick had canceled Bannon’s invite.

“Gutless,” Bannon said.

However long the free speech debate surrounding the cancellation goes on for – is it better to deny hateful ideologies a platform, or to host them on the public stage for “combative conversation”, as Remnick had promised? – the controversy seems extremely on-brand for Bannon, who styles himself as a political insurgent with views too hot for the drawing room.

In any case, the timing is good, as life after the White House for Bannon had been something of a skid. His separation with Trump was amicable at first, but after the publication in January of a White House exposé, Fire and Fury, written by journalist Michael Wolff and sourced to Bannon, Trump exploded.

“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump tweeted. “He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”

Trump’s attack appeared to level Bannon. He lost his perch atop Breitbart News, the post he held before joining the administration and to which he had returned. His key patroness, the billionaire conservative Rebekah Mercer, summarily dropped him, saying: “My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.” He was yelled at in a bookstore.

Perhaps worse for Bannon, the one thing he was supposed to be good at – understanding those people whom Hillary Clinton wrote off as “deplorables” – he has begun to look bad at. Of nine major candidates endorsed by Bannon in the 2018 election cycle, three failed to win primary races. A fourth candidate backed by Bannon, the 2017 Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, succumbed to allegations of sexual abuse against teenage girls.

Bannon suffered a new loss last week, when his favored candidate for a Senate seat for Arizona, Kelli Ward, got blown out of the Republican primary. Bannon, who always sounds as if he is trying to warm up the crowd before a professional wrestling bout, said at Ward’s campaign launch that Republicans would “reap the whirlwind” and “that whirlwind is Kelli Ward”. Ward lost by 25 points.

Bannon still has plans for the midterms. He has announced a new political group called Citizens of the American Republic (COAR) that aims to boost Republican turnout. The group, which maintains a web site featuring the latest Bannon press clips, does not appear to have any formal links with the national Republican party.

Bannon also has announced a movie to help drive the effort called Trump @ War. Judging by its trailer, the film features former Trump advisers Corey Lewandowski and Sebastian Gorka scoring points off House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and CNN host Don Lemon.

“How jacked do we think Trump will be when he sees this?” Bannon told Axios.

Bannon has not always been the best judge of what gets Trump jacked. One reason behind Bannon’s White House exit was an interview he gave to the American Prospect in which he criticized the Trump administration plan to cut a deal with North Korea as too favorable for China.

“To me the economic war with China is everything,” Bannon said. “And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”

Fears of a rise of “totalitarian China” likewise motivate Bannon’s dream of uniting European nationalist groups, in an effort he calls “the Movement”. Bannon appears to be finding no shortage of recruits. The former UK independence party leader Nigel Farage is on board, as is French national front leader Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Salvini’s Northern League party in Italy.

Trump’s election, which Bannon helped steer, was a sign that Bannon’s brand of “populism” – which in the United States and elsewhere accommodates white supremacy, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other bigotries – had a larger public appeal than most prior conversations about American politics had permitted.

The question is which conversations will be had going forward. In New York at least, Bannon won’t be taking part.