Rome

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was in Rome this weekend where he told his Italian followers that the "sovereign revolution" will start from Italy.

“Italy is now the center of the political universe, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini are subversives, I came here to tell you that you are not alone, yours is the most important experiment,” Bannon said.

“I’m not here to tell the Italians what they have to do, you know it well,” the protagonist of the campaign for the election of Donald Trump explained.

He spoke to Salvini and Meloni, to the two leaders he compared to Donald Trump.

The leader of the Brothers of Italy has also joined the organisation that the former Trump strategist is building in view of the European elections of 2019. “The Bannon Movement it is not a party, but a network, an association, and we who belong to the notion of the sovereign and identity, are right to be part of this network “, says Giorigia Meloni.

Antonio Tajani, although invited, did not go to Atreju, officially for health reasons, Italian media reported. “I ask myself: how do you become Italian sovereigns if an American arrives to tell us that we must be American sovereigns? Bannon can easily do it at home, we do not need American interference,” Tajani noted.

Meloni, however, denied that Bannon was an interference. “I want to tell Tajani that we have invited Bannon because we are patriots, not because we accept foreign interference, but because we want to build alliances”.

Meloni derided Tajani’s “sudden pride” and said it should rather be extended to European commissioners. “I wanted to see so many times also [this attitude] towards the infinity of European commissioners who continue to insult us. There is no need for American interference, but neither for those of the Germans, the French, the Luxemburgers and all those who are there to pontificate every day”.

Bannon from the stage spoke of a society divided between the people and the elite, and of Judeo-Christian roots. He said the people were destined to win thanks to characters like Trump in America, where he triumphed by telling the truth. Or Farage in Great Britain and Le Pen in France. He said sovereigns were operating in Brazil and in Colombia.

He talked for a long time about demography and the economic crisis, about economic and cultural developments in Africa, about the “monstrosities that put in place those who meet in Davos”.

He then warned about the dangers of China, in contrast to Russia. He quoted Reagan and Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and defined the American Democrats as dangerous Marxists.

Bannon said he will return to the US to change them and defeat them in the Midterm elections. But then he will return to Europe to help his sovereign friends complete their revolution.

The most powerful figure in Italy, the Italian interior minister Salvini, has joined The Movement.

According to Bannon Europeans have a common opponent in French President Emmanuel Macron.

“The fact that we have Salvini on board will clearly show that this is the place to be for the unifying of the populist movement in Europe,” Mischaël Modrikamen, the executive director of Bannon’s new organisation, told the New York Times. Also part of the team is Jeff Kwatinetz, Bannon’s former Hollywood business partner and a powerful talent manager.

Modrikamen said they would also work with leaders in Hungary, Austria, Poland, Finland and Denmark to form a “blocking power”.

Bannon has made powerful pollsters, John McLaughlin and Pat Caddell, both of whom have worked for prominent American politicians, available to the Hungarian and Polish leadership.

Kwatinetz, a manager and television producer, said he was impressed by Salvini. He is convinced that Salvini has the right profile. “He’s got it. Star quality”.

Meetings between the former Trump strategist and Salvini are “extremely serious”, the secretay-general of the European People’s Party caucus, Antonio Lopez Isturiz, said at a conference organised by European Parliament President Antonio Tajani in Fiuggi on Friday.

“Steve Bannon is a dangerous extremist, who even Trump had to get rid of because of how unpresentable he was. I read that he is meeting with Matteo Salvini: it is extremely serious news”, said Lopez Isturiz.

“I find unacceptable that this disgraced ideologue is thinking of destroying the European project: we are the founders of a united Europe and we will never accept this cheap nationalism”.

Salvini has vowed to “change the EU dynamics from within”.