Former Trump adviser invites the Guardian to shadow him as he sets about his plan to forge a new populist ‘super-group’ in Europe

Steve Bannon was forecasting chaos. “It will be like the intensity of Brexit,” he said, “which came over like a summer storm.” It was a humid day in mid-July and in a Mayfair hotel room he was relaying his plan to support rightwing, populist parties in next year’s European parliament elections.

“The beating heart of the globalist project is in Brussels,” he said. “If I drive the stake through the vampire, the whole thing will start to dissipate.”

The man who helped orchestrate Donald Trump’s White House bid had drunk one Red Bull and ordered four shots of espresso before offering the Guardian an exclusive on his project to turn the May 2019 vote into “a continent-wide referendum on the EU”.

Bannon was launching a European operation called the Movement. Based in Brussels, it would be a political consultancy in all but name, giving far-right parties access to polling data, analytics, advice on social media campaigns and help selecting candidates. “Remember ‘Bannon’s theorem’,” he said. “You put a reasonable face on rightwing populism, you get elected.”

Months after being exiled from the White House, he was recasting himself as a kingmaker for Europe’s far right. He wanted to forge a new “super-group” in the European parliament, uniting ultra-rightwing, Eurosceptic forces in countries as diverse as Sweden, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Poland and Germany. He described his new role as akin to “wrangling cats”.

Suspicious of Bannon’s self-promotion, I declined the offer of a scoop, asking instead if I could shadow him in the months ahead. He agreed, and over the last four months I joined him and his team in Brussels, Rome, Venice and Paris to film a documentary.

The film reveals how Bannon has succeeded in Italy, where he has won the backing of the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, and shows the skill with which he has managed to capture the attention of Europe’s media and shape the political discussion.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matteo Salvini, centre, with Silvio Berlusconi and Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy. Photograph: WENN UK/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

But the Movement is failing almost everywhere else. Bannon’s plan is colliding with the realities of European politics, where rightwing populist parties have turned down his approaches, and electoral laws that mean he is barred or restricted from campaigning in most of the countries he wants to intervene in .

Bannon claims to be untroubled by these setbacks. He ran the far-right website Breitbart and was closely involved in the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Politics, for him, is propaganda. If nothing else, Bannon’s venture into European politics has allowed him to accrue his most valued currency: attention.

The dawn of the Movement

The Movement is headquartered in an opulent mansion in the Brussels suburbs, with chandeliers in the hallway and cigars in the study. It is the home of Mischaël Modrikamen, a far-right Belgian politician and friend of Nigel Farage. When Trump won the 2016 US election, Modrikamen asked Farage to pass on a letter to the president-elect.

Modrikamen is not well known in the Belgian region of Wallonia, let alone throughout Europe. But that did not stop him from proposing, in writing, that the 45th president work with him to create a global populist uprising. He received no reply from the president’s transition team, but Modrikamen was undeterred. In January 2017, he registered a Brussels-based foundation called the Movement.

It was not until 18 months later, in July this year, that he heard from Bannon, who wanted to assume command of the nonprofit. The plan was that Modrikamen, a corporate lawyer, would become the Movement’s managing director, and together they would transform the foundation into a campaign machine for rightwing, nationalist parties fielding candidates for Europe’s 751-member parliament.

Bannon wanted to give rightwing populists “more sophistication”. In addition to hands-on help with campaigning and data analysis to help target voters, Bannon wanted to create a rapid response “war room”, equipped with an army of staff to pump out talking points.

“This is how we get out to the media, this is how we get people on TV, this is how we get people on radio, this is how we reach out and get articles,” he said. “Eighty per cent of messaging is sweat, OK? It’s just the grit of keeping it going .”

Bannon, whose personal fortune stems in part from a slice of the rights to the TV sitcom Seinfeld he acquired in the early 1990s, would personally finance the operation, but he said he could also bring in some big donors. Modrikamen told the American the financing had to be “legitimate”. “I said to Steve very clearly from the beginning: I don’t want money from dubious origins – Russian funds, or money coming from offshore accounts.”

The third key member of Bannon’s team is the aide he calls “my head guy in Europe”: Raheem Kassam. A former chief adviser to Farage, Kassam had spent much of the summer organising a street protest supportive of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

Bannon, Modrikamen and Kassam agreed they would not do business with Jobbik or Golden Dawn, the most far-right parties in Hungary and Greece respectively. But they soon ran into trouble over where to draw the line when recruiting parties that have neo-Nazi links or post-fascist roots.

One party with which Bannon is working is a small, far-right Italian group called Brothers of Italy. Prior to introducing me to its leader, Giorgia Meloni, Bannon had described Brothers of Italy as “one of the old fascist parties”, adding that it “may be a little too right-wing”.

When I pressed Meloni about her party’s heritage in the Italian Social Movement, founded by supporters of Benito Mussolini, she flatly rejected the fascist association. Bannon leaped to her defence. “I think you’re trying to say, ‘oh these guys are bunch of Nazis’,” he said. “We’re partnering with parties that are going to become quite mainstream, over time.”

Bannon’s team were also divided over the Belgian far-right politician Filip Dewinter, whom Kassam had invited into the fold. In the 1980s Dewinter, a former leader of the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang, had clashed with police while trying to stage a commemoration at the gravesite of 38 SS collaborators.

Play Video 26:36 How Steve Bannon's far-right 'Movement' stalled in Europe – video

Modrikamen, who is Jewish, was opposed to working with Dewinter. “Raheem has been in these circles. Maybe his level of tolerance is a bit different,” he said. “The moment you accept this kind of fringe, the legitimate [parties] won’t come.” Modrikamen also confessed to having “mixed feelings” about Geert Wilders, the radical anti–Islam politician from the Netherlands. Bannon was also unsure, saying the Dutch MP “definitely might be” in their club.

By November, it was clear the team was facing a more serious problem. Very few European parties of any variety have been willing to publicly sign up to the Movement. France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have signalled ambivalence about receiving a boost from an American outsider – although a spokesman for Le Pen’s National Rally party subsequently said it was “not going to say no” to Bannon.

Rightwing parties Bannon and Modrikamen were courting in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Poland, Austria and Germany all indicated they would not join. After meeting Bannon in Prague, the populist president of Czech Republic, Miloš Zeman, seemed far from convinced.

“He asked for an audience, got 30 minutes, and after 30 minutes I told him that I absolutely disagree with his views and I ended the audience,” he said. Outside of Italy, the only parties to unequivocally and publicly indicate they would join the club were a tiny far-right party in Spain and Modrikamen’s People’s party.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mischaël Modrikamen, the Movement’s managing director. Photograph: Aurore Belot/AFP/Getty Images

‘I’m a populist, an American nationalist’

Bannon’s arrival in Europe followed a startling rise and fall in the US. A former investment banker, he spent a decade making polemical films to enthuse American conservatives. He was close to Sarah Palin, about whom he made a movie, and active in the Tea party movement.

By the summer of 2016, Bannon was running Trump’s presidential campaign, and is credited with giving the reality TV star some semblance of a political ideology. But he lasted only eight months in the White House, forced out in August 2017. Six months later, amid the the fallout over Michael Wolff’s explosive book Fire and Fury, which Bannon facilitated, he was excommunicated by the president.

“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” Trump said. “It is the only thing he does well.”

In the weeks that followed, Bannon was ousted from the Breitbart media group he once ran, and abandoned by his billionaire patron, Robert Mercer. It was around this time he began coming to Europe, testing out populist speeches in Zurich, Prague and Lyon. They did not always translate well. After he delivered one of his favourite lines, about the exploitation of 19th-century Russian serfs, there were confused looks in the audience. The French interpreter, it turned out, had said “Russian surfers”.

But scholars of populism say Bannon’s speeches reveal his skill at harnessing populist discourse, framing politics as a battle between “the little guy” and any number of corrupt elites. He lambasts Wall Street bankers, European technocrats, Silicon Valley billionaires, as well as a vague group of cosmopolitan, liberal and allegedly out-of-touch elites he brands “the party of Davos” or simply “globalists”.

His fury is curious given his background. After a stint in the navy, Bannon graduated from Harvard Business School. He worked in Wall Street and Hollywood before setting up shop in Washington DC. He is thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

In Venice, Bannon stayed in the Gritti Palace, occupying a corner suite adorned with Renaissance art costing about €1,250 (£1,115) a night. In Rome, he had a room with a large terrace on the roof of the Hotel de Russie. In London, he likes to reside at the five-star Brown’s hotel.

“I’m a populist, an American nationalist – I always want what’s best for the United States,” he said during one conversation in the Mayfair hotel. “But I am also from German descent and Irish descent. I spent a good part of my life in Asia – and here, right? My business interests were here; I virtually lived in London for much of the 90s, right? I sold my bank to a French bank. I have got great affinity for the working-class people of Europe.”

Bannon is prone to overplaying his hand. He suggested an intermediary had made an approach to Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan. Privately the intermediary said that was an overstatement.

When Bannon told me in September he was advising Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right former military officer who ended up winning Brazil’s presidential race, he referred to him only as “the army paratrooper”. I asked Bannon the name of the Brazilian candidate. He looked stumped, then replied: “Botolini.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brazil’s presidential-elect, Jair Bolsonaro. Photograph: Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images

Charming, effusive … and aggressive

Bannon’s manipulation of the media is both artful and relentless. His sojourns to Europe typically involve checking into a luxury hotel then setting up a long line of interviews with reporters. It can make for a demanding workload. “I’ve had 70 interviews in three months,” Modrikamen said in September. “Not just in Europe; journalists from Japan, Australia, South America. The New York Times has interviewed me three times.”

But Modrikamen was becoming anxious that the press attention was preventing them from working on the nuts and bolts of their operation. He admitted to being annoyed when Bannon, after a day spent talking to reporters, proposed replacing their meeting to make way for one last meeting with a German reporter. “I said: ‘Steve, we’ve done so many already. Why do you need to have a journalist tonight? It is 11pm.’”

Bannon has two modes for interviews. One is courteous, charming, effusive. He often puts aside a full two hours for these interviews, and does not flinch to use flattery. “I love the Guardian,” he said in one of our first meetings. “It’s the leading progressive paper in the world.”

The other persona is explosive. Combative, domineering, aggressive, he will fly into a rage, mocking his questioner or shouting them down. “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop! Calm your bullshit, OK?!” Bannon yelled when I said the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was behind much of the coverage attacking the billionaire George Soros. On another occasion he told me: “We’ve welcomed you in here and now you’re asking the prick questions.”

The tactic is one of intimidation, and it allows Bannon to control the conversation, diverting it back to more friendly terrain. Moments after confrontation he likes to defuse the tension. “I am quite fond of you and you get so worked up,” he said after one exchange. “Last question and then we’re going to go to dinner and you’re going to join us.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bannon gestures at a news conference in New York. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Other journalists told me about similar experiences. “He spent 30 minutes smacking me around,” one TV reporter said. “The moment the camera was off, he was high-fiving: ‘Hey man, that was fun, let’s do it again.’”

When I pressed Bannon about his manipulation of the media, he pushed back hard. He insisted his European venture would be unharmed if the coverage were to stop. “You have this self-obsession that you guys matter,” he said. “Here’s what it matters: nothing, zero.” It was 10pm in Rome, and a few minutes later I was escorted out of the room to make way for a Dutch TV crew.

Later that night, at 3.25am, an email arrived. “Ah Paul: please read this piece,” he said, linking to a positive Buzzfeed article about a speech he had given the previous day. After sunrise, Bannon, a devout Catholic, attended Sunday mass, accompanied by a reporter from the Washington Post. He then headed to the airport and boarded a private plane bound for Prague. He was accompanied on the flight by a journalist from the New York Times.

Legal barriers

Our final meeting, at Bannon’s instigation, took place last week beside the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The Guardian had discovered a major problem with Bannon’s plan: electoral laws in most of the countries in which he was hoping to operate either barred or restricted in-kind contributions from foreign entities.

At 3pm, a black Mercedes van pulled up at the curb and Bannon emerged with an entourage. He did not dispute that European laws would curtail the Movement’s activities, but said his lawyers had suggested there may be “flexibility” in some countries. “From the beginning, I knew the electoral laws were going to be an issue,” he said.

Bannon conceded he may not be able to disseminate polling or data analytics, insisting he would do nothing to violate European electoral law. But he said the Movement could contribute in other ways; he began talking, for the first time, about using his Brussels-based group to produce economic reports, host dinners and run conferences. “That is 100%,” he said. “My lawyers have already signed off on that.”

Critics might observe that to be a significant retreat from the grandiose plan Bannon unveiled in July, when he pledged to unite rightwing populists and build a campaign machine to drive a stake into the heart of the Brussels “vampire”. Four months on, the headquarters of the Movement still stands empty. The operation has no website, only one Brussels-based member of staff – a press officer – and Modrikamen has still not filed the paperwork to make Bannon the foundation’s chair.

None of that is having much impact on the attention Bannon is receiving, and he said he had no plans to abandoned the operation. “I have a pretty good sense of where to spend my time, and where not to spend it,” he said. “It is very effective here.”