Steve Bannon now wants to open 'gladiator schools' in the U.S. for aspiring right-wing politicians after his allies won legal battle in Italy to keep MAGA training ground in an 800-year-old monastery

Former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon is making plans to open 'gladiator schools' in the U.S. to prepare right-wing disciples for the rough and tumble of political combat.

Bannon, who served as chief counselor to Trump in the White House and helped steer his 2016 campaign when the MAGA movement was conceived, shared his plans after prevailing in a slashing court fight over his allies' plan to open a similar proving ground in an ancient Italian monastery.

That came after Benjamin Harnwell, former British Conservative European Parliament aide and Bannon acolyte, prevailed after efforts to block him from leasing the 13th century Trisulti Charterhouse.

The European political 'gladiator school' is planned inside the former Carthusian monastery on the slopes of Monte Rotonaria in the region of Lazio.

'This was the Deep State coming after the populist nationalist movement,' Bannon said on his podcast Thursday. 

Former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon said he is planning to open up 'gladiator schools' inside the U.S., after he and ally Benjamin Harnwell prevailed in an Italian court after moves to block them from opening an academy in a 13th century Italian monastery

Then he teased plans for similar efforts inside the U.S., a day after former President Donald Trump effectively secured the Republican presidential nomination when rival Nikki Haley dropped out of the race.

'We have started a Academy for the Judeo Christian West. It's essentially a gladiator school for modern Information Age political warfare,' Bannon said. 'And we're going to do it in a monastery in Rome, it's kind of the headquarters, but do it throughout the United States and Western Europe. And other places – take people from Asia, take people from India. And train people of how to win. This is populist nationalist, academy,' he said, outlining far-reaching plans.

Describing the mission on both continents, Bannon said it would focus on 'how to teach you to be a force-multiplier, how to teach you to go out in the world and be a combatant – how to teach you to go out in the world and be a both a gladiator and a legionnaire,' using his trademark martial rhetoric.

He said there would be upcoming tests of a 'force-multiplier' school, potentially out West. 

During the prolonged legal battle in Italy, state prosecutors sued to try to block the effort, charging that it was a fraudulent lease and Harnwell was delinquent on rent payments. A magistrate judge ruled in his favor Thursday, clearing him on the rent and lease charges.

'Steve Bannon's Academy for the Judeo-Christian West — the 'gladiator school' — lives to fight another day,' Harnwell told Politico Europe while bashing 'politically driven' prosecutions. 'They destroyed my reputation with accusations they knew weren't true even at the time they were making them,' he said.

The Italian state allowed the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute(DHI) to use the building in 2018. It then faced an eviction and a court fight. Bannon is a trustee of the institute

An image taken in pay shows a general view of the Trisulti Monastery Certosa di Trisulti in Collepardo

Bannon plugged U.S. 'gladiator schools' on his War Room podcast

The Italian effort had brought protests, criticism in the national media, an eviction, and a nearly five-year court fight amid activists' opposition to using the ancient facility as a new lab for right-wing politics designed to help dispatch Trump-style figures across the continent.

Italian newspaper Repubblica had reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged, although Harnwell called the new ruling a total exoneration.

Italy's culture ministry tried to revoke the twenty-year lease.  

A planned curriculum included 'Cultural Marxism' and 'The Church as an Early Business Enterprise.

'We are going to rip out everything of a person that is of this world and throw it away' to turn them into activists, Harnwell told Voice of America back in 2019.

The leaseholder, called the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI), stated that its goal was to 'protect and promote human dignity based on the anthropological truth that man is born in the image and likeness of God.'

During the years of the court battle, Europe has seen gains of populist, nationalist movements in Spain, Germany, Italy, and Scandanavia.