Steve Bannon's right-wing 'gladiator school' booted from Italian monastery

• Bannon's plans to set up a right-wing "gladiator school" at a medieval Italian monastery have hit a roadblock.
• His group was evicted from the monastery after their lease was revoked in March.
• Bannon in May told the New Yorker that the school would churn out "the next Tom Cottons, Mike Pompeos, Nikki Haleys."

An effort by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to set up a right-wing "gladiator school" in an 800-year-old Italian monastery has seemingly been derailed, the Art Newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Italian culture ministry evicted Benjamin Harnwell, a British Catholic conservative and Bannon's ally, from the medieval monastery, the paper said.

Bannon in March was infuriated when his group's lease for the building - the Certosa di Trisulti - was revoked by Italy's Council of State, which cited reasons such as poor financial planning for the move, per the Daily Beast.

"The government have proven themselves corrupt, incompetent, and broke," Bannon said in a statement to the Daily Beast at the time. "Everybody - allies and foes alike - admit the annulment of our lease was politically motivated."

"This ruling is a joke which brings further shame on Italy's already-stained judiciary in eyes of the whole world," Bannon said, adding, "We refuse to be stopped by the corrupt bureaucracy that infests Italian government and hurts the Italian people."

Bannon, who was pardoned by President Donald Trump earlier this year after being charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering, intended to use the Italian monastery as an academy to train a new generation of conservative "culture warriors," the New Yorker reported in May. The political academy would churn out the "next Tom Cottons, Mike Pompeos, Nikki Haleys: that next generation that follows Trump," Bannon told the magazine at the time.

The group was to be called the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West, and Bannon described it as a "gladiator school" for conservatives.

Harnwell told the Art Newspaper that he is appealing the ruling that led to his eviction in Italy's highest court. The British conservative said that plans to establish the school were still moving forward and that classes would be taught online for the time-being. "We have over 5,000 requests to participate," Harnwell told the Art Newspaper.