Steve Bannon: 'A Parasite In Search of a Host'
As Trump's former chief strategist, fraudster Steve Bannon is promising to build a MAGA movement in Ireland, it's important to remember the vital roles he's played in spreading fascism globally
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“Steve Bannon is a weapon of mass destruction — the blast radius includes minds globally.”—Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous, American Monster — Steve Bannon, August 14, 2023
Foreign influence operations are not journalism, they are a matter of national security.
If a country wishes to remain sovereign, and not end up under the jackboot of imperialism, then do not let Steve Bannon gain a foothold in your country. Trump’s former chief strategist continues his efforts to foment populist insurgencies throughout Europe, and Ireland is next on his hit list.
When he tried to open a “gladiator school” in Italy, he was tossed out. Five years ago, the Italian government legally evicted him and his organization from a historic monastery. The Italian courts and the Culture Ministry permanently blocked his plans to establish what amounts to an academy for far-right political activists.
Now, Bannon is promising to build a MAGA movement in Ireland and is attempting to open an Irish version of his “War Room” podcast.
As someone who spent a decade warning about my own country’s democratic demise, the impact will be so destructive, it’s like letting Joseph Goebbels take over public radio in 1939.
In recent weeks, Bannon’s been dedicating coverage of Ireland on his podcast, pushing anti-immigrant narratives.
Chair of the board of advisers at the Clinton Institute of American Studies at University College Dublin, Ted Smyth, told reporter Edward Luce in the Financial Times:
“Ireland cannot be complacent about Bannon’s threat, given that the billionaire owners of tech platforms ruthlessly use their algorithms to disseminate disinformation about immigration and crime in Ireland, spreading false claims about civil unrest.”
Smyth adds: “While the Irish government needs to do much more to address rising public concern about housing and immigration, the Irish people, having secured their independence after 800 years of British imperialism, are not about to vote for the American version.”
Smyth also noted that “many Irish Americans are angry that Trump refused to grant visas to thousands of undocumented Irish and is now arresting and deporting them in unprecedented numbers.”
In his FT report, Edward Luce explained that Bannon is targeting Ireland, seeking an “Irish Trump,” to put “the fear of God into Ireland’s political and media establishment.”
In 2025, Trump sycophant Conor McGregor aborted his run for president of Ireland, which was greeted like day old McDonalds, never rising above single digit polling.
But McGregor has ideal MAGA qualifications — last July, he lost an appeal over a civil court ruling that awarded damages to a woman who accused him of rape. And the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism flagged McGregor’s “inflammatory political rhetoric and anti-immigration commentary.” He spent St. Patrick’s Day in 2025 with Donald Trump.
After his recent failure in Albania, I’m sure gray cardinal Paul Manafort is available to offering McGregor KGB Charm School lessons.
The harsh reality is, any remaining democratic country cannot look away from the threats posed by the cell of greedy psychotics who took down America. Bannon, a parasite in search of a host, is networked to authoritarian money that is used to wipe democracies off the face of the earth.
They will find an avatar in each country, they will look different but each with the same agenda, to deliver the country to fascism.
Estonia is one of the only countries that actually understands these threats, and will convict bad actors for high treason and imprison them for 14 years. Estonia understands.
To read more about the existential threat of Steve Bannon, who pleaded guilty to defrauding donors for millions of dollars in his Build The Wall grift, and who spent four months in prison for defying a Congressional order, please read my American Monster series.
Here is an excerpt from the fifth in the series:
“Steve Bannon is the ultimate cockroach… a parasite in search of a host to attach himself onto in order to achieve more visibility, more fame, more access, more power.”—Kurt Bardella
In 2019, I called Kurt Bardella — a former Breitbart employee turned democratic strategist and media personality — to thank him for gifting me the inspiration for the ‘Parasite Bannon’ phrase I deployed frequently in the early days of the Resistance. I also asked what had happened to people I had once known who had gone from trad fiscal conservatives to out of their damn minds.
He said, “They’ve been radicalized.”
By then, I had investigated the fallout from Cambridge Analytica for two years. And not unlike nuclear fallout, people were still so sick, left untreated to wander further down rabbit holes and away from their former selves. And like in Russia where the government psyoped its own citizens first — moving them away from liberal democracy and toward totalitarianism by state-run internet infiltration before attacking citizens globally — conservatives were ground zero targets. And Stephen Bannon’s tentacles were everywhere people were being infected and radicalized away from trust in democracy — as executive chairman of Breitbart, vice president of the data mining election operation Cambridge Analytica, and as Trump’s campaign CEO and chief strategist.
It’s important to note Bannon’s global endeavors. Funded by dark money, Bannon’s been attempting to unite Putin friendly political parties throughout Europe, accelerating global fascism — a key component of this series. He’s called Putin a “fellow nationalist and crusader against cosmopolitanism.” My readers will recognize that as straight Duginism. Not surprising, he met Russian political strategist Alexander Dugin in 2018 and considers himself a fan of Dugin’s extremist ravings.
Stephen Bannon is a convicted criminal who should be in prison where he can’t hurt people. But like the previous American Monsters I profiled, the inability in the US to incarcerate high-level criminals quickly and in a meaningful way is having deadly impacts on the West and the world…
So this is what happens when we do not incarcerate American criminals — they infect Europe with their fash brand, accelerating global authoritarianism…
Steve Bannon continues to be a liability to humanity — he is still free to radicalize people on his propaganda show where he floats right-wing narratives that then become popularized such as describing Putin’s war of annihilation in Ukraine as a ‘border dispute’ — his show ranking highest in disinformation among 79 political podcasts studied — and thanks to a many years’ long campaign to reputation wash him, the world as a whole has underestimated just how dangerous he is.—Heidi Siegmund Cuda for Bette Dangerous, American Monster — Steve Bannon, August 14, 2023
In 2016, Ukrainians tried to warn Americans, and we did not listen.
In 2026, I am an American, now trying to warning Europe.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
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Thanks for this news, one of your best posts, with many threads pulled together to explore or revisit. I did not know about this Ireland adventure — destined to fail if we do the righteous meme warfare right!