Escaping a possible federal prison term thanks to a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, far-right political strategist Steve Bannon continues to engage in promoting international fascist solidarity, thumbing his nose at the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from engaging in their own foreign policy making.
Bannon’s international fascism was on full display on August 10, 2021, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at a “Cyber Symposium” on “election fraud” sponsored by the conspiratorial pillow huckster, Mike Lindell. The symposium was carried live by the far-right conspiracy network One America News (OAN), founded in San Diego by right-wing businessman Robert S. Herring, Sr. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, OAN has kept alive spurious claims of election fraud and has helped to fan the flames of insurrection for Trump loyalists nationwide.
During the Sioux Falls conference, which trafficked in all sorts on fringe theories about a “stolen election” in 2020, Bannon introduced Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third son of Brazil’s fascist president and a member for São Paulo of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the chair of that body’s important International Affairs and National Defense Committee. In Sioux Falls, Eduardo, to the delight of Bannon and Lindell, proffered conspiracy theories about the 2014 second-round presidential election in Brazil, which was won by leftist Dilma Rousseff, the 2018 first- and-second round presidential elections, as well as the 2020 São Paulo legislative election. Without presenting any evidence, Eduardo suggested that election fraud was responsible for his father not winning outright in the first-round in 2018.
In 2019, Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro jointly attempted, unsuccessfully, to have Eduardo appointed as Brazil’s ambassador to the United States, where he would have likely turned the Brazilian embassy in Northwest Washington, DC, into a coordination center for Bannon’s international fascist operations, including The Movement, Bannon’s operation based in Brussels. Bolsonaro’s participation in Lindell’s conference came amid threats by his father to declare military rule, cancel the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, and unconstitutionally alter Brazil’s election methods. Mimicking Trump, President Bolsonaro has called for the rejection of Brazil’s standardized computerized voting system in favor of paper ballots, a transition that would, of course, be overseen by Bolsonaro and his far-right lackeys. On July 9, 2021, the Supreme Electoral Court of Brazil stated that Bolsonaro had committed a “dereliction of duty” to the Constitution by threatening to delay or cancel the election.
Bannon’s dalliances with Brazil’s Bolsonaro family comes just after Fox News’s Tucker Carlson attended a neo-fascist gabfest in Hungary sponsored by that nation’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban. Carlson used the occasion to spread on Fox News to an American audience Orban’s form of “illiberal democracy,” which is another word for right-wing dictatorship.
Bannon’s and Carlson’s internationalization of America’s electoral process represents a distinct threat to the sanctity of the U.S. democratic electoral process and, therefore, a threat to U.S. national security.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
