The location is splendid, on a tree-covered slope on one of the peaks of Monti Ernici, a mountain range in central Italy east of Rome.

It was here in 1211 that the Carthusians consecrated Certosa di Trisulti, the monastic redoubt Steve Bannon and his friend Benjamin Harnwell, a 43-year-old Briton, plan to turn into an academy for nationalist populists to help them wage a cultural struggle and to “defend Europe’s Judeo-Christian roots,” as Harnwell tells me.