The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella announced on Friday that he would no longer be giving a speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) following footage of US President Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon allegedly performing a Nazi salute, according to international reports.
Bannon, now working as a podcast host, allegedly performed the fascist salute as he finished his CPAC speech on Thursday. Bannon later denied that the hand gesture was a Nazi salute, telling France’s LePoint magazine it was “a wave” he “did all the time.”
“I do it at the end of all of my speeches to thank the crowd,” Bannon said. He also wrote, according to the Washington Post, “LMAO…It’s a wave that I do with my motivational speeches — the pathetic ‘enemy of the people’ media afraid to address the content of the speech.”
“The only way that they win is if we retreat, and we are not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we are not going to quit – we’re going to fight, fight, fight,” Bannon told the attendees before performing the controversial hand gesture.
“Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers, out of provocation, allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon,” Bardella said, according to The Guardian.
Deborah Dwork, the director of a center that studies the Holocaust at the City University of New York, told the Washington Post, “Of course it’s a Nazi salute…That’s the message that Trump’s circle has been sending for some time.”
The Anti-Defamation League also condemned Bannon, writing on X/Twitter, “Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others.
“We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”
Who is Steve Bannon?
Bannon was an adviser to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and served as Trump's chief White House strategist in 2017 before they had a falling out, which was later patched up. Bannon also has played an instrumental role in right-wing media.
Bannon has a controversial history. He previously guilty in mid-February in New York state court to a fraud charge related to his fundraising campaign for Trump's wall along the US-Mexico border.
At a hearing, Bannon, 71, pleaded guilty to one count for scheme to defraud. He was immediately sentenced to three years of conditional release, avoiding jail time.
Bannon was charged with money laundering and conspiracy and accused of deceiving donors in 2019 who contributed more than $15 million to a private fundraising drive known as "We Build the Wall" during Trump's first term in the White House.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought similar charges against Bannon in 2020, but Trump pardoned him in his final hours in the White House the next year.