Steve Bannon Has Three Channels on Odysee — 160 Flagged War Room Episodes, Zero Removals

On 5 November 2020 YouTube removed Steve Bannon's War Room channel for repeated incitement to violence. The triggering segment called for Anthony Fauci to be beheaded and his head displayed outside the White House on a pike. Five and a half years later Bannon's broadcast operation runs on Odysee across three channels with 160 flagged War Room episodes between them and a combined ~4,767 LBC of tip activity. The newest of the three was created 110 days ago — that is, in February 2026 — with no apparent friction. The platform doesn't know Bannon was banned anywhere. There's no system on Odysee that could.

The Three Channels

The Ban That Doesn't Travel

Bannon's YouTube ban (November 2020) was issued under YouTube's policy against "content inciting violence against an individual or group based on protected attributes". The triggering segment was unambiguous. The ban has been upheld through subsequent appeals. In US legal terms Bannon also has a standalone contempt-of-Congress conviction (2022, four months federal time served 2024) and is a continuing subject of FBI interest under separate grand-jury proceedings.

None of that travels across platforms. Odysee has no API integration with YouTube's removal database. No payment- method matching exists because there are no payments to match on (LBC tips don't require KYC). No voice-fingerprinting exists because the platform doesn't maintain biometric profiles. No identity-verification step exists at channel creation. The result is that a publicly-identified figure under active federal scrutiny who has been formally removed from the largest video platform on earth can open a fresh channel on the second-largest decentralised video platform with no friction. Not by evading detection — by walking through a door that doesn't have a lock.

What This Says About the "Re-Banning" Question

Mainstream platforms get criticised for re-banning creators who evade initial bans. The criticism assumes a Trust & Safety function exists — that there's a queue of removal decisions, an appeals process, an enforcement team. Odysee has four employees and no Trust & Safety function. There is no first ban to re-enforce. The 160 War Room episodes currently live are not Bannon's third-attempt material; they are his archive, posted at the platform's own discretion, with the platform earning its 5% on every tip.

The same pattern applies to 16 of 20 named deplatformed creators our scanner tracks: Alex Jones (3 channels), Nick Fuentes, Tommy Robinson (2 channels), Owen Benjamin, David Icke, Stefan Molyneux (covered in our May 13 Fresh Propaganda Nodes piece), Vincent James / Red Elephants (811 flagged videos on a single channel), Sneako, Mark Collett, Red Ice TV, and the rest. Bannon's arrival in February 2026 isn't exceptional; it is the case study that makes the pattern legible because of who he is.

What Should Happen

The minimum viable response from a video host of Odysee's size would be to (a) maintain a denylist of named creators removed from peer platforms for incitement, hate speech, or CSAM-adjacent content — public sources like the GIFCT shared hash database, the SPLC's Hatewatch list, and the Tech Against Terrorism public database all exist and are free to query — and (b) require email + phone verification at channel-creation time so that operating three Bannon-branded handles requires three distinct identities. Neither is happening. Both are routine elsewhere.

We have filed a referral notice on the three Bannon-network channels to Coimisiún na Meán under Article 16 of the EU Digital Services Act on the basis that the content is publicly accessible from Ireland and that Bannon's removal-elsewhere record establishes the host's constructive knowledge. The filing joins our takedown-tests register with status checks at +30, +60, and +90 days. We will publish whatever response we receive.