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Protesters have forced the closure of a Berlin bookstore after itplanned to hold an event about a fascist philosopher cited approvingly by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Doron Hamburger, the Israeli co-owner of Topics Berlin, said in a post on the shops Facebook page the decision to close was partly the result of fallout for announcing it would host an event about Italian occultist and philosopher Julius Evola, German broadcasterDeutsche Welle reported.

Bannon cited Evola, a far-right thinker revered by the Italian Fascists, duringa 2014 speech to a Vatican conference. The esoteric writer, who died in 1974, is also praised by members of the alt-right, a movement of U.S. white nationalist and anti-establishment conservatives that Bannon nurtured while editor of the Breitbart website prior to his White House appointment.

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In March, the bookshop announced plans to host an event byDC Miller, describedby the owners as an American friendin a report in German newspaperDie Welt.Called Revolt Against the Modern World, the event was going to explore Evolas ideas and legacy. When anti-fascist groups learned about it, they reportedly used social media to call for a shitstorm against the store.

The protesters claimedtheevent intended to rehabilitate Evolas reputationand should not be allowed to take place at the shops address in the Neuklln district, a multicultural area of the German capital where in recent months there has been a spike in far-right attacks.

Whether it is a coincidence or not, after the Evola incident our sales had dropped drastically, and our willingness to create an interesting cultural program had dwindled. We, or maybe I should [say] I, could have gone on, fightback or act as if nothing happened, but I was reluctant to do so, and of course the financial aspect of things was a major reason for that, Hamburger is quoted as writingin a Facebook posting before the stores closing party on July 22.

Hamburger denied allegations the event had sought to rehabilitate Evolas reputationand said he had never recognized any racist, fascist, supremacist tendencies in his conversations with his friend and colleagueMiller, who had planned the talk.

The closure follows controversy over a planned alt-right exhibition in an east London gallery in March, with Miller named inlocal media reportsas one of the defenders of the event who confrontedanti-fascist demonstrators at the site.

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