Stephen Bannon

As a graduate of Harvard Business School, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and a Hollywood movie producer, he is in many ways an example of the bicoastal elite that he now disdains.

While Bannon and those close to him have said he is not racist, he has nonetheless shown a willingness to accommodate “fringe organizations,” as he described the extremists attracted to populism in a 2014 address unearthed by BuzzFeed. Eventually, those elements would fall away, he assured the audience: “Over time, it all gets kind of washed out, right?”

Friends, family and even now-critical former colleagues said the image of Bannon as a bigot is wrong, and miss what really drives the 62-year-old, who was infuriated when people like his father, a longtime phone company worker, saw their retirement funds shrink because of the 2008 financial crisis. Bannon’s longtime personal assistant is an African American woman, and he has extended family members who are Jewish, they note.

“He is not a racist,” said Julia Jones, a self-described “Bernie Sanders liberal” who was Bannon’s screenwriting partner for 16 years. “I think he is using the alt-right for political purposes.”

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Friday, Bannon said, “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist.” He predicted Trump could create a new populist political movement that would win significant black and Hispanic support and “govern for 50 years.”

Bannon did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story, but he offered up friends and family to vouch for his character.

His older brother, Martin J. “Mike” Bannon III, strongly rejected the idea that he held any prejudices.

“Steve and I and others were taught by our parents that if a woman came on the bus, you gave up your seat — it didn’t matter if they were black or white or Asian or whatever,” Mike Bannon said.

Bannon’s first foray into his brand of disruptive politics came in 1975, during his junior year at Virginia Tech, when he launched an upstart bid for student body president, challenging the established order.

He chose as his running mate a woman, Susan Oliver, at a time when campus leadership positions were dominated by men.

“He had as much respect for me and my ideas and my contributions as anybody possibly could,” said Oliver, who is now a lawyer in Lynchburg, Va.

The race got nasty.

Bannon had only participated in student government for five months. His opponent, Marshall DeBerry, had toiled for more than two years in the organization and was the handpicked heir of the outgoing president.

Bannon used DeBerry’s establishment credentials against him. “He was saying, ‘This administration, these guys . . . they’re all part of this old crowd. They haven’t done jack for you,’ ” DeBerry recalled.

A Bannon-Oliver campaign flier belittled other candidates for offering only “Platitudes, Promises and Slogans.”

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:Poor WWC. Seduced and about to be fucked over again by the same professional class they so disdain! Cho chaad.

In the three years before he became Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon lived as a virtual nomad in a quest to build a populist political insurgency.

No presidential adviser in recent memory has followed such a mysterious, peripatetic path to the White House. It was as though he was a man with no fixed address.

He owned a house and condo in Southern California, where he had entertainment and consulting businesses, a driver’s license and a checking account. He claimed Florida as his residence, registering to vote in Miami and telling authorities he lived at the same address as his third ex-wife.

He stated on the application that he earned $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News Network, a figure that has not been previously reported. He also earned $270,000 as executive chairman of Arc Entertainment, a film distribution company based in Santa Monica, Calif.

In addition, Bannon received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, a new nonprofit charity in Tallahassee, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Bannon, two Breitbart writers and other conservative activists had launched the organization a year earlier and it produced reports and books that were promoted by Breitbart. Bannon claimed he worked 30 hours a week at GAI, according to IRS filings.

In May 2013, Bannon opened an account in his name for municipal sewer and water service at the Opechee Drive residence, documents show.

The utility account is one of the few public indications of Bannon’s presence in Florida. But Bannon told utility officials to mail the bills to the office of his business manager on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to documents obtained through Florida public records laws.

Four neighbors told The Post they do not recall seeing Bannon at the house.

“I never saw him,” said Steven Chastain, who lived a few doors away on a nearby street.

“He wasn’t living there,” said Barbara Pope, a longtime resident who often walked her dog on Opechee Drive. “I would have recognized him.”

Years before Bannon became the architect of an anti-globalist revolution — working as chief strategist under President Trump to weaken free-trade deals, restrict immigration from a number of majority-Muslim nations and slam corporations that move jobs overseas — he made his fortune as the quintessential global capitalist.

An examination of Bannon’s career as an investment banker found that the Bannon of the 1980s and 1990s lived what looks like an alternate reality from the fiery populist of today who recently declared that “globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”

With stints at Goldman Sachs and his own firm, Bannon was a creature of corporatism, wealth-building and international finance. His company received crucial financial backing from banks in Japan and France, and one of his key clients was the Saudi prince. It all was managed from the unlikely setting of an office steps away from the elite shopping district of Rodeo Drive.

“We show up in New York,” Vorse said. “We march into their executive suites. We say, ‘We are here to help; can we hang out in your conference room til you need us?’ It was almost like we were white-collar squatters. We moved into the conference room.”

Bannon said he received “a big fee,” though he declined to disclose the amount.

As a result of this and other deals, Bannon’s company was ranked as the world’s fourth most valuable media investment bank, ahead of firms with thousands more employees, according to Vorse.