Before Milo Yiannopoulos Backed Sex With Teens, He Spewed Anti-Semitism

Milo Yiannopoulos Image by Getty Images

By Nathan Guttman February 21, 2017

Milo Yiannopoulos resigned from his post as a Breitbart News editor Tuesday. It’s the latest blow to his career after he lost his book deal and a speaking gig at the conservative CPAC conference following an interview that surfaced in which he spoke positively about pedophilia.

But Yiannopoulos, who grew up Catholic and whose mother is Jewish, had already done plenty to offend Jews.

“Most of the generation Trump, the alt-right people, the people who like me, they’re not anti-Semites. They don’t care about Jews,” Yiannopoulos told Dave Rubin on the Rubin Report last March when discussing the rise of hate speech on social media.

“They may have some prejudice about Jews,” he added. “Like the Jews run everything. Well we do. The Jews run all the banks. Well we do. The Jews run the media. Well we do. You know they’re right about all that stuff.”

When pressed by Rubin, Yiannopoulos insisted that Jewish control over finance and the media is “not in debate,” explaining that “Jews completely dominate the media. Vastly disproportionately represented in all of these professions. That’s just a fact, it’s not anti-Semitic to point out statistics.”

Update note: At 3:50 p.m., this story was updated to reflect Yiannopoulos resigning from Breitbart News.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected]

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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