Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Leaked Emails Reveal How White Supremacists Influenced Breitbart

A feature story published by BuzzFeed News on Thursday documents the ways that Breitbart News, run by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, relied on content influenced by white supremacists.

The report relies on the leaked emails of Milo Yiannopoulos, a journalist of Jewish ancestry who worked as Breitbart’s tech editor until he was forced to resign after an old video emerged of him appearing to condone pedophilia.

Yiannopoulos and his assistant, Allum Bokhari, wrote Breitbart’s much-discussed 2016 “guide to the alt-right,” which was even cited as a cautionary example by presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. But BuzzFeed reported that Yiannopoulos and Bokhari received advice and editing from a coterie of well-known white supremacists, including the neo-Nazi hacker Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer and the white nationalist writer Devin Saucier, before it was approved for publication by Bannon.

Saucier repeatedly pitched ideas to Yiannopoulos, some of which quickly turned into Breitbart articles. Yiannopoulos referred to Saucier in an email as “my best friend.”

The report also included a YouTube video of Yiannopoulos singing “America the Beautiful” at a karaoke bar in front of the “alt-right” leader Richard Spencer, who was “sieg heil”-ing along with other spectators.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.