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
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!