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Editor's summary: BuzzFeed, a media outlet and Pulitzer Prize finalist, obtained leaked emails from Breitbart News, some of which were published in Buzzfeed's roughly 9,000-word exposé of the site's inner workings. The article chronicles the rise of Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart's tech editor, and his relationship with Steve Bannon, the recent White House Chief Strategist who left the Trump administration and resumed his position as executive chairman of Breitbart News in August. It also details exchanges between Yiannopoulos and people such as Peter Thiel, Devin Saucier, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. The article shows how Breitbart "smuggled white nationalist ideas into the mainstream" by using Yiannopoulos as a go-between for white nationalists and others in his following, who provided him with story tips and constructive (?) criticism.
Vice Media has fired Mitchell Sunderland, an editor and writer for Broadly, Vice's women-focused site. Sunderland emailed Yiannopoulos and encouraged him to mock the feminist writer Lindy West. He also sent a Broadly video about the Satanic Temple and abortion rights to Tim Gionet, Yiannopoulos's tour manager, resulting in this story. Dan Lyons, a writer for the TV series Silicon Valley and author of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, and David Auerbach, a former technology writer for Slate, also passed along news tips to Breitbart. Auerbach has vociferously denied writing the emails.
Milo Yiannopoulos responded on Thursday, mainly taking issue with a video of him singing karaoke while Richard Spencer and others raised Nazi salutes. Yiannopoulos wrote, "I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about. Everyone who knows me has seen me make jokes about some awful things. But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have. I have severe myopia, due to a congenital eye defect, as has been widely reported and as many people know or have seen from my squinting during public speeches. In a dark bar, I did not see these hand gestures. If I'd have realized white nationalist losers were hailing me as their leader, I'd have immediately walked off stage. I stand for, as always, race-blind nationalism. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm enjoying my honeymoon with my black husband."
Broadening Brush: Alt-White, Buzzfeed Exposé!
BuzzFeed has published documentation of the direct connection of Breitbart News, the alt-right movement, and Milo Yiannopoulos to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups:
In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.
But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon's leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be "the platform for the alt-right."
The article is extensive, quoting from emails from the Breitbart organization itself.
In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted "we're not a hate site." Breitbart's media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to "computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand."
These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.
Sometimes, it is good to know who you are lying down with, so you will know why you have fleas. And sometimes, journalists ought to "follow the money." I highly recommend reading the article, "Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream".
Liberal collusion with Alt-right! Shocking!
Now the Salon is getting into the fray, reporting on BuzzFeed's dump of Breitbart emails and pointing out that many liberal journalists are implicated.
A recently released cache of email correspondence revealed direct collaboration between popular alt-right website Breitbart and purported white nationalists and neo-Nazis. While the revelations are damning, they are not entirely surprising to those who follow Breitbart's editorial strategies. More shocking, perhaps, is that a number of purportedly liberal journalists have also secretly colluded with Breitbart over the years.
Again, this is a lengthy article, well worth the read, that goes into detail on the relations of Breitbart News to other journalistic entities, and political extremists. One example:
The surprising journalistic connections to Yiannopoulos include David Auerbach, a tech critic who has contributed extensively to Slate and has been published in intellectual left magazines like n+1, Triple Canopy, and even the Nation, one of the most esteemed voices of the American left. Auerbach once wrote a longform piece of cultural criticism for Triple Canopy exploring how the politics of anonymous online forum culture (A-Culture, in his parlance) eventually evolved into the fusion of libertarianism and racist nationalism that we now associate with sites like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit in its prelapsarian days.
Though anonymity does not play directly into the majority of the discussions on forums associated with A-culture, it is responsible—along with the written nature of the discourse—for the characteristics that have emerged from those sites. . . . Anyone entering into an A-culture forum is likely to witness a nonstop barrage of obscenity, abuse, hostility, and epithets related to race, gender, and sexuality. Anyone objecting to this barrage will immediately attract a torrent of even greater abuse. These forums maintain an equilibrium of offense designed to drive away anyone who is not sympathetic to the general libertarian mindset.
But it does seem that Buzzfeed has stirred up a hornet's nest of buzzing, the type of thing that may even attract buzzards.
Shortly thereafter, Auerbach tweeted that he had "told [Buzzfeed editor Ariel Kaminer] that this stuff was untrue. He's currently trying to put words in my mouth." Auerbach went on to speculate that "Buzzfeed might have it in for me because I criticized Buzzfeed chair Keith Lerer for hiring 4chan's founder." "I also criticized Buzzfeed's business model in NYMag," he added. "So yeah, they're probably pissed at me."
More about sexism and male privilege than racism. Or more of a cat-fight among journalists and whatever those who work for Breitbart are. As Alice said, "Curiouser and curiouser."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Sunday October 08 2017, @11:27PM (9 children)
You can't even define what alt-right is in an intelligent manner. No one can, because it is an invented code word that means, "we don't have to consider these people's arguments because these are bad people."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @11:40PM
That's teach those awful neocons!
Wait, wrong dog whistle.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday October 09 2017, @02:18AM (2 children)
I can. It means a Right that is neither Country Club Republican or Conservative. Everyone on the Alt-Right agrees on that point, that the Chamber of Commerce Republicans are indistinguishable from Dems now and that Conservatism failed to conserve anything and that now there really isn't anything LEFT to conserve so something new is needed, an ALTERNATIVE. Hence Alt-Right. On every other detail there tends to be debate but Vox Day's sixteen point list is pretty useful even if many now consider Vox a cuck or traitor over the Gab fiasco. It is all but impossible to agree with all sixteen since some kinda preclude others but the idea was that if you agree with most you are Alt-Right. If you agree with a few Alt-Light. If you don't agree with any of them you are probably a cuck or Prog.
And as for calling us Racists and Nazis, WE. DON'T. CARE. So save those insults for the cucks, they will still reflexively cower in fear, we won't. You Progs have literally called every Republican candidate of note both of those things since before Reagan. Those cards are charged to the max now and won't work, get some new insults.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @03:19AM
This post is a gem. Too bad I won't know for sure if this worldline includes the 2018 riots for another 6-7 months. All the kindling is there and hasn't changed at all from my original worldline.
The FEMA concentration camps formed in reaction to the massive loss of housing during the riots are still on the horizon. I wonder if the CDC will even need a cover story in this worldline?
It would seem more fitting if it were done by executive order this time around. The thought sort of gives me the heebie-jeebies. BRICS could wind up being the good guys in this wordline on the other side of the Stein's gate. Unfortunately, on N-day, I'll need to use the convergence to return to a worldline most like the one I left.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 09 2017, @06:03AM
You would be surprised at how much we agree on, J-Mo. According to that list I am "alt-lite."
The difference is in the implementation of the solutions we want, though. You are speaking from a place of profound selfishness and fear; some of us know where this leads when it grabs the reins of political power, and that place is nowhere good.
I know you aren't saying the things you say for laughs or troll points, nor are you simply trying to stir up trouble for its own sake. It's much too pure (or at least distilled and concentrated) for that. You are a clinical sociopath who has found the alt-right's talking points a justification for your own utter lack of humanity. But you're not stupid, or at least not lacking in brainpower. I know what you are. People like you arise in every era, and sometimes you can't be contained, to the detriment of everyone else...
Bannon isn't either; in fact, he and I actually did many of the same things in regard to our studies of various religions, history, value systems, logic, etc. But because he came from a position of relative privilege, he seethes with resentment for being pushed out from his "rightful place," whereas I was *always* on the margins in most regards, with the conspicuous exemption of being white (though in the parts of NYC i grew up in that was very much a minority ethnicity). He has the same resentment, anger, and fear you do. I can feel it clear across the internet.
Please, if you listen to nothing else I say, take this to heart: your "burn it down" message is nothing more than a reactionary outpouring of pain and rage. Your method will lead us back to the 19th century or worse, which in many ways is Bannon's stated goal ("Traditionalism" with a capital T). This will do no one any good. The past is gone, forever, and it won't ever, ever come back. All you would accomplish is dystopia. Please, engage with reality as it comes at you. Stop trying to be a rock in the stream of time, or you'll just get ground down to powder.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Informative) by unauthorized on Monday October 09 2017, @02:28AM (3 children)
The gist is that they are white nationalists who want to live in ethnostates (ie racially homogeneous nations) and want to send all the people of different skin colors "back home". And no, that's not an euphemism, if it was Buzzfeed wouldn't need to grasp at straws like "journalist talks to people: Illuminati confirmed".
The alt right themselves invented the term and readily use it to refer to themselves. Here is an interview about the subject with the guy who coined it [youtube.com].
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 09 2017, @03:34AM (2 children)
So, one young idiot coins a term, "alt-right", and your left latches onto it like it's meaningful? FFS, Spencer doesn't represent me, or anyone I know. You're as big an idiot as Spencer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @04:34AM
Runaway, you stupid fucking hillbilly SJW! Just stop it, OK? You are giving away the entire alt-right strategy with your over-wrought emotional responses!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:36AM
The alt-right has embraced the term most strongly.
The D and R have taken to using it out of convenience since - but not before.
(Score: 4, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday October 09 2017, @11:04AM
"Alt-right" is not a term defined by the left. It is a term invented and defined by the alt-right themselves. It's a thing. Here, look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right [wikipedia.org]
It's also worth mentioning that Bannon is on record as describing Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right".
Now do you have anything factual to add to the conversation?