Yiannopoulous got mixed up in Gamergate , an online controversy driven by video gamers who felt women and minorities were being overrepresented in games and commentary about games. Milo sided with the gamers: A Breitbart piece he wrote, titled "Feminist bullies tearing the video game industry apart," gets his position across pretty well.
So Yiannopoulos turned his byline at Breitbart into something of a work of performance art — writing offensive piece after offensive piece as an act of rebellion against the politically correct liberals who controlled culture. A few examples:. In fact, they welcomed it. If cultural Marxism is the real enemy, and political correctness is its most potent weapon, then the ultimate objective must be defanging political correctness.
Breitbart has done a lot of stuff like this, especially in its writing on race and gender. Perhaps the most significant thing Yiannopoulos has accomplished at Breitbart is definitively linking the site to the alt-right. The alt-right is a group of online dissidents from mainstream conservatism. While they have a diverse set of beliefs and interests, they share one core belief: Mainstream conservatism is full of politically correct sellouts. The alt-right encompasses a range of views.
But it also includes people who reject bigotry, at least in its overt forms, but whose views are still too reactionary for the conservative mainstream.
Regardless, racism and sexism are essential elements of the alt-right movement; it could not exist in its current form without them. Alt-righters tend to oppose mass immigration on the grounds that Latin Americans and Muslims dilute the excellence of white culture. They support what they call "white identity politics" — the idea that white Americans should organize and stick up for their own interests because minority groups do the same thing.
They blame "globalists" in both the liberal and conservative elite for selling out white America through free trade and open borders.
Hot arguments on the alt-right include the idea that African Americans are intrinsically dumber than white Americans, that society would be better off if women had fewer opportunities outside of the home, and that Nazism maybe wasn't all bad. Yiannopoulos has used his platform at Breitbart to mainstream this movement. Once again, Yiannopoulos faced no consequences for his dabbling with a demonstrably racist movement.
In fact, Bannon embraced it, applying the alt-right label to his own vision for the outlet. Breitbart today, then, has given in to its basic impulses. Very, very friendly. Since Trump began running, Breitbart has aggressively promoted his candidacy, giving him the kind of hagiographic treatment it had previously provided to outsiders like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. So in March, when then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski manhandled Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and then denied it, the site faced an existential dilemma.
Back your reporter, like any journalistic outlet would do, or side with the Trump campaign, like a Trump Super PAC would? We all know the answer at this point. Breitbart forbade its reporters from supporting Fields who, I should disclose, is a personal friend of mine. A Breitbart editor, Joel Pollak, published a piece arguing that the incident " could not possibly have happened " as Fields described it. Trump is the vindication of everything Breitbart has ever stood for, so standing with him over Fields made sense.
Overriding focus on attacking political correctness? Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric? Broadsides against the conservative elite? Politics of white resentment? Check, check, and check. He continues:. Boyle and the rest of the Breitbart team have earned this. Their publication, after years of shouting at the elite from the sidelines, is currently in sync with the GOP nominee. Purge the Paul Ryans and make the alt-right mainstream. Nobody knows the answer to this question. The emerging conservative line is that Breitbart has been corrupted: that Andrew Breitbart would abhor what it has become today.
But this is letting Breitbart, and the conservative movement itself, off the hook. What Breitbart would say today is unknowable. They warned that the kind of conspiracism and fact-free reporting Breitbart. That, at the very least, should cause mainstream conservatives to question why they saw things differently.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing American publisher, founded the Breitbart news website in but passed away after five years.
The outlet quickly gained a reputation for having published misleading or false stories and for dogmatically pushing a far-right agenda. The far-right website came to global prominence during the US presidential election for its support for Donald Trump under the executive chairship of Steve Bannon.
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