Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream
Milo Yiannopoulos
The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was  Milo Yiannopoulos   the siteâs former tech editor known best for  his  outrageous public provocations  such as last yearâs Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and Septemberâs canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year  Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movementâs nastier edges  writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices âa fair hearing.â In March  Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted âweâre not a hate site.â Breitbartâs 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 âcomputer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.â 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 â and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream. Itâs a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings âAmerica the Beautifulâ in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers  including the white nationalist Richard Spencer  raise their arms in Nazi salutes. These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website â and  in particular  Yiannopoulos â links the Mercer family  the billionaires who fund Breitbart  to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content  and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate. They capture what Bannon calls his âkilling machineâ in action  as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world  sifts through these grievances for ideas and content  and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld  collecting advertisersâ checks all along the way. And the cache of emails â some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public â expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos  who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannonâs grand plan for Yiannopoulos  whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often  the documents reveal  this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley  Hollywood  academia  suburbia  and everywhere in between. "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 " Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "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.â He added that during his karaoke performance  his "severe myopia" made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.
A year and a half ago   Milo Yiannopoulos  set  himself  a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech  10 months before the alt-rightâs great hope became president  and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the countryâs politics and culture.
At the time   Yiannopoulos  who would later describe himself as a âfellow travelerâ of the alt-right   was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015  after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate â the opening salvo of the new culture wars â he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months  he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff â#war.â It was a war  fought story by story  against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life.  Yiannopoulos  was a useful soldier whose very public identity as a gay man (one who has now married a black man) helped defend him  his anti-political correctness crusade  and his employer from charges of bigotry. But now  Yiannopoulos  had a more complicated fight on  his  hands. The left â and worse  some on the right â had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist.  Yiannopoulos  had to take back âalt-right â to redefine for Breitbartâs audience a poorly understood  leaderless movement  parts of which had already started to resist the term itself. So he reached out to key constituents  who included a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist. âFinally doing my big feature on the alt right â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in a March 9  2016  email to Andrew âWeevâ Auernheimer  a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer  and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. âFancy braindumping some thoughts for me.â âItâs time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right â  Yiannopoulos  wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin  a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the âneoreactionaryâ movement  which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. âWhich is my whorish way of asking if you have anything youâd like to make sure I include.â âAlt r feature  figured youâd have some thoughts â  Yiannopoulos  wrote the same day to Devin Saucier  who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff  and who wrote a story in June 2017 called âWhy I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.â The three responded at length: Weev about the Daily Stormer and a podcast called The Daily Shoah  Yarvin in characteristically sweeping world-historical assertions (âItâs no secret that North America contains many distinct cultural/ethnic communities. This is not optimal  but with a competent king itâs not a huge problem eitherâ)  and Saucier with a list of thinkers  politicians  journalists  films (Dune  Mad Max  The Dark Knight)  and musical genres (folk metal  martial industrial  â80s synthpop) important to the movement.  Yiannopoulos  forwarded it all  along with the Wikipedia entries for âAlternative Rightâ and the esoteric far-right Italian philosopher Julius Evola â a major influence on 20th-century Italian fascists and Richard Spencer alike â to Allum Bokhari  his deputy and frequent ghostwriter  whom he had met during GamerGate. âInclude a bit of everything â he instructed Bokhari.
âI think youâll like what Iâm cooking up â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Saucier  the American Renaissance editor. âI look forward to it â Saucier replied. âBannon  as you probably know  is sympathetic to much of it.â Five days later Bokhari returned a 3 000-word draft  a taxonomy of the movement titled âALT-RIGHT BEHEMOTH.â It included a little bit of everything: the brains and their influences (Yarvin and Evola  etc.)  the ânatural conservativesâ (people who think different ethnic groups should stay separate for scientific reasons)  the âMeme teamâ (4chan and 8chan)  and the actual hatemongers. Of the last group  Bokhari wrote: âThereâs just not very many of them  no-one really likes them  and theyâre unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.â âMagnificent start â  Yiannopoulos  responded.
Over the next three days   Yiannopoulos  passed the article back to Yarvin and the white nationalist Saucier  the latter of whom gave line-by-line annotations.  He  also sent it to Vox Day  a writer who was expelled from the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for calling a black writer an âignorant savage â and to Alex Marlow  the editor of Breitbart. âSolid  fair  and fairly comprehensive â Vox Day responded  with a few suggestions. âMost of it is great but I donât want to rush a major long form piece like this â Marlow wrote back. âA few people will need to weigh in since it deals heavily with race.â
Also  there was another sensitive issue to be raised: credit. âAllum did most of the work on this and wants joint [byline] but I want the glory here â  Yiannopoulos  wrote back to Marlow. âI am telling him you said itâs sensitive and want my byline alone on it.â Minutes later   Yiannopoulos  emailed Bokhari. âI was going to have Marlow collude with me â¦ about the byline on the alt right thing because I want to take it solo. Will you hate me too much if I do that? â¦ Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but itâs racially charged) and they would prefer it.â âWill management definitely say no if itâs both of us?â Bokhari responded. âI think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL.â Five days later  March 22nd  Marlow returned with comments. He suggested that the story should show in more detail how  Yiannopoulos  and most of the alt-right rejected the actual neo-Nazis in the movement. And he added that Taki's Magazine and VDare  two publications  Yiannopoulos  and Bokhari identified as part of the alt-right  âare both racist. â¦ We should disclaimer that or strike that part of the history from the article.â (The published story added  in the passive voice  âAll of these websites have been accused of racism.â) Again the story went back to Bokhari  who on the 24th sent  Yiannopoulos  still another draft  with the subject head âALT RIGHT  MEIN FUHRER.â On the 27th  now co-bylined  the story was ready for upper management: Bannon and Larry Solov  Breitbartâs press-shy CEO. It was also ready  on a separate email chain  for another read and round of comments from the white nationalist Saucier  the feudalist Yarvin  the neo-Nazi Weev  and Vox Day. âI need to go thru this tomorrow in depthâ¦although I do appreciate any piece that mentions evola â Bannon wrote. On the 29th  in an email titled âsteve wants you to read this â Marlow sent  Yiannopoulos  a list of edits and notes Bannon had solicited from James Pinkerton  a former Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer and a contributing editor of the American Conservative. The 59-year-old Pinkerton was put off by a cartoon of Pepe the Frog conducting the Trump Train. âI love art â he wrote inline. âI think [Breitbart News Network] needs a lot more of it  but I donât get the above. Frogs? Kermit? Am I missing something here?â Later that day  Breitbart published âAn Establishment Conservativeâs Guide to the Alt-Right.â It quickly became a touchstone  cited in the New York Times  the Los Angeles Times  the New Yorker  CNN  and New York Magazine  among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July  in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right  President Trump echoed a line from the story â a story written by a âbrown-soundingâ amanuensis  all but line-edited by a white nationalist  laundered for racism by Breitbartâs editors  and supervised by the man who would in short order become the presidentâs chief strategist. The machine had worked well.
The previous November   Yiannopoulos  emailed Bannon with a bone to pick. Breitbart London reported that a London college student behind a popular social justice hashtag had threatened the anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller. âThe story is horseshit and we should never have published it â  Yiannopoulos  wrote. âReckless and stupid. â¦ Strongly recommend we pull. itâs insanely defamatory. I spoke to pamela geller and even she said it was rubbish. Weâre outright lying about this girl and surely weâre better than that. We can and should win by telling the truth.â Six minutes later  Bannon wrote back to his tech editor in a fury. âYour [sic] full of shit. When I need your advice on anything I will ask. ... The tech site is a total clusterfuck---meaningless stories written by juveniles. You donât have a clue how to build a company or what real content is. And you donât have long to figure it out or your [sic] gone. â¦ You are magenalia [sic].â
On December 8  the New York Times published a major story about the radicalization of American Muslims on Facebook.  Yiannopoulos  published a story called âBirth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.â That afternoon  Bannon emailed  Yiannopoulos  and Marlow. âDude---we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!! U should be OWNING this conversation because u r everything they hate!!! Drop your toys  pick up your tools and go help save western civilization.â âMessage received â  Yiannopoulos  wrote back. âI will do a Week of Islam next week.â âU donât need that â Bannon responded. âJust get in the fight---ur Social Media and they have made it a powerful weapon of war. â¦ There is no war correspondent in the west yet dude and u can own it and be remember for 3 generations--or sit around wasting your God-given talents jerking off to your fan base.â Over the next several months   Yiannopoulos  began to find the right targets. First  it  was a continued attack on Shaun King  the writer and Black Lives Matter activist whose ethnicity  Yiannopoulos  had called into question. Next it was thenâYahoo CEO Marissa Mayer  who Bannon called in an email to  Yiannopoulos  the âposter child for the narcissistic ecosystem.â And increasingly it was enemies of Donald Trump. In response to a  Yiannopoulos  pitch accusing a prominent Republican opponent of Trump of being a pill-popper  Bannon wrote: âDude!!! LMAO! â¦ Epic.â And Bannon signed off on an April story by  Yiannopoulos  imploring #NeverTrumpers to get on board with âTrump and the alt-right.â (Bannon did  however  veto making it the lead story on the site  writing to  Yiannopoulos  and Marlow  âLooks like we have our thumb on the scale.â) Why was Bannon so concerned with the focus of his tech editorâs energies? In a February email exchange before  Yiannopoulos  appeared on Greg Gutfeldâs Sunday Fox News show  Bannon wrote  âGutfeld should become an object lesson for u. Brilliant cultural commentator who really got pop culture  the hipster scene and advant [sic] gardeâ¦.got on fox and tried to become a political pundit...lost all credibility. â¦ You r one of the potential heirs to his cultural leadership so act according.â Bannon was grooming the younger man for something greater. In May  Bannon invited  Yiannopoulos  to Cannes for a week for the film festival. âWant to discuss tv and film with u â he wrote in an email. âU get to meet my partners  hang on the boat and discuss business.â
The boat was the Sea Owl  a 200-foot yacht owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer  who is a major funder of Breitbart and various other far-right enterprises. That week   Yiannopoulos  shuttled back and forth from the Cannes Palace Hotel to the pier next to the Palais des Festivals et des CongrÃ¨s and the green-sterned  âfantasy-inspiredâ vessel complete with a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The Mercers were in town to promote Clinton Cash  a film produced by Bannon and their production studio  Glittering Steel. On board  Yiannopoulos drank  mingled  and interviewed Phil Robertson  the lavishly bearded patriarch of Duck Dynasty  for his podcast. âI know how lucky I am â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Bannon on May 20. âIâm going to work hard to make you some money -- and win the war! Thanks for having me this week and for the faith youâre placing in me chief. The left wonât know what hit them.â âU just focus on being who u are-- we will put a top level team around u â Bannon wrote back. â#war.â
Bannon passed the request from Mercer to  Yiannopoulos .  Yiannopoulos  passed  it  to Charlie Nash  an 18-year-old Englishman whom he had met at a conference of the populist right-wing UK Independence Party conference the previous year  and who started working as his intern immediately after. Like some bleach-blonde messiah of antiâpolitical correctness   Yiannopoulos  tended to draw in ideologically sympathetic young men at conferences  campus speeches  and on social media  accumulating more and more acolytes as  he  went along. In June 2015 it was Ben Kew  who invited  Yiannopoulos  to speak at the University of Bristol  where  he  was a student;  he âs now a staff writer for Breitbart. In September 2015 it was Tom Ciccotta  the treasurer of the class of 2017 at Bucknell University  who still writes for Breitbart. In February 2016 it was Hunter Swogger  a University of Michigan student and then the editor of the conservative Michigan Review  whom  Yiannopoulos  cultivated and brought on as a social media specialist during his Dangerous Faggot tour.  Yiannopoulos  called these young researchers  his  âtrufflehounds.â Nash  who had just been hired by Breitbart at $30 000 a year after months of lobbying by  Yiannopoulos   dutifully fielded the request from the billionaire indirectly paying his salary and turned around a story about the rejected Capitol HillAwry app on the 25th â and a follow-up five days later after Apple reversed its decision. âHuge victory â Bannon emailed after the reversal. âHuge win.â This was the usual way stories came in from the Mercers  according to a former Breitbart editor: with a request from Bannon referring to âour investorsâ or âour investing partners.â After Cannes  as Bannon pushed  Yiannopoulos  to do more live events that presented expensive logistical challenges  the involvement of the investing partners became increasingly obvious. Following a May event at DePaul University in Chicago in which Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a  Yiannopoulos  speech  he wrote to Bannon  âI wouldnât confess this to anyone publicly  of course  but I was worried ... last night that I was going to get punched or worse. ... I need one or two people of my own.â
âAgree 100% â Bannon wrote. âWe want you to stir up more. Milo: for your eyes only we r going to use the mercers private security company.â Copied on the email was Dan Fleuette  Bannonâs coproducer at Glittering Steel and the man who acted for months as the go-between for  Yiannopoulos  and the Mercers. As  Yiannopoulos  made the transition in summer 2016 from being a writer to becoming largely the star of a traveling stage show  Fleuette was enlisted to process and wrangle the legion of young assistants  managers  trainers  and other talent the Breitbart tech editor demanded be brought along for the ride.
First came Tim Gionet  the former BuzzFeed social media strategist who goes by âBaked Alaskaâ on Twitter  whom  Yiannopoulos  pitched to Fleuette as a tour manager in late May. Gionet accompanied  Yiannopoulos  to Florida after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub killings in Orlando. The two planned a press conference outside a mosque attended by the shooter  Omar Mateen. (âBrilliant â Bannon emailed. âBtw they are ALL âfactories of hate.ââ) But after some impertinent tweets and back talk from Gionet  Fleuette became Yiannopoulosâs managerial confidante. âHe needs to understand that âBaked Alaskaâ is over â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in one email to Fleuette. âHe is not a friend he is an employee. â¦ He is becoming a laughing stock and that reflects badly on me.â In another  âI think we need to replace Tim. â¦ [He] has no news judgment or understanding of whatâs dangerous (thinks tweets about Jews are just fine). â¦ He seems more interested in his career as an obscure Twitter personality than my tour manager.â At the Republican National Convention   Yiannopoulos  deliberately chose a hotel for Gionet far from the convention center  writing to another Breitbart employee  âExactly where I want him. â¦ He needs the commute to remind him of his place.â Gionet did not respond to multiple requests by BuzzFeed News for comment.
But Gionet  who would go on to march with the alt-right in Charlottesville  was still useful to  Yiannopoulos  as a gateway to a group of young  hip  social mediaâsavvy Trump supporters.  Yiannopoulos  managed all of  his  assistants and ghostwriters under  his  own umbrella  using âyiannopoulos.netâ emails and private Slack rooms. This structure insulated Breitbartâs upper management from the 4chan savants and GamerGate vets working for  Yiannopoulos . And  it  gave  Yiannopoulos  a staff loyal to  him  above Breitbart. (Indeed   Yiannopoulos  shopped a separate âTeam Miloâ section to Dow Jones  which publishes the Wall Street Journal  in July 2016.) It also sometimes led to extraordinarily fraught organizational and personal dynamics. Take Allum Bokhari  the Oxford-educated former political consultant whom  Yiannopoulos  rewarded for his years of grunt work with a $100 000 ghostwriting contract for his book Dangerous. But the men were spying on each other. In April 2016   Yiannopoulos  asked Bokhari for âa complete list of the email  social media  bank accounts  and any other system and services of mine you have been accessing  and how long youâve had access.â Bokhari confessed to having logged into Yiannopoulosâs email and Slack  and had used  Yiannopoulos âs credit card for an Airbnb  a confession  Yiannopoulos  quickly passed on to Larry Solov  the Breitbart CEO. âMy basic position is that he is not stable and needs to be far away from me â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Marlow and Solov. Meanwhile   Yiannopoulos  had compiled a transcript of what he called âa short section of 30 hours of recording down on paper â which appeared to be of conversations between Bokhari and a friend. The newcomers brought in by Gionet werenât much better behaved.  Yiannopoulos  had to boot one prospective member of  his  âtour squadâ for posting cocaine use on Snapchat. Mike Mahoney  a thenâ20-year-old from North Carolina  had to be monitored because of his propensity for racism and anti-Semitism on social media. (Mahoney was later banned from Twitter  but heâs relocated to Gab  a free speech uber alles social network where he is free to post messages such as âreminder: muslims are fags.â) âLet me know if thereâs anything specific thatâs really bad eg any Jew stuff â  Yiannopoulos  wrote of Mahoney in an email to another member of his staff. âHis entire Twitter persona will have to change dramatically once he gets the job.â On September 11  2016  Mahoney signed a $2 500-a-month contract with Glittering Steel. As the Dangerous Faggot tour swung into gear   Yiannopoulos  grew increasingly hostile toward Fleuette  whom  he  excoriated for late payments to  his  young crew  lack of support  and disorganization. âThe entire tour staff is demanding money â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in one email to Fleuette in October. âNo one knows or cares who Glittering Steel is but this represents a significantly damaging risk to my reputation if it gets out.â And in another  âYour problem right now is keeping me happy." Yet ultimately Fleuette was necessary â he connected  Yiannopoulos âs madcap world and the massively rich people funding the machine. âI think you know who the final decision belongs to â Fleuette wrote to  Yiannopoulos  after one particularly frantic request for money. âI am in daily communication with them.â
 Yiannopoulos âs star rose throughout 2016 thanks to a succession of controversial public appearances  social media conflagrations  Breitbart radio spots  television hits  and magazine profiles. Bannonâs guidance  the Mercersâ patronage  and the creative energy of his young staff had come together at exactly the time Donald Trump turned offensive speech into a defining issue in American culture. And for thousands of people  Yiannopoulos  Breitbartâs poster child for offensive speech  became a secret champion.
Aggrieved by the encroachment of so-called cultural Marxism into American public life  and egged on by an endless stream of stories on Fox News about safe spaces and racially charged campus confrontations  a diverse group of Americans took to  Yiannopoulos âs inbox to thank him and to confess their fears about the future of the country. He heard from ancient veterans who âbinge-watchedâ his speeches on YouTube; from âa 58 year old asian womanâ concerned about her high school daughterâs progressive teachers; from boys asking how to win classroom arguments against feminists; from a former NASA employee who said he had been âlaid off by my fat female bossâ and was sad that the Jet Propulsion Lab had become âcompletely cuckedâ; from a man who had bought his 11-year-old son an AR-15 and named it âMiloâ; from an Indiana lesbian who said she âdespised liberalsâ and begged  Yiannopoulos  to âkeep triggering the special snowflakesâ; from a doctoral student in philosophy who said he had been threatened with dismissal from his program for sharing his low opinion of Islam; from a Charlotte police officer thanking  Yiannopoulos  for his âcommon sense Facebook postsâ about the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott (âBLUE LIVES MATTER â  Yiannopoulos  responded); from a New Jersey school teacher who feared his students would become âpawns for the left social justice campaignâ; from a man who said he had returned from a deployment in âan Islamic countryâ to discover that his wife was transitioning and wanted a divorce (subject line âRegressivism stole my wifeâ); from a father terrified his daughter might attend Smith College; from fans who wanted to give him jokes to use about fat people  about gay people  about Muslims  about Hillary Clinton. He also heard  with frequency  from accomplished people in predominantly liberal industries â entertainment  tech  academia  fashion  and media â who resented what they felt was a censorious coastal cultural orthodoxy. Taken together  they represent something like a network of sleeper James Damores  vexed but silent for fear of losing their jobs or friends  kvetching to  Yiannopoulos  as a pressure valve. For  Yiannopoulos   these emails werenât just validation  though they were obviously that. They sometimes became more ammunition for the culture war. âIâm a relatively recent ex-lefty who received deep liberal indoctrination via elite private schools (Yale and Andover) â wrote one film editor who introduced herself as an âUndercover âpede in Hollywood." (âCentipedeâ is slang for an online Trump supporter.) âIâve been deeply closeted thus far due to the severe personal and professional repercussions of not beating the progressive drum.â In an email titled âWorking for E! Is Hell â a production manager at the cable network wrote  Yiannopoulos  that  her  employer was a âcontributor to the fake news machine and my colleagues have become insufferable. â¦ I â¦ offer you my services â¦ a partner in fighting globalism.â And Adam Grandmaison  whom Rolling Stone described as âunderground hip-hopâs major tastemaker â reached out to  Yiannopoulos  to suggest he investigate a journalist who had accused her ex-boyfriend of physical abuse. In an email to BuzzFeed News  Grandmaison wrote that he was merely voicing concern about a black man being judged by the media  and that "I didn't intend for [Milo] to write about it." (Grandmaison's email to  Yiannopoulos  began "first off i absolutely do not want credit for tipping you off to this.") Even more tips came in from tech workers. A Google employee sent  Yiannopoulos  a picture of a cartoon gingerbread man named âGogy  the Googely Googlerâ that had been posted by a coffee machine to remind employees to tidy up. According to the Google employee  the sign had turned into an HR problem after employees were angered that Gogy was identified as male.
A Google spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the company has no record of Gogy or any related HR complaint. A Twitter software engineer who felt betrayed by the âmoral companyâ he had worked for since 2012  when it âstood for free speech â emailed to tell  Yiannopoulos  that the removal of  his  verification in early 2016 âwas obviously politically motivated.â And some of these disgruntled tech workers reached beyond the rank and file. Vivek Wadhwa  a prominent entrepreneur and academic  reached out repeatedly to  Yiannopoulos  with stories of what  he  considered out-of-control political correctness. First it was about a boycott campaign against a Kickstarter with connections to GamerGate. (âThese people are truly crazy and destructive. â¦ What horrible people â wrote Wadwha of the campaigners.) Then it was about Y-Combinator cofounder Paul Graham; Wadwha felt Graham was being unfairly targeted for an essay he wrote about gender inequality in tech. âPolitical correctness has gone too far â Wadhwa wrote. âThe alternative is communism â not equality. And that is a failed systemâ¦â  Yiannopoulos  passed Wadhwaâs email to Bokhari  who promptly ghostwrote a story for Breitbart  âSocial Justice Warrior Knives Out For Startup Guru Paul Graham.â Wadwha told BuzzFeed News that he no longer supports Yiannopoulos.
The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was  Milo Yiannopoulos   the siteâs former tech editor known best for  his  outrageous public provocations  such as last yearâs Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and Septemberâs canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year  Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movementâs nastier edges  writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices âa fair hearing.â In March  Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted âweâre not a hate site.â Breitbartâs 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 âcomputer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.â 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 â and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream. Itâs a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings âAmerica the Beautifulâ in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers  including the white nationalist Richard Spencer  raise their arms in Nazi salutes. These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website â and  in particular   [TGT]  â links the Mercer family  the billionaires who fund Breitbart  to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content  and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate. They capture what Bannon calls his âkilling machineâ in action  as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world  sifts through these grievances for ideas and content  and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld  collecting advertisersâ checks all along the way. And the cache of emails â some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public â expose the extent to which this machine depended on  [TGT] who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannonâs grand plan for Yiannopoulos  whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often  the documents reveal  this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley  Hollywood  academia  suburbia  and everywhere in between. "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 " Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "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.â He added that during his karaoke performance  his "severe myopia" made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.
A year and a half ago   Milo Yiannopoulos  set  himself  a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech  10 months before the alt-rightâs great hope became president  and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the countryâs politics and culture.
At the time   Yiannopoulos  who would later describe himself as a âfellow travelerâ of the alt-right   was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015  after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate â the opening salvo of the new culture wars â he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months  he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff â#war.â It was a war  fought story by story  against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life.  Yiannopoulos  was a useful soldier whose very public identity as a gay man (one who has now married a black man) helped defend him  his anti-political correctness crusade  and his employer from charges of bigotry. But now  Yiannopoulos  had a more complicated fight on  his  hands. The left â and worse  some on the right â had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist.  Yiannopoulos  had to take back âalt-right â to redefine for Breitbartâs audience a poorly understood  leaderless movement  parts of which had already started to resist the term itself. So he reached out to key constituents  who included a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist. âFinally doing my big feature on the alt right â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in a March 9  2016  email to Andrew âWeevâ Auernheimer  a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer  and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. âFancy braindumping some thoughts for me.â âItâs time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right â  Yiannopoulos  wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin  a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the âneoreactionaryâ movement  which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. âWhich is my whorish way of asking if you have anything youâd like to make sure I include.â âAlt r feature  figured youâd have some thoughts â  Yiannopoulos  wrote the same day to Devin Saucier  who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff  and who wrote a story in June 2017 called âWhy I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.â The three responded at length: Weev about the Daily Stormer and a podcast called The Daily Shoah  Yarvin in characteristically sweeping world-historical assertions (âItâs no secret that North America contains many distinct cultural/ethnic communities. This is not optimal  but with a competent king itâs not a huge problem eitherâ)  and Saucier with a list of thinkers  politicians  journalists  films (Dune  Mad Max  The Dark Knight)  and musical genres (folk metal  martial industrial  â80s synthpop) important to the movement.  Yiannopoulos  forwarded it all  along with the Wikipedia entries for âAlternative Rightâ and the esoteric far-right Italian philosopher Julius Evola â a major influence on 20th-century Italian fascists and Richard Spencer alike â to Allum Bokhari  his deputy and frequent ghostwriter  whom he had met during GamerGate. âInclude a bit of everything â he instructed Bokhari.
âI think youâll like what Iâm cooking up â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Saucier  the American Renaissance editor. âI look forward to it â Saucier replied. âBannon  as you probably know  is sympathetic to much of it.â Five days later Bokhari returned a 3 000-word draft  a taxonomy of the movement titled âALT-RIGHT BEHEMOTH.â It included a little bit of everything: the brains and their influences (Yarvin and Evola  etc.)  the ânatural conservativesâ (people who think different ethnic groups should stay separate for scientific reasons)  the âMeme teamâ (4chan and 8chan)  and the actual hatemongers. Of the last group  Bokhari wrote: âThereâs just not very many of them  no-one really likes them  and theyâre unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.â âMagnificent start â  Yiannopoulos  responded.
Over the next three days   Yiannopoulos  passed the article back to Yarvin and the white nationalist Saucier  the latter of whom gave line-by-line annotations.  He  also sent it to Vox Day  a writer who was expelled from the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for calling a black writer an âignorant savage â and to Alex Marlow  the editor of Breitbart. âSolid  fair  and fairly comprehensive â Vox Day responded  with a few suggestions. âMost of it is great but I donât want to rush a major long form piece like this â Marlow wrote back. âA few people will need to weigh in since it deals heavily with race.â
Also  there was another sensitive issue to be raised: credit. âAllum did most of the work on this and wants joint [byline] but I want the glory here â  Yiannopoulos  wrote back to Marlow. âI am telling him you said itâs sensitive and want my byline alone on it.â Minutes later   Yiannopoulos  emailed Bokhari. âI was going to have Marlow collude with me â¦ about the byline on the alt right thing because I want to take it solo. Will you hate me too much if I do that? â¦ Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but itâs racially charged) and they would prefer it.â âWill management definitely say no if itâs both of us?â Bokhari responded. âI think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL.â Five days later  March 22nd  Marlow returned with comments. He suggested that the story should show in more detail how  Yiannopoulos  and most of the alt-right rejected the actual neo-Nazis in the movement. And he added that Taki's Magazine and VDare  two publications  Yiannopoulos  and Bokhari identified as part of the alt-right  âare both racist. â¦ We should disclaimer that or strike that part of the history from the article.â (The published story added  in the passive voice  âAll of these websites have been accused of racism.â) Again the story went back to Bokhari  who on the 24th sent  Yiannopoulos  still another draft  with the subject head âALT RIGHT  MEIN FUHRER.â On the 27th  now co-bylined  the story was ready for upper management: Bannon and Larry Solov  Breitbartâs press-shy CEO. It was also ready  on a separate email chain  for another read and round of comments from the white nationalist Saucier  the feudalist Yarvin  the neo-Nazi Weev  and Vox Day. âI need to go thru this tomorrow in depthâ¦although I do appreciate any piece that mentions evola â Bannon wrote. On the 29th  in an email titled âsteve wants you to read this â Marlow sent  Yiannopoulos  a list of edits and notes Bannon had solicited from James Pinkerton  a former Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer and a contributing editor of the American Conservative. The 59-year-old Pinkerton was put off by a cartoon of Pepe the Frog conducting the Trump Train. âI love art â he wrote inline. âI think [Breitbart News Network] needs a lot more of it  but I donât get the above. Frogs? Kermit? Am I missing something here?â Later that day  Breitbart published âAn Establishment Conservativeâs Guide to the Alt-Right.â It quickly became a touchstone  cited in the New York Times  the Los Angeles Times  the New Yorker  CNN  and New York Magazine  among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July  in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right  President Trump echoed a line from the story â a story written by a âbrown-soundingâ amanuensis  all but line-edited by a white nationalist  laundered for racism by Breitbartâs editors  and supervised by the man who would in short order become the presidentâs chief strategist. The machine had worked well.
The previous November   Yiannopoulos  emailed Bannon with a bone to pick. Breitbart London reported that a London college student behind a popular social justice hashtag had threatened the anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller. âThe story is horseshit and we should never have published it â  Yiannopoulos  wrote. âReckless and stupid. â¦ Strongly recommend we pull. itâs insanely defamatory. I spoke to pamela geller and even she said it was rubbish. Weâre outright lying about this girl and surely weâre better than that. We can and should win by telling the truth.â Six minutes later  Bannon wrote back to his tech editor in a fury. âYour [sic] full of shit. When I need your advice on anything I will ask. ... The tech site is a total clusterfuck---meaningless stories written by juveniles. You donât have a clue how to build a company or what real content is. And you donât have long to figure it out or your [sic] gone. â¦ You are magenalia [sic].â
On December 8  the New York Times published a major story about the radicalization of American Muslims on Facebook.  Yiannopoulos  published a story called âBirth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.â That afternoon  Bannon emailed  Yiannopoulos  and Marlow. âDude---we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!! U should be OWNING this conversation because u r everything they hate!!! Drop your toys  pick up your tools and go help save western civilization.â âMessage received â  Yiannopoulos  wrote back. âI will do a Week of Islam next week.â âU donât need that â Bannon responded. âJust get in the fight---ur Social Media and they have made it a powerful weapon of war. â¦ There is no war correspondent in the west yet dude and u can own it and be remember for 3 generations--or sit around wasting your God-given talents jerking off to your fan base.â Over the next several months   Yiannopoulos  began to find the right targets. First  it  was a continued attack on Shaun King  the writer and Black Lives Matter activist whose ethnicity  Yiannopoulos  had called into question. Next it was thenâYahoo CEO Marissa Mayer  who Bannon called in an email to  Yiannopoulos  the âposter child for the narcissistic ecosystem.â And increasingly it was enemies of Donald Trump. In response to a  Yiannopoulos  pitch accusing a prominent Republican opponent of Trump of being a pill-popper  Bannon wrote: âDude!!! LMAO! â¦ Epic.â And Bannon signed off on an April story by  Yiannopoulos  imploring #NeverTrumpers to get on board with âTrump and the alt-right.â (Bannon did  however  veto making it the lead story on the site  writing to  Yiannopoulos  and Marlow  âLooks like we have our thumb on the scale.â) Why was Bannon so concerned with the focus of his tech editorâs energies? In a February email exchange before  Yiannopoulos  appeared on Greg Gutfeldâs Sunday Fox News show  Bannon wrote  âGutfeld should become an object lesson for u. Brilliant cultural commentator who really got pop culture  the hipster scene and advant [sic] gardeâ¦.got on fox and tried to become a political pundit...lost all credibility. â¦ You r one of the potential heirs to his cultural leadership so act according.â Bannon was grooming the younger man for something greater. In May  Bannon invited  Yiannopoulos  to Cannes for a week for the film festival. âWant to discuss tv and film with u â he wrote in an email. âU get to meet my partners  hang on the boat and discuss business.â
The boat was the Sea Owl  a 200-foot yacht owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer  who is a major funder of Breitbart and various other far-right enterprises. That week   Yiannopoulos  shuttled back and forth from the Cannes Palace Hotel to the pier next to the Palais des Festivals et des CongrÃ¨s and the green-sterned  âfantasy-inspiredâ vessel complete with a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The Mercers were in town to promote Clinton Cash  a film produced by Bannon and their production studio  Glittering Steel. On board  Yiannopoulos drank  mingled  and interviewed Phil Robertson  the lavishly bearded patriarch of Duck Dynasty  for his podcast. âI know how lucky I am â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Bannon on May 20. âIâm going to work hard to make you some money -- and win the war! Thanks for having me this week and for the faith youâre placing in me chief. The left wonât know what hit them.â âU just focus on being who u are-- we will put a top level team around u â Bannon wrote back. â#war.â
Bannon passed the request from Mercer to  Yiannopoulos .  Yiannopoulos  passed  it  to Charlie Nash  an 18-year-old Englishman whom he had met at a conference of the populist right-wing UK Independence Party conference the previous year  and who started working as his intern immediately after. Like some bleach-blonde messiah of antiâpolitical correctness   Yiannopoulos  tended to draw in ideologically sympathetic young men at conferences  campus speeches  and on social media  accumulating more and more acolytes as  he  went along. In June 2015 it was Ben Kew  who invited  Yiannopoulos  to speak at the University of Bristol  where  he  was a student;  he âs now a staff writer for Breitbart. In September 2015 it was Tom Ciccotta  the treasurer of the class of 2017 at Bucknell University  who still writes for Breitbart. In February 2016 it was Hunter Swogger  a University of Michigan student and then the editor of the conservative Michigan Review  whom  Yiannopoulos  cultivated and brought on as a social media specialist during his Dangerous Faggot tour.  Yiannopoulos  called these young researchers  his  âtrufflehounds.â Nash  who had just been hired by Breitbart at $30 000 a year after months of lobbying by  Yiannopoulos   dutifully fielded the request from the billionaire indirectly paying his salary and turned around a story about the rejected Capitol HillAwry app on the 25th â and a follow-up five days later after Apple reversed its decision. âHuge victory â Bannon emailed after the reversal. âHuge win.â This was the usual way stories came in from the Mercers  according to a former Breitbart editor: with a request from Bannon referring to âour investorsâ or âour investing partners.â After Cannes  as Bannon pushed  Yiannopoulos  to do more live events that presented expensive logistical challenges  the involvement of the investing partners became increasingly obvious. Following a May event at DePaul University in Chicago in which Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a  Yiannopoulos  speech  he wrote to Bannon  âI wouldnât confess this to anyone publicly  of course  but I was worried ... last night that I was going to get punched or worse. ... I need one or two people of my own.â
âAgree 100% â Bannon wrote. âWe want you to stir up more. Milo: for your eyes only we r going to use the mercers private security company.â Copied on the email was Dan Fleuette  Bannonâs coproducer at Glittering Steel and the man who acted for months as the go-between for  Yiannopoulos  and the Mercers. As  Yiannopoulos  made the transition in summer 2016 from being a writer to becoming largely the star of a traveling stage show  Fleuette was enlisted to process and wrangle the legion of young assistants  managers  trainers  and other talent the Breitbart tech editor demanded be brought along for the ride.
First came Tim Gionet  the former BuzzFeed social media strategist who goes by âBaked Alaskaâ on Twitter  whom  Yiannopoulos  pitched to Fleuette as a tour manager in late May. Gionet accompanied  Yiannopoulos  to Florida after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub killings in Orlando. The two planned a press conference outside a mosque attended by the shooter  Omar Mateen. (âBrilliant â Bannon emailed. âBtw they are ALL âfactories of hate.ââ) But after some impertinent tweets and back talk from Gionet  Fleuette became Yiannopoulosâs managerial confidante. âHe needs to understand that âBaked Alaskaâ is over â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in one email to Fleuette. âHe is not a friend he is an employee. â¦ He is becoming a laughing stock and that reflects badly on me.â In another  âI think we need to replace Tim. â¦ [He] has no news judgment or understanding of whatâs dangerous (thinks tweets about Jews are just fine). â¦ He seems more interested in his career as an obscure Twitter personality than my tour manager.â At the Republican National Convention   Yiannopoulos  deliberately chose a hotel for Gionet far from the convention center  writing to another Breitbart employee  âExactly where I want him. â¦ He needs the commute to remind him of his place.â Gionet did not respond to multiple requests by BuzzFeed News for comment.
But Gionet  who would go on to march with the alt-right in Charlottesville  was still useful to  Yiannopoulos  as a gateway to a group of young  hip  social mediaâsavvy Trump supporters.  Yiannopoulos  managed all of  his  assistants and ghostwriters under  his  own umbrella  using âyiannopoulos.netâ emails and private Slack rooms. This structure insulated Breitbartâs upper management from the 4chan savants and GamerGate vets working for  Yiannopoulos . And  it  gave  Yiannopoulos  a staff loyal to  him  above Breitbart. (Indeed   Yiannopoulos  shopped a separate âTeam Miloâ section to Dow Jones  which publishes the Wall Street Journal  in July 2016.) It also sometimes led to extraordinarily fraught organizational and personal dynamics. Take Allum Bokhari  the Oxford-educated former political consultant whom  Yiannopoulos  rewarded for his years of grunt work with a $100 000 ghostwriting contract for his book Dangerous. But the men were spying on each other. In April 2016   Yiannopoulos  asked Bokhari for âa complete list of the email  social media  bank accounts  and any other system and services of mine you have been accessing  and how long youâve had access.â Bokhari confessed to having logged into Yiannopoulosâs email and Slack  and had used  Yiannopoulos âs credit card for an Airbnb  a confession  Yiannopoulos  quickly passed on to Larry Solov  the Breitbart CEO. âMy basic position is that he is not stable and needs to be far away from me â  Yiannopoulos  wrote to Marlow and Solov. Meanwhile   Yiannopoulos  had compiled a transcript of what he called âa short section of 30 hours of recording down on paper â which appeared to be of conversations between Bokhari and a friend. The newcomers brought in by Gionet werenât much better behaved.  Yiannopoulos  had to boot one prospective member of  his  âtour squadâ for posting cocaine use on Snapchat. Mike Mahoney  a thenâ20-year-old from North Carolina  had to be monitored because of his propensity for racism and anti-Semitism on social media. (Mahoney was later banned from Twitter  but heâs relocated to Gab  a free speech uber alles social network where he is free to post messages such as âreminder: muslims are fags.â) âLet me know if thereâs anything specific thatâs really bad eg any Jew stuff â  Yiannopoulos  wrote of Mahoney in an email to another member of his staff. âHis entire Twitter persona will have to change dramatically once he gets the job.â On September 11  2016  Mahoney signed a $2 500-a-month contract with Glittering Steel. As the Dangerous Faggot tour swung into gear   Yiannopoulos  grew increasingly hostile toward Fleuette  whom  he  excoriated for late payments to  his  young crew  lack of support  and disorganization. âThe entire tour staff is demanding money â  Yiannopoulos  wrote in one email to Fleuette in October. âNo one knows or cares who Glittering Steel is but this represents a significantly damaging risk to my reputation if it gets out.â And in another  âYour problem right now is keeping me happy." Yet ultimately Fleuette was necessary â he connected  Yiannopoulos âs madcap world and the massively rich people funding the machine. âI think you know who the final decision belongs to â Fleuette wrote to  Yiannopoulos  after one particularly frantic request for money. âI am in daily communication with them.â
 Yiannopoulos âs star rose throughout 2016 thanks to a succession of controversial public appearances  social media conflagrations  Breitbart radio spots  television hits  and magazine profiles. Bannonâs guidance  the Mercersâ patronage  and the creative energy of his young staff had come together at exactly the time Donald Trump turned offensive speech into a defining issue in American culture. And for thousands of people  Yiannopoulos  Breitbartâs poster child for offensive speech  became a secret champion.
Aggrieved by the encroachment of so-called cultural Marxism into American public life  and egged on by an endless stream of stories on Fox News about safe spaces and racially charged campus confrontations  a diverse group of Americans took to  Yiannopoulos âs inbox to thank him and to confess their fears about the future of the country. He heard from ancient veterans who âbinge-watchedâ his speeches on YouTube; from âa 58 year old asian womanâ concerned about her high school daughterâs progressive teachers; from boys asking how to win classroom arguments against feminists; from a former NASA employee who said he had been âlaid off by my fat female bossâ and was sad that the Jet Propulsion Lab had become âcompletely cuckedâ; from a man who had bought his 11-year-old son an AR-15 and named it âMiloâ; from an Indiana lesbian who said she âdespised liberalsâ and begged  Yiannopoulos  to âkeep triggering the special snowflakesâ; from a doctoral student in philosophy who said he had been threatened with dismissal from his program for sharing his low opinion of Islam; from a Charlotte police officer thanking  Yiannopoulos  for his âcommon sense Facebook postsâ about the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott (âBLUE LIVES MATTER â  Yiannopoulos  responded); from a New Jersey school teacher who feared his students would become âpawns for the left social justice campaignâ; from a man who said he had returned from a deployment in âan Islamic countryâ to discover that his wife was transitioning and wanted a divorce (subject line âRegressivism stole my wifeâ); from a father terrified his daughter might attend Smith College; from fans who wanted to give him jokes to use about fat people  about gay people  about Muslims  about Hillary Clinton. He also heard  with frequency  from accomplished people in predominantly liberal industries â entertainment  tech  academia  fashion  and media â who resented what they felt was a censorious coastal cultural orthodoxy. Taken together  they represent something like a network of sleeper James Damores  vexed but silent for fear of losing their jobs or friends  kvetching to  Yiannopoulos  as a pressure valve. For  Yiannopoulos   these emails werenât just validation  though they were obviously that. They sometimes became more ammunition for the culture war. âIâm a relatively recent ex-lefty who received deep liberal indoctrination via elite private schools (Yale and Andover) â wrote one film editor who introduced herself as an âUndercover âpede in Hollywood." (âCentipedeâ is slang for an online Trump supporter.) âIâve been deeply closeted thus far due to the severe personal and professional repercussions of not beating the progressive drum.â In an email titled âWorking for E! Is Hell â a production manager at the cable network wrote  Yiannopoulos  that  her  employer was a âcontributor to the fake news machine and my colleagues have become insufferable. â¦ I â¦ offer you my services â¦ a partner in fighting globalism.â And Adam Grandmaison  whom Rolling Stone described as âunderground hip-hopâs major tastemaker â reached out to  Yiannopoulos  to suggest he investigate a journalist who had accused her ex-boyfriend of physical abuse. In an email to BuzzFeed News  Grandmaison wrote that he was merely voicing concern about a black man being judged by the media  and that "I didn't intend for [Milo] to write about it." (Grandmaison's email to  Yiannopoulos  began "first off i absolutely do not want credit for tipping you off to this.") Even more tips came in from tech workers. A Google employee sent  Yiannopoulos  a picture of a cartoon gingerbread man named âGogy  the Googely Googlerâ that had been posted by a coffee machine to remind employees to tidy up. According to the Google employee  the sign had turned into an HR problem after employees were angered that Gogy was identified as male.
A Google spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the company has no record of Gogy or any related HR complaint. A Twitter software engineer who felt betrayed by the âmoral companyâ he had worked for since 2012  when it âstood for free speech â emailed to tell  Yiannopoulos  that the removal of  his  verification in early 2016 âwas obviously politically motivated.â And some of these disgruntled tech workers reached beyond the rank and file. Vivek Wadhwa  a prominent entrepreneur and academic  reached out repeatedly to  Yiannopoulos  with stories of what  he  considered out-of-control political correctness. First it was about a boycott campaign against a Kickstarter with connections to GamerGate. (âThese people are truly crazy and destructive. â¦ What horrible people â wrote Wadwha of the campaigners.) Then it was about Y-Combinator cofounder Paul Graham; Wadwha felt Graham was being unfairly targeted for an essay he wrote about gender inequality in tech. âPolitical correctness has gone too far â Wadhwa wrote. âThe alternative is communism â not equality. And that is a failed systemâ¦â  Yiannopoulos  passed Wadhwaâs email to Bokhari  who promptly ghostwrote a story for Breitbart  âSocial Justice Warrior Knives Out For Startup Guru Paul Graham.â Wadwha told BuzzFeed News that he no longer supports Yiannopoulos.