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Breitbart got trolled.

Breitbart.com is a far-right news site which operates out of the U.S., London, and Jerusalem, and Conservapedia's main source of information nowadays. Well, we say news; it's more like the unwanted love child of Fox News and /pol/ who serves as an American Pravda for Donald Trump and others like him. "Screaming hateful absurdities" might be more appropriate. It was founded by Andrew Breitbart, whose death launched a bunch of idiot conspiracy theories among people who lost the ability to debate coherently a long time ago. Breitbart is basically a Nazi version of BuzzFeed.

It is inadvisable to use Breitbart as a source. Wikipedia editors have agreed to not allow Breitbart to be used as citations for facts,In September 2018, Wikipedia banned the use of Breitbart as a source, as much of its news coverage was found to be unreliable, misleading and false. similar to how Daily Mail was blacklisted, though it does help when discussing how horrifying Stephen "Lenin" Bannon is. It's called Breitbart because the name Bannon would be too telling: Steve is basically David Duke with a little more smarts, a Goldman guy with Seinfeld money who bought the outlet to push his agenda. There is no doubt that he will be successful — in destroying the Republican Party.

It is surprising how a previously right-wing rag which was a notch below WorldNetDaily has become a major news outlet for "socially liberal" Reddit. Breitbart is building an army of unemployed twenty-somethings who will be the future of America. So no, they are not going away soon.

Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012) was a media personality created by Steve Bannon American right-wing media critic, webmaster and "Internet entrepreneur." He was the founder of the "Big X" sites, currently comprising Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Peace. When it came to Hollywood radicals, it took one to know one: He was born to progressive Jewish parents in Brentwood, a suburb of Los Angeles. He joined the conservative cause in reaction to a multi-pronged, liberal media attack on Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearing. From then on, "outrage was Breitbart’s chosen weapon."

A.B. had a reputation for making up more stories than Aesop, all wrapped in a burrito of self-aggrandizement and grandiose, incoherent proclamations. He was particularly fond of using misleading information to denigrate his political opponents. Very shortly after his death (mere hours after the news broke), bizarre conspiracy theories began circulating that Breitbart was murdered after finding "something" on Barack Obama rather than dying of natural causes.

Breitbart has actually gone downhill since he died. The world isn't poorer for Andrew's passing, but if he could do one thing well, it was digging up actual dirt. His successor organization gave up that line a long time ago, to the extent that employees who actually write about issues get hounded out of the organization.

Background

Breitbart got his start working for Matt Drudge, performing tech support for the Drudge Report website. He ran his own site on the side, a site he bolstered by repeatedly linking to it through the Drudge Report. In fact, between 2002 and 2008, breitbart.com received more links through Drudge than any other site - a whopping 14.45% of all links. He was also a periodic contributor to the conservative Washington Times and did early work helping Arianna Huffington launch The Huffington Post.

In the early years, Breitbart fancied himself a media critic, focusing on the daring exploits of Hollywood. He was deeply concerned with the plight of the conservative entertainer, likening them to persecuted minorities and claiming that the studios actively blacklist them. He even wrote a book on the subject - Hollywood, Interrupted. The book, such as it is, uses 1990s tabloid scandals to "prove" that Hollywood is corrupt, especially because "many actors are liberal" (which he even admits in the synopsis).

Re-branding

Breitbart and its London affiliate became a darling of the Alt-right crowd for its "breaking" coverage of Gamergate's war on women. Their embedded journalist was Caesar Flickerman Milo Yiannopoulos, an "expert" who can't recall the name of his phone provider, much less the titles of any video games.

Trumpbart

“”Breitbart has unfortunately become Trump’s Pravda.

—Ben Shapiro (yes, that one)

Donald Trump denies that one of his campaign managers manhandled Michelle Fields when she was a Breitbart reporter. Breitbart defended Trump over Fields out of fear of losing "access to Donald Trump." Despite the evidence of video, audio and an eyewitness account supporting her allegations, Trump supporters even went so far as to send her death threats then denied that death threats were even sent. Michelle Fields and other editors (including Shapiro) quit their jobs in protest following Breitbart's non-reaction.

Providing even more evidence of how objective their coverage of Trump's campaign is, Trump appointed Steve Bannon, the CEO of the website, to run his campaign after experiencing flailing poll numbers. A blogger running a reality show star's presidential campaign. This is what it has come down to. (Because Steve already has his hands full with Making America Great Again, he has stepped aside from his position at Breitbart.)

While Breitbart has reported on the story, they never commented at all about this conspicuous collusion. Many commentators ascertained that this development would turn the election cycle even uglier than it already is. Contrary to the worst fears though, Trump has come out like a shy reindeer after the appointment and apologized for previous remarks which caused "personal pain" by not mentioning which ones in particular.

President Trump made Bannon his Chief Political Strategist and even put him on the "Principals Committee" of the US National Security Council - downgrading the role of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to make room for him. This is similar to a Democratic president having Michael Moore as Chief Political Strategist, except even more polarizing.

Later, Bannon either quit or was fired (depending on the source), returning to his post at Breitbart.

Notable "successes"

ACORN

Breitbart's one big success was his promotion of James O'Keefe's misleadingly edited gotcha videos of ACORN. First introduced on Big Government, this was a major boost to Breitbart's profile, and likely added to his inflated sense of importance.

From that point on, ACORN was a major target for Breitbart and Co. In a statement from December 2009, Breitbart said the following:

ACORN is a corrupt and criminal organization, and anyone with open eyes can see this. Yet SEIU’s Andy Stern and left wing puppetmaster John Podesta, of the Soros-funded radical leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, chose to architect a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat[ic] Party hack from Massachusetts, and have put immense efforts into launching a two-pronged propaganda campaign and legal assault against the filmmakers of the ‘pimp and prostitute’ exposé and the story’s publisher. BigGovernment.com continues to expose ACORN’s illegal activity and has helped to illuminate how corrupt organizations like ACORN, SEIU and HCAN are coordinating the efforts to shove radical health care reform down an unwilling majority of Americans['] throats.

Breitbart was on a mission, and with his wunderkind in tow, there was no stopping him.

Collapse

Of course, a lot can change when said wunderkind gets caught trying to tamper with the phone lines in a Senator's office. At first, Breitbart and his people tried to distance themselves from O'Keefe:

In the past, Breitbart has said O’Keefe — now a paid contributor to biggovernment.com — is an independent contractor not an employee.

By February, Breitbart had moved beyond simple denial, claiming that "Watergate Jr. imploded."

In late September 2010, following a failed attempt by O'Keefe to embarrass CNN, Breitbart not only completely dissociated himself from O'Keefe; he claimed that he had never been connected to O'Keefe. Ultimately realizing how transparent this was, he released the following statement on October 1st:

I proudly stood behind James O’Keefe on his groundbreaking ACORN investigation. I also defended him when the media, including CNN — during a previous regime, “the Rick Sanchez era” — falsely reported the Sen. Mary Landrieu story as a “wiretapping” plot gone wrong.

In all these cases the left-leaning media exposed its obvious bias against James because of his contrarian point of view and because the targets of his investigations are protected institutions of the Democrat Media.

However, in my dealings with Ms. Boudreau, she and her producer, Scott Zamost, conducted themselves professionally, and I believe James owes them a candid and public explanation.

From what I’ve read about this script, though not executed, it is patently gross and offensive. It’s not his detractors to whom he also owes this public airing. It’s to his legion of supporters.

NAACP Freedom Fund dinner

In June 2010, Breitbart posted clips from the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner which allegedly proved that USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod was a racist. Per the post, Brown supposedly admitted to "racially discriminat[ing] against a white farmer." The response from the crowd was "hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another group's racial tolerance." Sherrod subsequently resigned, allegedly amidst pressure from the White House.

The only thing that could derail Breitbart's narrative would be if the supposed targets of Sherrod's bigotry came out and defended her. Which they did. That might be because she did, in fact, help the farmers, among other white families. The clips Breitbart posted were selectively edited to remove the portion of Sherrod's speech where she spoke of how her initial misapprehensions about helping whites led her to realize that race shouldn't be an issue in her job — the exact opposite of what Breitbart had claimed.

As soon as the full tape went public, the Beltway came down on Breitbart, who went into spin control mode. He argued that his post was never about Sherrod, a fact betrayed by his own writings. Meanwhile, some of the other Big X bloggers came to Breitbart's defense, including one who seemed to be arguing that the White House and USDA were at fault for believing Breitbart.

Shady sources

A July 2016 Breitbart article relayed Sarah Palin's claim that protesters responded to paid ads on Craigslist to protest at Donald Trump rallies - a claim that originated from a website that impersonated ABC News.

Shilling for Trump

Breitbart was the only major media company to go along with Trump's blatant lie that his inauguration crowds were bigger than Obama's.

Breitbart, as well as Infowars and other right-wing news websites, were reportedly under FBI investigation for a possible role in colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Sections

Big Hollywood

In January 2009, Breitbart stepped up to the Big Leagues with the launch of Big Hollywood, his new website. According to the master:

Big Hollywood is not a "celebrity" gabfest or a gossip outpost — it is a continuous politics and culture posting board for those who think something has gone drastically wrong and that Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots.

The early days of Big Hollywood were unimpressive. At the very least, Breitbart was at least right about one thing — his site was not a gossip outpost. Unfortunately, that's because the content in general was rather thin. Much of the early content was reprints of old columns that were vaguely on topic. The regular writers were a mix of Hollywood D-listers and wannabees who felt that their lack of success was due to politics and bloggers hoping to gain greater visibility. Among the regulars:

• Adam Baldwin: Only semi-regularly.
• John Lott
• Debbie Schlussel
• Ben Shapiro
• Sebastian Gorka: Former "National Security Editor" who lied about his military service, on top of being a neo-Nazi with a phony Ph.D. (He didn't spend 7 years studying phrenology to be called "Mister", thank you very much.)
• Kathryn Jean Lopez
• Victoria Jackson
• Carrie Prejean
• Rich Lowry
• Melanie Morgan
• John Nolte

Other sections

Breitbart, being a true visionary, was not content to create one horrible group blog — his ultimate goal was to create an entire line of bad group blogs covering every conceivable subject. First out of the gate was Big Government, opened in September 2009, which was conspicuously silent about the single Biggest share of our Big Government's discretionary spending, the military. This was followed (with far less fanfare than the first two) by Big Journalism in January 2010. The fourth site, Big Peace, rolled out on July 4th, 2010. He had many more blogs planned, including Big Education, Big Tolerance and Big Jerusalem. Poe's Law.

Racism

October 5, 2017, Buzzfeed revealed that they had obtained a cache of internal Breitbart emails that revealed how they colluded with overt racists on the alt-right to write stories. One set of emails that they revealed showed that while Milo Yiannopoulos was a staff writer, he directly solicited ideas from four sources:

1. weev (Andrew Auernheimer), Former leader of the *sigh* Gay Nigger Association of America and a contributor to the neo-Nazi and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer
2. Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin), a creator of the neoreactionary movement
3. Devin Saucier, an editor from the online white nationalist magazine, American Renaissance
4. Vox Day (Theodore Beale), an alt-right, neo-fascist, and white supremacist blogger

From this solicitation, Yiannopoulos's ghost writer and colleague at Breitbart, Allum Bokhari, did most of the writing but Yiannopoulos wanted all of the credit. Bokhari wanted his name included and argued that "I think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL." Bannon eventually green-lighted the article and it was published on March 26, 2016 with both Bokhari's and Yiannopoulos' bylines as "An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right". The Buzzfeed article also detailed how the Mercer family (Robert Mercer and Rebekah Mercer) had a significant investment in and suggested articles for Breitbart. Robert Mercer reportedly divested his investment in Breitbart in November 2017, as a belated attempt to avoid the taint of Breitbart's racism.

Some other examples of racism on Breitbart:

• "Isn't he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard?"
• "Half-black girls at Yale — who wouldn’t have gotten in without the black half"
• "These teenagers – they’re really leading the way in taunting the media and the liberals. And their position – I think they’re leading us the way out of this by just saying, 'No, actually it is fun to be called a racist.'"
• "Some Mexican men don’t limit themselves to 12-year-olds."
• "While feminists are quick to cry 'rape culture!' when it comes an eye-rolling fake rape story about 'overwhelmingly blonde' white fraternity brothers, they, along with amnesty activists, downplay the brutal rape culture that Mexican immigrants who exhibit utter backwardness when it comes to progressive standards bring to America."
• "The Hispanic culture is more accepting of statutory rape"
• "In the meantime, here’s a thought: What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it?"
• "For ethnic activists, huge annual influxes of unassimilated minorities subvert the odious melting pot and mean continuance of their own self-appointed guardianship of salad-bowl multiculturalism."
• "In fact, his law brought in the poorest of the poor, from the most dysfunctional cultures in the world, and effected the most dramatic demographic transformation of any nation in all of human history."
• "'You have to understand,' Coulter told Breitbart News, 'screaming and defacing things is how Latin Americans express disagreement. At least as long as they were destroying books and screaming in a book store, they weren’t molesting any 4-year-olds.'"
• "But whether America continues to exist or becomes some dystopian blend of Guatemala and Afghanistan will be determined by this election."

What was his problem, anyway?

I dunno how I died. Do you know how I died? You probably don't know how I died.

Andrew Breitbart had a reputation for erratic behavior, particularly when caught off guard. Among the incidents:

• He was photographed flipping off a group of demonstrators from pathetic-excuse-for-a-charity Invisible Children, whom he had mistaken for anti-war protesters. (Looks a little better in retrospect, hey?)
• He left a 90-second long, expletive-laden voice mail for Gawker regarding an article on James von Brunn.
• He melted down about five seconds into an interview with David Shuster and spent most of the time yelling about all the ways MSNBC had wronged him.

Like his predecessor, Milo, too, has changed since he went on his weight loss journey. He fidgets and sniffles whenever he's giving a speech or interview, and his recent success has only caused the tics to worsen. His behavior is getting more erratic and he's starting to look like a Faces of Meth PSA.

2017 onwards

For a brief period, Breitbart was run by naval lieutenant-cum-banker-cum-Warchief of the True Horde-cum-"Student of History"-cum-dictionary definition of "chronic skin condition" Steve Bannon after a stint in the Great Cheeto's administration; first as the last in a long line of campaign managers, than as chief propagandist strategist, a job title that doesn't appear to have formally existed before the 2017 inauguration (the man's very, very busy). Bannon returns to his old haunt as "executive chairman," while editorial duties are held by Andrew's former "glorified personal assistant" Alex Marlow, former Trump ghostwriter Wynton Hall, and Joel B. Pollak, a pleasent-looking gent hailing from apartheid-era Johannesburg who ran a failed Congressional campaign in Illinois against Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky.

The website's content remains largely unchanged, with stories mostly consisting of "brown people are really scary you guys!" and a tabloid-inspired page design that seems to be trying to overwhelm the senses of any passing reader with gaudy shades of flashing orange, black, and blue and headlines in ALL CAPS. Their general modus operandi seems to be doing the precise opposite of what the mainstream news media (or 'MSM', as they so lovingly call them) are doing, like defending Christopher Columbus from globalist/RINO/MSM/Antifa/Democratic/Islamist/transgender besmirchment. An "Italian-American icon" who was not at all a tyrant who helped facilitate the mass genocide of an entire native population after first enslaving them. Their byline seems to be to be unabashadly pro-Donald Trump, far-right wing, and "anti-MSM", basically setting up camp against whatever it is that anyone not following their particular brand of 21st century Western nationalism is for. There's little in the way of the kind of hard-hitting, investigative journalism its namesake seemed to strive for, just a lot of disappointingly unremarkable op-eds, commentary, and blogs with eye-catching and inflammatory headlines whose attached articles' quality ranges from average to painful. In addition to their main website, they have a daily radio news show on SiriusXM Patriot, a line of branded clothing and accessories available through their online store, and a number of downloadable crappy podcasts.

In 2018, after Steve Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as describing Donald Trump as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic" for meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign, Steve Bannon was fired "stepped down" from his head role at Breitbart. Can't have that sort of thing here, no-siree. With no cult of personality to lead the way, Breitbart has begun to experience quite the decline in influence and traffic. Breitbart appears to be descending into the same depths of irrelevance as WND.

Staff

Current contributors

This Is Spinal Tap's "up to eleven"

• James Delingpole: A fervent climate science denier and self-described "incredibly groovy guy" who claims to "write about everything" but mostly writes about how global warming is all a big scam.
• Jack Hadfield: A bonafide Neo-Nazi and Anti-feminist who serves as a contributor for Breitbart Tech.
• Sonnie Johnson: A Tea Party activist and Fox News regular whose sole gimmick seems to be that she's a conservative black woman, a "phenomenon" that is far from that but that she seems to exploit endlessly.
• Raheem Kassam: Ex-Muslim co-editor for the London bureau and Christopher Hitchens fanboy.
• Aaron Klein: Leader of Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau and vociferous anti-Obama crank.
• Michelle Malkin: As a freelancer for almost every online right-wing publication you can think, it's no surprise that Malkin is a semi-regular columnist for Breitbart.
• Joel B. Pollak: A (currently inactive) attorney and former congressional candidate who serves as senior-editor-at-large. He serves as the company's public spokesperson, and writes a blog about the "struggles" of being a right-winger in supposedly decidedly liberal southern California.
• Curt Schilling: A former baseball player for several teams who decided one day to crank his long-stagnant wingnut level up to eleven. After failed careers in video game development and color commentary, the latter after he posted a Twitter meme comparing Islam to Nazism, he's found his true calling as a podcast host and recurring guest contributor to the website's sports section.
• Charlie Spiering: Breitbart's official White House correspondent, who is remarkable insofar that he's a White House correspondent. His coverage is possibly some of the better to be found on the site, though it's still heavily marred by their characteristic far-right slant.
• Thomas D. Williams: A theologian and former Catholic priest who writes on religious topics. Also a former member of the Legion of Christ.

Former contributors

• Jonah Goldberg: He was a columnist for Breitbart in the early-2010's. Left to focus on his work with National Review.
• Sebastian Gorka: Served as a national security analyst. Became a Trump advisor, then went over to Fox News.
• Dana Loesch: She was a writer and editor during Breitbart's early days. Eventually defected to TheBlaze.
• James O'Keefe: Of ACORN fame. Now runs Project Veritas.
• Rand Paul: He used to write for the Washington Times, but the column was moved to Breitbart after a plagiarism stir. Breitbart: Where we don't care where you got the text, only that it stays on-message.
• Ben Shapiro: Used to work for Breitbart before the Bannon et al. faction took hold of the joint.
• Milo Yiannopoulos: Formerly one of the site's all-star contributors, alt-right darling Milo "resigned" (read: was effectively fired through pressure from higher up) after endorsing pederasty on a podcast.

See also

• New tone
• Astroturfing
• Vulgar libertarianism
• Quote mining
• Fake news
• Resett.no

External links

• Breitbart Issues Best Correction Since Forever