Leaked emails show how Milo Yiannopoulos worked with Stephen Bannon, alt-right to transform Breitbart

Before becoming White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon ran Breitbart, a website he said he wanted to be "the platform for the alt-right." Documents and emails obtained by BuzzFeed News show how Breitbart's former tech editor, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, worked with white nationalists to define "alt-right" and set Breitbart on its current course.

With Bannon back at Breitbart after his stint in the White House, Yiannopoulos is Breitbart's most famous alumnus, having left the site in February. BuzzFeed News reveals several noteworthy tidbits about him — like Yiannopoulos' penchant for using Nazi-related passwords (one started with "LongKnives1290," another "Kristall") — as well as emails between Bannon and Yiannopoulos, including one where Bannon admonishes Yiannopoulos for not doing his part to "help save western civilization."

BuzzFeed News goes in-depth on how Yiannopoulos and his deputy/frequent ghostwriter Allum Bokhari compiled an article ultimately titled "An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right." Looking for advice and information on the alt-right's mindset, Yiannopoulos emailed Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, who wrote about being a white nationalist on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, and Devin Saucier, who helps edit the white nationalist online magazine American Renaissance. After Bokhari wrote the first draft, Yiannopoulos wrote to Saucier, saying, "I think you'll like what I'm cooking up." Saucier replied: "I look forward to it. Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it."

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In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Yiannopoulos said he finds "humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about," but "as someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms." For more on Breitbart, the alt-right, and a video of Yiannopoulos singing "America the Beautiful" at a Dallas bar as white nationalist Richard Spencer and others "sieg heil," visit BuzzFeed News.