Buzzfeed’s Breitbart hitpiece is not what you think it is.

If you read the original Buzzfeed report, or the subsequent descriptions of the report you will find that there are two main takeaways.

1. Milo is a racist, and was used by Breitbart and Steve Bannon to promote racism.
2. Some liberals/leftists were also talking to Milo and must be purged.

Let’s unpack what evidence we are given.

1. Milo solicited advice from racists and fascists when he wrote an article about racists and fascists. This is supported on many occasions through emails, which show up as correspondence between Milo and various people about how Milo should style his article An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt Right. This should not surprise anyone. In An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right, Milo and Allum Bohkari literally told us that they reached out to members of the alt right to write the article. See, they said they tracked down members of the alt-right, and now we have emails confirming that they talked to them. All that proves is that they told the truth in the article. It is worth mentioning that for their article on the subject, An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt Right, was included in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Jealousy List for 2016. Bloomberg Businessweek’s Jealousy list is published every year with content that they wish they had published. The fact that Breitbart, or more specifically Milo and Allum Bokhari, wrote and published an article about the alt-right where they said they corresponded with the alt right should not be surprising when we learned that they corresponded with members of the alt right. Here are other media outlets that go to the alt right to learn about the alt right: Liz Wheeler from One American News Network who interviewed Richard Spencer, Vice interviewed Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, here is a full list of interviews and appearances that Jared Taylor alone has done posted directly on American Renaissance. The Young Turks interviewed Nathan Damigo. Milo and Allum are no more responsible for giving rise to the alt right than any of these other outlets, and they are inherently no more racist than any of these members of other media outlets for doing so.
2. Milo’s passwords were racist. There were two passwords cited. One which was actually Allum saying that one of Milo’s passwords started with the German word Kristal which means crystal glass. It is a word that is most notably in the american public consciousness from Kristalnacht or the night of broken glass when the Nazi’s started breaking into Jewish owned businesses. Many believe that this is when the holocaust began. We don’t know if this account actually existed or if was Milo’s or if Kristalnacht was even the word Allum was actually referring to. All we know is Allum said that there was one which could have been anything. The second is that one of Milo’s other passwords was “LongKnives1290” or something like that. Which probably references the night of Long Knives which was a purge of Nazi leadership in 1934. The 1290 is supposedly a reference to King Edward’s Edict of Expulsion which kicked the Jews out of England. I find no reason to suppose this is the reference because no evidence has been provided for this. The Long Knives part is interesting. Why. The most famous victim of the Night of Long Knives was Ernst Roehm, the most famous gay nazi. Milo has been repeatedly compared to gay nazis before. It happened in an article in the Huffington Post, New York Magazine, and National Review. In the first two, he was specifically compared to Ernst Roehm. In the National Review piece, he was compared to Hugo Boss who was not himself gay but that is the point that the writer tried to make. He might have been trying to make himself the butt of a joke by placing himself in the Night of Long Knives in that password. Also, Milo has Jewish ancestry and is British, so I don’t particularly mind him referencing the Edict of Expulsion. If anything, it just seems like an inside joke, which by the way, makes for a good password.
3. The third part of the piece is the video where Milo is signing America the Beautiful at a Karaoke bar in Texas. There are a lot of problems with the video being used as evidence. One, no where in the video does Milo make a roman salute. Other people do. Two, the people doing the roman salutes are taking videos of themselves while Milo is signing. Three, Milo’s eyes are clearly closed or almost closed for the entirety of the video, so he obviously cannot see them. It is also quite dark, and Milo supposedly cannot see very well. I don’t know if this is true, but he does seem to squint a lot or use eye-glasses that are about as thick as aquaria in other videos. The fourth and final problem is that we already know that Milo has hung out with these people.This excerpt also came from his article. Buzzfeeds hitpiece on Breitbart is actually just a hitpiece on the alt right, who Milo and Allum said repeatedly that were in correspondence with and were invited to “secret dinner parties”. The Buzzfeed report verifies what Milo and Allum said about the Alt Right. They said the alt-right makes holocaust jokes. In the video, we see that happen. To be clear, we have not learned anything new.

The second part of this is about how left-wing journalists at left-wing outlets were (gasp) sharing information with right-wing journalists at right-wing outlets. Excuse me while I collapse on my fainting couch. The horror, the horror. Let’s be clear. Even if Milo is a racist who hung out with other racists because of the information provided in the Buzzfeed publication, the liberal journalists who wrote to him were not privy to that information, so it is unwise to treat them as if they are racist. People are going after two main figures notably David Aurenbach who is a former Slate writer who supposedly gave Milo and Allum hot tips about Wikipedia banning people who have the wrong opinions on Gamergate, or supposedly writing emails about Anita Sarkesian’s love life or a racist friend of Arthur Chu a former Jeopardy winner who turned into a social justice warrior. Neither of those hot-tips were apparently turned into stories on Breitbart. The other targeted person who had the gall to send Milo an email was Mitchell Sunderland who wrote for Vice. Mitchell Sunderland wrote an email to Milo telling him to mock Lindy West for being a fat feminist. Lindy West according to wikipedia is a fat acceptance movement leader. It is almost difficult not to giggle at her. Mitchell Sunderland is the editor of Vice’s broadly section which is devoted to talking about women. The story here is not that Mitchell Sunderland tried to give Milo ideas about Lindy West. The scandal is that Mitchell Sunderland felt that he could not write a piece where he ridiculed a woman when it was his job to write about women. He was summarily fired. This is not the first time that a Vice reporter was fired for criticizing a powerful leftist woman. Who else remembers Michael Tracey getting fired because he proved that Lena Dunham lied about voting for Hillary in the New York Democratic Primary?