Alternative Media, Alternative Election: The populist influence of Breitbart on the political climate of the USA

By Jesse Aaron Young

500395844

17/03/2017

BA (Hons) Journalism and Media Studies

UXS 3090

Declaration

‘I hereby declare that this dissertation is my own work in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the BA (Hons) Journalism and Media Studies.’

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Date …………….……………………

Word Count: 10946

Permissions

‘I hereby give permission for my dissertation to be used for photocopying and

teaching purposes at Bangor University in subsequent years.’

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List of figures

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the recent populist upheaval in western politics

from the perspective of Breitbart News, a self-proclaimed outlet of alternative media.

Following the company’s influence from the relatively confined scope of the gaming

industry to the White House and the Trump presidency, the dissertation demonstrates

the effectiveness of Breitbart’s tactics in using, and manipulating, the community-

based nature of the modern internet. This is shown by the comparison of existing

studies on movements such as GamerGate and anti-vaxxerism with Web 2.0 and

populist theory. Observing the editorial output of Breitbart and actions taken by

affiliated individuals, the dissertation finds that by deepening social divisions and

perpetuating conspiracy theories, Breitbart attained exponential growth as a company.

Their rhetoric rebuffed moderate voices and attracted extremists, creating a

radicalised community that harassed dissenting parties. They served as a self-

proclaimed platform for the controversial Alt Right political movement. They later

achieved greater influence and legitimacy through their involvement with the Trump

campaign. Demonstrating instances of Breitbart’s direct impact on US politics during

the Trump presidency, the paper concludes that a form of Breitbart’s methods must be

adopted by activists, politicians, and the media at large, to effectively counter the

populist influence of alternative media.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my family, the members of which are too numerous and crazy to list

here, for their constant support and encouragement; my mother, Julie Donnelly,

especially. My teachers at Bangor University—particularly Andrew McStay, Vian

Bakir, John Finnegan and my supervisor, Jordan Glendenning—have had great

influence on my growth throughout my studies, culminating in this dissertation.

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter one: Alternative Movement .............................................................................. 5

What is GamerGate? .................................................................................................. 5

GamerGate vs. Mainstream Media .......................................................................... 10

Chapter two: Alternative Media ................................................................................... 13

Opportunity .............................................................................................................. 15

Motive ...................................................................................................................... 17

Means ....................................................................................................................... 18

Chapter Three: Alternative Politics.............................................................................. 25

Milo Yiannopoulos and the Alt Right ...................................................................... 27

Stephen K. Bannon and the Alt Right ...................................................................... 30

Chapter four: Alternative Election ............................................................................... 33

The Connections ...................................................................................................... 35

The Campaign .......................................................................................................... 37

The Presidency ......................................................................................................... 41

Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 44

Reference List .............................................................................................................. 46

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Introduction

Western politics are in a state of populist upheaval. This is clear in the growth

and successes of populist movements in the UK, the USA, France, Austria and the

Netherlands. It is not a sudden development, but the result of a slow build of

resentment between ideologies. This resentment has been deliberately fuelled by

online publications and communities that nurture extremism. Such publications often

refer to themselves as an ‘alternative’ to the ‘mainstream’ media, defining themselves

not by what they are about, but what they are against. These alternative media outlets

ply their trade in demonizing the monolithic ‘Other’. They leverage misogyny,

xenophobia, and other forms of prejudice under the guise of the ‘anti-establishment’.

Pushing conspiracy theories, encouraging harassment, and making clever use of the

medium of the internet to accomplish both, these alternative media outlets have laid

the foundation for the current nature of western political discourse.

It is important to clarify that not all alternative media is of a culturally

regressive nature. The term has previously been used for outlets that have provided

repressed minorities a voice, and aided social movements with goals of equal

treatment. This paper does not aim to belittle the accomplishments of such

movements, nor does it aim to inherently condemn the anti-establishment. A key

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aspect of alternative media, as it is used here, is the commandeering of anti-

establishment ideas as part of a populist strategy.

There are conflicting views on the definition of ‘populism’, and much study

has been dedicated to the subject, most of which falls outside the scope of this

dissertation. Populism is here discussed in terms of its divisive elements, namely in its

division of the ‘people’ and the ‘establishment’, however defined (Ostiguy and

Roberts, 2016, pp. 25–26; Pantelimon, 2014; Touraine, 1988, p. 117).

The purpose of this paper is to outline and explore the tactics of self-

proclaimed alternative media, the personal cost of these tactics, and their contribution

to the increasingly polarised western political environment. For such a far-reaching

subject, it is necessary to narrow the focus of study to significant exemplars. Among

these, the case of Breitbart News’ ties to the Trump presidency is particularly worthy

of examination. ‘Breitbart News’ (or Breitbart) has had an unprecedented level of

influence in the Trump White House. Their CEO was recruited onto the Trump

campaign team, attained leadership among White House staff and, for a time, stood on

the National Security Council. Breitbart’s largest stakeholder also played an

instrumental role in the Trump campaign. Breitbart’s reporting has, allegedly, directly

influenced presidential actions.

This is of concern, as Breitbart is a news outlet with an openly hostile editorial

tone towards the mainstream press, women, and minorities, and which is lauded by

avowed white supremacists and neo-Nazis. It has a large and dedicated audience—not

in spite of the previously stated facts, but in part because of them. Breitbart combines

populist strategy with an intimate understanding of how that strategy applies to the

community-based structure of the internet. Their success is partially due to their

manipulation of reactionary and conspiratorial movements, such as the one that

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emerged from the ‘GamerGate’ (or GG) controversy in 2014. Their methods are not

without precedent; for example, remarkable similarities can be seen in anti-science,

anti-intellectual, ‘natural medicine’ organisations that perpetuated the ‘anti-

vaccination’ (or anti-vaxxer) movement.

Even before considering the cumulative effect of similar publications, the

emergence of Breitbart as a significant political force in the United States is of

worldwide concern. Only in understanding the methods of alternative media will it be

possible to counter their negative influence. Therefore, this dissertation combines the

study of several academic papers on GamerGate with existing studies on the anti-

vaxxer movement, Web 2.0 theory, and studies of populism. Additionally, the paper

includes several excerpts from Breitbart stories, to demonstrate populist techniques

manifest in the publication’s editorial style. The dissertation is also a study of the

reported words and actions of key individuals with connections to Breitbart and the

Trump presidency. This research, considered together, provides a through-line in the

growth of one of the most influential outlets in current USA politics.

By applying a populist business model to online reporting, Breitbart has

helped to polarise, and radicalise, western political discourse. This dissertation shows

that their influence can be countered by likewise understanding and leveraging the

community-based power of the modern internet.

The dissertation is structured as follows:

The first chapter outlines the circumstances of GamerGate, focusing on

aspects of the movement that put its members at odds with the mainstream media. The

chapter then details how the conflict escalated, leaving GG members susceptible to

Breitbart’s influence.

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The second chapter establishes Breitbart’s similarity to GG, and its rapid

growth in readership and audience engagement. Then, it discusses Breitbart’s

audience-building methods, using their relationship with GG as an example, the anti-

vaxxer movement as a point of comparison, and Web 2.0 as a theory base.

The third chapter examines Breitbart’s relationship with the ‘Alt Right’, a

fringe political movement that contains white supremacists and neo-Nazis, which has

risen to prominence in recent years. Detailing the Alt Right connections of two key

Breitbart figures, the chapter will show how Breitbart used populist principles to

further radicalise their audience.

The fourth chapter shows the financial and interpersonal connections between

Breitbart and Donald J. Trump. After examining the populist strategy of these parties

in the 2016 American presidential election, the chapter concludes with an overview of

the actions taken so far by the Trump presidency, the elevation of Breitbart as a

publication, and the influence of Breitbart and related parties in the White House.

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Chapter one: Alternative Movement

The details pertaining to the events of Gamergate have been discussed in detail

by several papers (Braithwaite, 2016; Mortensen, 2016; Perreault and Vos, 2016;

Chess and Shaw, 2015; Massanari, 2015), but it is necessary to give a brief account

here. In doing so, this chapter explores professed GamerGaters’ motives, the

communities in which they gathered, and the organisational structure of their

movement. After establishing these facts, this chapter demonstrates how the

reactionary, defensive nature of GamerGate caused its members to disengage from the

influence of the mainstream press, and open themselves up to the influence of

alternative media outlets.

What is GamerGate?

The term GamerGate (GG) was popularised on the 27th of August 2014, when

actor Adam Baldwin used it in the form of a hashtag (#Gamergate) on Twitter. The

tweet, since deleted, linked to videos attacking independent game developer Zoe

Quinn (Perreault and Vos, 2016, p. 8; Chess and Shaw, 2015, p. 210). Although

Quinn had been the subject of harassment for over a year, due the release of her game

Depression Quest (Parkin, 2014), the videos Baldwin linked referred to comparatively

fresh accusations made by a jilted ex-boyfriend of Quinn’s. The allegations, made on

a blog post that was shared widely (Gjoni, 2014), included claims that Quinn had slept

with five gaming journalists for favourable reviews, most notably Nathan Grayson of

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the gaming website Kotaku (Perreault and Vos, 2016, p. 2; Chess and Shaw, 2015, p.

210). The favourable reviews did not exist (Mortensen, 2016, p. 5), and the accuser,

Eron Gjoni, later retracted the claim (ibid., p. 6). In spite of this, the accusations

persisted, and remained an important rallying cry for the movement that formed under

the GamerGate banner (ibid.).

The persistence of the Quinn accusations is explained in part by the phrase

“ethics in games journalism”, which became intrinsically tied into the GG rhetoric

(Tsukayama, 2014). The idea of a developer sleeping with a games journalist for a

favourable review elicited an emotionally charged response that surpassed the need

for truth or accuracy. The campaign “defied rational argument and criticism”

(Mortensen, 2016, p. 3), and the altogether vague notion of ethics in games journalism

appealed to moral outrage while simultaneously resisting direct scrutiny.

The movement was largely formed of anonymous people, with no official

leader, quantifiable goals, or even a coherent structure (Chess and Shaw, 2015, p.

210). The result was what Mortensen terms a “swarm” mentality, which “allowed all

participants to determine their own motivation” (Mortensen, 2016, p. 7). This

leaderless state is touted to this day by the subreddit KotakuInAction, one of the most

popular GG hubs, which lists its over 78,000 subscribers as “leaders of Gamergate”

(reddit, 2017). These factors made GG difficult to comprehensively report on, a

problem that would come to be exacerbated by the many stories of harassment that

came to be associated with the movement.

The harassment linked to Gamergate most commonly involved venomous

comments over platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, often including threats of

rape, death, or both (Dockterman, 2014; Edwards, 2014). This tactic was augmented

by doxing, meaning to “search for and publish private or identifying information

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about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent”

(Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.). This method gave an element of reality to what might

otherwise be perceived as empty threats.

Subjects of GG harassment typically fell into two categories: Outspoken

women, and media outlets that supported their work. Gender politics proved to be

integral to the GG narrative, which Perrault and Vos say would otherwise have been

“a classic journalistic ethical controversy” (Perreault and Vos, 2016, p. 2).

GamerGaters were invested in a hobby that was culturally shifting towards a wider

audience (Chess and Shaw, 2015, p. 216). Acting defensively, GG framed their

conflict in stark terms of identity, drawing a distinction between themselves and the

vast Other (Massanari, 2015, p. 5); they considered themselves to be ‘true gamers’

and non-traditional gamers (women) to be ‘outsiders’ (Braithwaite, 2016, p. 4).

Socially progressive criticism of gaming, especially of a feminist nature, was

designated a threat to the gamer identity and “actual evidence of conspiracy” (Chess

and Shaw, 2015, p. 201). Those that espoused progressive views were pejoratively

labelled ‘Social Justice Warriors’, or ‘SJWs’ (Braithwaite, 2016, p. 1). In GG’s

rhetoric these SJWs were not acting independently, but were “part of an insidious plot

to destroy gaming entirely” (Braithwaite, 2016, p. 6).

GG’s choice of harassment targets is reflective of this tribalistic mentality, and

betrays the comparative insignificance of the ‘ethics in games journalism’ credo. The

three most prominent examples were Zoe Quinn, feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, and

game developer Brianna Wu (Mortensen, 2016, p. 7). All three were advocates for a

socially progressive agenda. All were women. None were games journalists. The

more self-aware GG followers, in an attempt to distance themselves from these

figures, gave them the dismissive title of ‘Literally Who’ (Singal, 2014). This attempt

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at deflection does not hold up to scrutiny. After the alleged incident that sparked the

GamerGate controversy, a study commissioned by Newsweek found that, in tweets

made with the GamerGate hashtag over the six-week period after its popularisation,

the conversation revolved around Quinn and not the journalists to whom ‘ethics in

gaming journalism’ would logically apply (Wofford, 2014). Quinn had been

mentioned fourteen times as much as the most prominent journalist involved, Nathan

Grayson (ibid.; see Figure 1).

As the graph also displays, GamerGate mentions of Sarkeesian and Wu far

exceeded those of Quinn. In observing this, Wofford of Newsweek noted that GG had

accused neither of any ethical violation; they were simply outspoken critics of the

movement (Wofford, 2014). Nonetheless, harassment escalated to the level of terrorist

threats, as was the case when Utah State University enlisted Sarkeesian to speak on

their campus. They received an anonymous email which threatened “the deadliest

shooting in American History” unless the event was called off, with detailed

descriptions of the planned attack (Wingfield, 2014; Tassi, 2014a). The talk was

cancelled. Through a combination of threats and doxing, Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu

were each driven from their homes on separate occasions (Totilo, 2014; Robertson,

2014; Edwards, 2014; see Figure 2). Two other women, games journalist Jenn Frank

and game designer Mattie Brice, left the industry entirely due to harassment (Phillips,

Figure 1: Statistics showing mentions of individuals related to GG during the first six weeks of the movement (Wofford, 2014)

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2016, p. 109). Even female scholars who wrote on gaming were targeted, including

Mia Consalvo, Adrienne Shaw and Torill Elvira Mortensen (Mortensen, 2016, pp. 2–

3).

Understandably, these events received significant media coverage that

expanded beyond gaming-specific outlets (Alexander, 2014; Brooker, 2014; Chu,

2014; O’Rourke, 2014). GamerGate was repeatedly mentioned side-by-side with

harassment, and GG followers fought against what they perceived, through

disassociation, to be wilful ignorance and unjust treatment. In turn, their protests were

met with little sympathy; they were disorganised, their stated purposes were evidently

disingenuous, and their rhetoric was laced with prejudice. In attempting to report on

Figure 2: Twitter threats, backed by doxing, directed at Brianna Wu (Totilo, 2014)

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this confusing, self-contradictory, and conspiracy-minded movement, the mainstream

media became part of the monolithic Other that GG considered their adversary.

GamerGate vs. Mainstream Media

Two months after GamerGate began, reporter Jesse Singal wrote about the

journalistic difficulties of talking about GamerGate: “Whenever I [write about GG], I

find that gamergaters are unhappy with my representation of their movement; they

feel I am fundamentally misunderstanding it” (Singal, 2014). In an attempt to clarify

his understanding, Singal visited the GamerGate subreddit KotakuInAction and made

a screenshot of the six most popular posts at the time (ibid.; see Figure 3). A sample

size of six is not in itself a compelling study, but when considered next to other

research, these post titles provide context for understanding GG’s enmity with the

mainstream media.

Figure 3: Screenshot of the top six posts of KotakuInAction on 19 October 2014 (Singal, 2014)

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The general tone of the posts is defensive, negative, and focused almost

entirely on parties considered antagonistic to the movement. The supposedly

irrelevant Wu is, like in the Newsweek statistics (see Figure 1), the most popular point

of discussion. Sarkeesian also features (under her twitter username, @femfreq), as

does the broader antagonising force of SJWs. Even the name KotakuInAction is a

literal product of finding identity in common opposition (being named after the

gaming journalism website ‘Kotaku’). GamerGaters considered themselves a

marginalised group. Similarly to how some marginalised groups use

‘counterknowledge’ conspiracy theories as a coping mechanism against persecution,

GG resorted to conspiracy to cope with perceived persecution (Fiske and Hancock,

2016, p. 191; Chess and Shaw, 2015, pp. 216–217). They were largely privileged, but

saw themselves as cultural outsiders due to their hobbies being “marked by the

dominant culture as odd or weird” (Massanari, 2015, p. 4). As self-defined underdogs,

they blamed individuals and groups for the widespread changes to gaming culture

(Chess and Shaw, 2015, p. 215), and the notion that they, themselves, were

persecutors, was met with scepticism and vitriol (Massanari, 2015, p. 4).

This constructed sense of victimisation explains how post titles (see Figure 2)

such as “we’re not the only ones who have been affected by SJW’s[sic]” could coexist

alongside accusations that the opposition was fraudulently promoting a victimisation

narrative (“ … avalanches of threats she pretends to have”). Harassment of women in

the gaming industry, the primary product of the movement, was incompatible with

that same movement’s idealistic vision. The mounting evidence of the reality of this

harassment was countered with yet more conspiracy. The term ‘professional victim’

was deployed against targets of GG harassment, implying their claims were

exaggerated or fabricated for the sake of wealth and attention (Robertson, 2017;

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Mortensen, 2016, p. 16). People like Quinn and Sarkeesian were supposedly secretly

rich, a theory that invoked ideas of a class dispute (Mortensen, 2016, p. 16). To justify

its existence, GG created a world of myth, filled its pantheon with ‘SJWs’, and

centred its attention on the very figures it professed to ignore.

The GG obsession with their own perceived antagonists extended to their

accomplishments. As news outlets inside and outside the gaming sphere began to

report on the movement in what are colloquially termed the ‘gamers are dead’ articles

(Goodchild, 2014), GG responded with a weaponised form of crowdsourcing. They

coordinated mass emails to advertisers, pressuring them to withdraw partnership from

offending publications (Tassi, 2014b); the post in Singal’s screenshot which reads

“KEEP EMAILING ABOUT BULLYING” (see Figure 3) is likely referring to this

practice. In some cases they were successful, and these instances were lauded as

cultural victories (Yiannopoulos, 2014a).

GamerGaters routinely disassociated themselves from harassment, while also

claiming responsibility for any resulting developments they deemed to be positive

(Mortensen, 2016, p. 8). Negative media coverage was thus deemed inaccurate,

unfair, and even the product of collusion (ibid., p. 5). By contesting the most basic

realities of the claims against them, GG perpetuated conflict and ironically served to

solidify harassment as a defining aspect of their movement. As their antagonistic

relationship with the mainstream media continued to intensify, so did feelings of

disenengagement and distrust. As one of the top post in Signal’s screenshot phrases it,

GamerGate caused many to lose “all faith in the main stream media” (see Figure 3).

As the next chapter shall explore, the conflicts stoked by GamerGate made many of

its followers particularly susceptible to media outlets that catered to their outsider

status.

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Chapter two: Alternative Media

“There’s no hiring bias against women in tech, they just suck at interviews”

(Yiannopoulos, 2016a). Such reads a headline on Breitbart News, an online

publication that provides “an alternative source for news” (Steel, 2016). With the

headline’s inflammatory reference to obvious sexist tropes, a casual reader may

assume the ensuing article to be a satire piece. It is not: proceeding to quote a “new

report by an interview matchmaking service” at length, the article makes the case that,

“to the shock of the feminists who organized it”, the report proved “that being part of

an allegedly oppressed group is actually an advantage” (Yiannopoulos, 2016a). This

article is not an outlier but a part of an ongoing narrative pushed by Breitbart and

similar publications, and one that is not limited to women. “Why white people seek

black privilege”, reads one Breitbart headline (Shapiro, 2015). “Lesbian bridezillas

bully bridal shop owner over religious beliefs”, reads another (Berry, 2014). Breitbart

interprets the concept of ‘progressiveness’ as a marginalisation of the traditional order

of things, and opposes it accordingly (Sorrentino, 2014). It is not hard to see the

commonalities between Breitbart and GamerGate, and indeed they distinguished

themselves as “the news site most in favor [sic] of GG” (Mortensen, 2016, p. 2).

Breitbart went beyond the capacity of traditional reporting, however. GamerGate was

a movement without focus or a sympathetic media voice, and Breitbart provided the

former along with the latter. This chapter will establish Breitbart’s success as the

result of such practices. While few studies currently touch on this specific

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relationship, remarkable similarities can be found in the relationship between

alternative medicine outlets and the anti-vaccination movement. Referring to Web 2.0

theory, and using anti-vaccination examples as a frame of reference, this chapter will

discuss how Breitbart successfully leveraged the GamerGate movement to their own

ends.

In August 2012, two years before GG, Breitbart CEO Steven K. Bannon

declared that Breitbart would rule the right-wing conversation: “We are going to be

the Huffington Post of the right” (Rainey, 2012). On the same day, the Los Angeles

Times published June statistics for the unique visitors of a selection of conservative-

leaning websites. Breitbart stood at 1.1 million (Los Angeles Times, 2012). By

January 2016, the site was reporting 17 million unique visitors per month (Farhi,

2016). From the 13th of May to the 13th of June, 2016, Breitbart was ranked first in

social media interactions among all English-language publishers of political content

(Duffy, 2016; see Figure 4). In under four years, their readership had grown

exponentially in size and engagement.

Figure 4: Statistics on social media interactions for political content in May/June 2016 (Duffy, 2016)

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To help understand how Breitbart was able to garner such a large and

dedicated audience, this chapter focuses on the nature of Breitbart’s relationship with

GamerGate. This will show, in microcosm, Breitbart’s tactics—particularly, their

effective use of the internet in its current, community-based form, otherwise referred

to as Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). Breitbart’s methods will be illustrated, alongside its

predecessors, in the form of opportunity, motive, and means.

Opportunity

Organisations with an anti-vaccination agenda saw their break into mainstream

audiences when Andrew Wakefield published a study linking vaccines with autism

(Wakefield et al., 1998). This study was almost immediately contested (Rao and

Andrade, 2011; Taylor et al., 1999), eventually retracted under a ruling that Wakefield

had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” (Novella, 2010), and was further refuted as

“based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud” (Deer, 2011b, 2011a; Godlee,

2011). However, these developments proved ineffective in impeding the narrative

instigated by Wakefield; with the aid of celebrity voices such as Jenny McCarthy, the

support of natural health sites, and extensive media coverage, the anti vaxxer

movement achieved—and maintains—widespread proliferation (Kata, 2012, p. 3780).

GamerGate proved to be a turning point in Breitbart’s editorial attitude

towards gaming culture, particularly that of Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos. In

September 2014, in what would later be described by the Anti-Defamation league

(2017) as the moment he “rose to prominence”, Yiannopoulos wrote an article titled

“Feminist Bullies Tearing the Video Game Industry Apart” (Yiannopoulos, 2014b).

“It’s easy to mock video gamers as dorky loners in yellowing underpants”, he began,

“in previous columns, I’ve done it myself. Occasionally at length.” Yiannopoulos

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indeed had a record of acerbic commentary on video games; four months before, he

had scapegoated games in the Isla Vista killings (Yiannopoulos, 2014c). His change

of heart, as he explained, was due to “an army of sociopathic feminist programmers

and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, …

terrorising the entire community” (Yiannopoulos, 2014b). The feelings of persecution

that characterised GG were a perfect fit for the Breitbart sales pitch, and were directly

incorporated into their message. Yiannopoulos’ article was for those he termed as

“marginalised, troubled people who have found it difficult to manage their lives in

mainstream society” (ibid.).

Yiannopoulos went on to write several articles on GG over the ensuing year

(Yiannopoulos, 2014f, 2014a, 2014e, 2014d, 2015b, 2015a). The GG term ‘SJW’ was

embraced, incorporated into the Breitbart lexicon, and conflated with the “liberal

media” (Yiannopoulos, 2014a) and the “authoritarian left” (Yiannopoulos, 2015b).

The culmination of this trend occurred in October 2015, when Breitbart announced a

new subdivision of the site, ‘Breitbart Tech’, and promoted Yiannopoulos to

‘Technology Editor’ (Yiannopoulos and Dulis, 2015). The leading statement reads,

“Technology and gaming journalism is sick, but Breitbart has the medicine”. The

accompanying image (Garrison, 2015; see Figure 5) depicts Yiannopoulos wielding a

sword labelled ‘truth’, fighting a monster labelled ‘SJWs’, along with several other

labels outlining concepts Breitbart opposes, such as the ‘wage gap myth’ and

‘diversity quotas’.

Where Wakefield’s fraudulent study stigmatised autism, GamerGate

stigmatised feminism. Where alternative medicine sites took advantage of concerned

parents, Breitbart took advantage of gamers that saw themselves as under attack. Both

used the fear elicited by their respective events as a foundation for self-promotion.

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Motive

Much of the driving force behind the anti-vaccination movement was in

organisations that had a vested interest in discouraging mainstream medical treatment.

Kata (2012, p. 3780) observes that, as well as promoting irresponsible treatment

methods, “Prominent ‘natural’ health sites … have large sections with dubious

information on vaccines”. By denigrating their direct competition, these sites are

exercising good business practice.

The incentive for Breitbart’s pro-GamerGate stance was more direct: as an

alternative media outlet, their brand of news was itself the product. Their anti-

mainstream stance may have had its ideological roots in the site’s leadership (Former

CEO Stephen K. Bannon described himself and Breitbart as “virulently anti-

establishment” (Farhi, 2016)), but their business strategy had proven strengths in its

Figure 5: Illustration that accompanied Breitbart Tech announcement (Garrison, 2015)

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populist appeal. Weyland defines populist strategy with two applicable characteristics:

Appealing to a mass of followers who “feel left out” (Weyland, 1999, p. 381), and

reaching these followers “in a direct, quasi-personal manner that bypasses established

intermediary organizations” (ibid.). In his latter point, the importance of Breitbart’s

undermining of the mainstream media can be seen not only as good business, but a

specific appeal to a target audience that identified as marginalised.

Although Weyland specifies “a personal leader” as an important part of his

definition (Weyland, 1999, p. 381), Pruchnic nonetheless identifies Breitbart’s

approach to news as “a populist messaging strategy” (Pruchnic, 2012, p. 239). He

specifies Breitbart’s tactical use of scepticism, as well as their oppositional political

rhetoric, as populist tactics (ibid.). Even without a unifying figurehead, Breitbart

borrowed from populist strategy to further their financial and political goals. This

extended to how they effectively used the internet in reaching their intended audience;

as Pantelimon (2014) observes, “the use of new techniques and of the media is one of

the defining characteristics of the new populism”.

Means

To fully explore how alternative medicine and alternative news exerted

influence on their respective audiences, it is necessary to clarify the term ‘Web 2.0’.

Web 2.0 was first defined by media expert Tim O’Reilly as a “a turning point for the

web” in which larger corporations lost their monopoly over internet-based content,

and users were empowered (O’Reilly, 2005). Throughout his clarification of the term,

O’Reilly references several principles upon which Web 2.0 operates, which shall be

henceforth summarised as ‘openness’, ‘user participation’, and ‘network effects’.

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Breitbart, like their alternative medicine counterparts, exerted effective

influence on their active audience by focusing on the principle of openness, “an

increasingly valued attribute which may include a degree of distrust of authority”

(Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher, 2012, p. 3736). In other words, by providing detailed

and vivid information not made readily available elsewhere—such as in the

mainstream news media or in government publications—they were able to evoke

suspicion of their competition while promoting their own narrative. Yiannopoulos, for

example, publicised a mailing list of writers for various gaming journalism outlets

under the title “Exposed: The Secret Mailing List of the Gaming Journalism Elite”

(Yiannopoulos, 2014f). Quoting various journalists expressing sympathy for Quinn

and intent to support her work, the article “confirmed what GG saw as collusion”

(Mortensen, 2016, p. 5). Breitbart worked to validate and reinforce GG’s suspicion of

mainstream outlets, while building trust and dedication to their own brand. As this

chapter shall make clear, this developed into an active working relationship, where

Breitbart was able to mobilise their growing fanbase in the GG community.

Anti-vaxxerism thrived, and continues to thrive, in communities based on user

participation. Larger anti-vaccination organisations have been shown to “actively use

Web 2.0 by coordinating their presence” in popular forms of social media (Betsch et

al., 2012, p. 3729). By making effective use of these platforms, they helped to

generate more “vivid, emotionally arousing and personal” content opposing

vaccination (ibid., p. 3731). Such content represents the changing power dynamic that

Web 2.0 has enabled; “power has shifted from doctors to patients, the legitimacy of

science is questioned, and expertise is redefined” (Kata, 2012, p. 3778). Breitbart

provided similarly engaging and emotional stories, the spread of which was

perpetuated by the structure of popular GamerGate subcommunities.

20

The GG audience was especially attuned to user-participatory environments

(Mortensen, 2016, p. 8). Massanari (2015, p. 1) refers to their hubs as “toxic

technocultures”, and Mortensen (2016, p. 3) notes their susceptibility for being

“utilized to create echo chambers and to silence opposing voices”. She gives the

example of the message board 8chan, where “sexual or racist slurs were common and

swearing close to mandatory” in an environment that fostered toxic attitudes (ibid., p.

9). On Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan, anecdotal evidence is upheld by a system in which

“uninteresting information is supposed to scroll off” (ibid., p. 10), meaning that

personal stories that support a popular agenda will remain, while corrections will

swiftly disappear. Mortensen summarises the result:

“The selectively ephemeral nature of chans supports the attitudes and feelings

of the members, rather than the boring or even unpleasant facts they might

want to ignore, and the medium itself supports and strengthens any existing

echo chamber effect in the community” (Mortensen, 2016, p. 10).

As people have a predilection to “follow the lead of someone with whom they

have more of a connection” (Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher, 2012, p. 3737),

Breitbart’s promotion of the GG victimisation narrative stories was an effective

method for influencing opinion. By publishing anecdotes of supposed SJW

persecution, they formed a relationship with their audience akin to a personal bond.

The conspiratorial nature of these stories could, paradoxically, be taken as more

authoritative due to “the inherent credibility of the ‘anti-authority’” (ibid., p.3735).

According to Kata, the conspiracy theories that alternative medicine outlets helped

perpetrate allowed the unification of “an amorphous group holding diverse views”

under the ethos of “an opposition to vaccines” (Kata, 2012, p. 3778). In the same way,

Breitbart’s oppositional and vivid storytelling was well-matched to GG’s espoused

crusade against ‘SJWs’. Where with anti-vaccination stories, patients were the victims

and vaccination the assailant (Betsch et al., 2012, p. 3728), with GG the same was

21

emotionally true of gamers and feminism respectively. By providing provocative

stories involving GG antagonists (Bokhari, 2016; Yiannopoulos, 2015c, 2015d,

2014d, 2014e) while also belittling and casting doubt on claims of harassment

(Yiannopoulos, 2016b; see Figure 6), Breitbart tapped into a user-participatory

environment that would share and support their content uncritically. Inversely,

developments in the GG story that negatively impacted the movement’s credibility

were simply ignored. Long after the accusations against Zoe Quinn were soundly

debunked, Breitbart’s repetition of GamerGate accusations remained unchecked by

facts, as is demonstrated by the opening statement to one such story on Quinn:

“A failed game designer and professional victim most famous for cheating on

her boyfriend and inspiring a year-long hate campaign against video game

enthusiasts …” (Yiannopoulos, 2015e)

Figure 6: Headline and accompanying image of a Breitbart story on harrassment (Yiannopoulos, 2016b)

22

Anti-vaccination proponents and sites like Breitbart were effective not only in

aspects of Web 2.0 that they utilised, but also in aspects they helped impede. Such is

the case with the network effects of Web 2.0, wherein information is more likely to be

trustworthy when refined and aggregated by communities representing a diversity of

thought (Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher, 2012, p. 3737). Breitbart undermined this

effect through bullying, and the use of divisive rhetoric (Mortensen, 2016, p. 13). In

the same way, the polarised nature of the vaccination debate, which alternative

medicine outlets helped perpetuate, resulted in a “fragmentation” of online

communities that discussed the issue, with any given community likely exhibiting a

limited range of opinion (Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher, 2012, p. 3737). Kata states

that the anti-vaccination movement “[took] advantage of this milieu to disseminate its

messages”, using tactics such as “skewing science, shifting hypotheses, censoring

dissent, and attacking critics” to further discourage network effects (Kata, 2012, p.

3778). Looking at Breitbart from this perspective, it is apparent that their prejudiced

language and bullying tactics had a sifting effect on their audience, repelling

moderates while further radicalising those who remained in their echo chamber

(Mortensen, 2016, p. 13).

In the polarised environment surrounding GG, Breitbart actively encouraged

the GG practice of doxing people who spoke out against the movement. They worked

in tandem. GG used doxing to obtain information on their critics, which Breitbart

would publish along with language designed to smear the character of the dox victim.

Then, the article would be circulated in the GG community. One such critic, Sarah

Nyberg, describes her experience of being doxed as follows:

23

“I watched them, live, pore through reams of private information in an

attempt to discover who I was. Being trans made me particularly vulnerable to

having my private information used in a campaign to terrorize me. They found

my deadname, eventually, but only by combing through the obituary of my

mother” (Nyberg, 2015; see Figure 7).

Using this information as well as forum posts from Nyberg’s teenage years,

Yiannopoulos published a story on Breitbart titled “Leading GamerGate Critic Sarah

Nyberg Claimed To Be A Pedophile [sic], Apologised For White Nationalism”

(Yiannopoulos, 2015f). The article openly cited the leaks as revealing “Nyberg’s

disturbing past”, spending almost 3000 words combing through the chatlogs at length.

This incident is one of the more unpleasant manifestations of Breitbart’s tactics,

which at times came at the expense of vulnerable individuals.

As Breitbart continued to denigrate minorities and smear Others, it garnered a

fanatical audience that could be weaponized according to their will. This culminated

in a situation where harassment could be directed and stoked by a mere mention on

Breitbart’s website. For example, the release of the 2016 Ghostbusters film was met

with a scathing review from Yiannopoulos, who used the film as a springboard to

Figure 7: Anonymous posters coordinate to dox Sarah Nyberg (Nyberg, 2015)

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attack “the lies of third-wave feminism” (Yiannopoulos, 2016c), and singled out the

character played by actress Leslie Jones as a “a black character worthy of a minstrel

show” (ibid.). Shortly after, Jones began to receive racist abuse over Twitter (Silman,

2016). The Telegraph (2016) reports that Yiannopoulos (under his Twitter username,

@nero, which at the time had more than 338,000 followers) helped lead this abuse.

The harassment escalated when he became personally involved, messaging Jones

directly and retweeting pictures of fake inflammatory tweets made in her name

(Silman, 2016). This incident resulted in Yiannopoulos being permanently suspended

from Twitter (ibid.), but his tenure at Breitbart continued. Breitbart reported his

removal as evidence of “unashamed bias” (Kew, 2016), and noted that the resulting

#FreeMilo hashtag had begun to trend on Twitter (ibid.). The relationship between

Breitbart and GamerGate may have been beneficial to both sides, but as the GG

zeitgeist passed, Breitbart retained an uncritical audience that would voluntarily

reinforce their abusive means.

The techniques discussed in this chapter represent how populist methods can

be adapted by media organisations who position themselves against the establishment.

It also shows how Web 2.0 principles can be manipulated to gain profit and influence

while smearing political adversaries. In their closing remarks on the anti-vaccination

movement, Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher offer what simultaneously serves as a

poignant summary of Breitbart’s influence over GamerGate, and a proposal for how

such methods may be countered:

“While there will always be a subset of people whose beliefs … are resistant

to change, those who leverage the user participation, openness, and network

effects of Web 2.0 to the fullest extent will be most likely to reach and convince

the larger majority of people” (Witteman and Zikmund-Fisher, 2012, p. 3738).

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Chapter Three: Alternative Politics

With Breitbart’s use of nakedly bigoted language and logic, it is of little

surprise that the website attracted followers of the Alt Right, an “openly racist, anti-

Semitic and xenophobic” (Geoforum, 2017, p. 1) political movement consisting of

“an anonymous army of trolls” (Malmgren, 2017, p. 9). Many of their followers

identify as white nationalists and neo-Nazis, but they have distinguished themselves

by “a mix of shock tactics, targeted harassment, outright calls to violence, and a savvy

understanding of social media” (ibid.). The Alt Right consists of several factions and

lacks a concrete political platform, but its followers are united in their opposition to

the elite (ibid., p. 11). The aim of this chapter is to show how Breitbart proved to be a

valuable ally to the Alt Right, massaging their extremist ideas into a more palatable

and relatable message, and how this proved to be a radicalising influence on

Breitbart’s own audience.

White supremacists have become increasingly pervasive on the internet, as is

evidenced by Berger (2016, p. 2), who found that American white nationalist twitter

accounts saw their followers increase by 600% from 2012 to 2016, a period of growth

that parallels that of Breitbart (see Figure 8). While direct causality in either direction

is not proven, this chapter will explore how, as with GamerGate, Breitbart nurtured a

mutually beneficial relationship between themselves and white extremist movements.

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The striking similarity between the Alt Right and GamerGate is evident, and

indeed they are believed to have an overlapping audience. A summative video

published by the New York Times summarised Alt Right followers as “white

supremacists, Gamergate supporters and anti-Semites” (Weigel, 2016). However,

there is a lack of academic research on the nature of the connection between the two,

likely due to the Alt Right’s relatively recent rise to prominence. This may change in

the near future, however, as academic papers are beginning to bring up the Alt Right

as a topic of concern (Geoforum, 2017; Malmgren, 2017; Suiter, 2016). What is

currently clear is that the two movements share ideas, particularly in the realm of

racist conspiracy theories. Mortensen (2016, p. 2) writes that followers of GG adopted

white supremacist ideas in fear of ‘Cultural Marxism’, a supposed secret movement

which Törnberg and Törnberg (2016, p. 415) define as a supposed “Jewish invention”

to promote feminism and Islam. Mortensen (2016, p. 2) names Breitbart as one of the

sources of the movement’s extremist ideas, and summarises the results:

Several GG’ers embraced this conspiracy, and claimed Jews and western

academics have joined forces to pacify White men, and planned to hand the

power of the ‘‘western world’’ to the Jews or Islam by encouraging politically

correct digital games, resonating with the claims against Cultural Marxists

made by the killer Anders Behring Breivik in his manifesto” (Mortensen,

2016, p. 2).

Figure 8: Statistics showing follower count of identified white nationalists from 2012 to 2016 (Berger, 2016)

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By helping to instil fringe conspiracy in their audience’s minds, Breitbart

radicalised their audience while appealing to existing radical audiences. This resulted

in a cross-pollination of misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and more, between

groups like GamerGate and the Alt Right; all adversaries, true to populist form, were

defined as part of the elite. To help understand Breitbart’s role as facilitator in this

process, the rest of this chapter is dedicated to examining the actions of two key

Breitbart figures in relation to the Alt Right.

Milo Yiannopoulos and the Alt Right

In an article critical of the Alt Right movement, one former Breitbart writer,

Ben Shapiro, observed, “Many of the most public members of the alt-right are

leftovers from Gamergate” (Shapiro, 2016); he goes on to implicate his former

Breitbart colleague, Milo Yiannopoulos, as one such member. Since Shapiro may be

subject to bias due to leaving the company on unfriendly terms (Kaplan, 2016), a

closer reading of Yiannopoulos’ work is required to ascertain his position in Alt Right

circles.

It is clear that Yiannopoulos has functioned as an apologist for the movement.

One Yiannopoulos article, in which he defended the Alt-Right term ‘cuckservative’,

provides a clear example of Alt Right apologia (Yiannopoulos, 2015g). As defined by

the Southern Poverty Law Center (2016), the term ‘cuck’, or ‘cuckold’, hearkens to a

genre of pornography with a history of racist undertones. Its use in combination with

‘conservative’ implies “that establishment conservatives are like white men who

allow black men to sleep with their wives” (ibid.). Yiannopoulos deflected

accusations of the word having racist roots, and lauded it as a “gloriously effective

insult” (Yiannopoulos, 2015g). He argued that the term ‘cuck’ was popularised on

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4chan and not “white power websites” (ibid.)—a disingenuous defence that implicitly

exonerated members of such message boards of racist intent. Yiannopoulos adopted

the same tone as his debut piece on GamerGate; just as GG followers were

“marginalised, troubled people” (Yiannopoulos, 2014b), Alt Right members were

“slurred, demonised, [and] ridiculed” by the establishment (Yiannopoulos, 2015g).

Again, Yiannopoulos appealed to an audience in want of a sympathetic ear.

Another article co-written by Yiannopoulos, “An Establishment

Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right” (Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, 2016),

portrayed the Alt Right movement as daring and its members as “dangerously bright”.

The language throughout the article was not only sympathetic to the movement, it

actively downplayed their reputation of bigotry while simultaneously glorifying their

fight against the “regressive left” (ibid.). Accusations of anti-Semitism and white

supremacy were dismissed as coming from “mostly Establishment types” (ibid.).

According to this article, the movement was a “young, rebellious contingent” whose

actions are the result of a “mischievous urge”, motivated to break taboos for one

reason: “Because it’s funny!” (Bokhari and Yiannopoulos, 2016) In his ‘punk rock’

portrayal of the Alt Right, Malmgren remarks that Yiannopoulos “grasped a kernel of

truth” (Malmgren, 2017, p. 12). Many Alt Right members promote the cause for

shock value. “Its members want to be villains” (ibid.), and likewise Yiannopoulos has

described himself as “the world's most fabulous supervillain” (Anti-Defamation

League, 2017). However, Malmgren rejects the notion that this diminishes the

dangerous potential of the movement (Malmgren, 2017, p. 12). The motive behind

acts of discrimination does not detract from the human cost, especially when escalated

to the point of harassment and violence.

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Conservative publications roundly condemned Yiannopoulos’ article, but it

was also poorly received by some Alt Right figureheads, who “attacked

[Yiannopoulos] as a ‘Jewish homosexual’” and claimed that he was undermining the

establishment “for Jewish purposes” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). This is

symptomatic of the ideologically inconsistent quality of the movement, which

contained neo-Nazi and white supremacist elements alongside a comparatively softer

faction, deemed by some members of the movement as ‘Alt Lite’ (Malmgren, 2017, p.

10). Malmgren comments that Breitbart’s approach to Alt Right ideology typified Alt

Lite attitudes, normalizing Alt Right views “through relatively approachable

language” (Malmgren, 2017, p. 10). He specifically names Yiannopoulos as one of

the Alt Right’s “most visible ‘intellectuals’” (Malmgren, 2017, p. 9), in spite of

factional opposition.

Yiannopoulos continued to employ the same tactics he had used at the height

of GamerGate, even going on a university tour to use doxing tactics against

transgender and immigrant students (Oppenheim, 2017; Landsbaum, 2016). As Darcy

of the Business Insider reports (2017), Yiannopoulos’ tactics were used against him,

shortly before his scheduled speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference,

when conservative twitter account The Reagan Battalion (with the twitter name

@ReaganBattalion) resurfaced an old video interview. In the video, Yiannopoulos

defends “the idea of ‘13 year olds’ having sex with ‘older men,’ referencing his own

story that he benefited from a priest molesting him when he was a teenager” (Lopez,

2017). The video achieved wide circulation, Yiannopoulos’ speech was cancelled (as

was a book deal), and he quit Breitbart the following day (ibid.).

In Milo Yiannopoulos’s fall, as with his rise, the potential for leveraging the

active nature of the internet is shown. The internet has developed into a battleground

30

of information, where an individual or organisation may gain influence by selectively

sharing information and harnessing the audience’s reaction. Yiannopoulos

demonstrated this by ingratiating himself as a public face of the Alt Right, and

modifying the movement’s goals to suit Breitbart’s established audience.

Stephen K. Bannon and the Alt Right

Yiannopoulos was not a lone actor at Breitbart in aiding the Alt Right. He had

active support from Breitbart CEO, Stephen K. Bannon, who himself proved to be an

important figure to the movement.

Hosting Yiannopoulos on Breitbart’s satellite radio show, Bannon “repeatedly

lavished praise on Yiannopoulos, comparing his courage to that of Winston

Churchill” (Hankes, 2017). Bannon’s choice of words in his praise of Yiannopoulos is

indicative of his personal views; he called him “one of the leading voices of his

generation in this whole fight against cultural Marxism, the defense [sic] of Western

Civilization” (ibid.). As previously indicated, both ‘Cultural Marxism’ and ‘western

civilization’ are terms associated with white nationalists, Islamophobes, anti-feminists

and anti-Semites (Hankes, 2017; Mortensen, 2016, p. 2; Törnberg and Törnberg,

2016, p. 402). Although Bannon has not made explicit anti-Semitic remarks (Anti-

Defamation League, 2016), he is on record stating the following regarding reports of

black citizens being shot by the police:

“What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There

are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and

violent” (Bannon, 2016).

Unlike Yiannopoulos, Bannon’s statements contain more careful and coded

language. He does not identify as a ‘supervillain’, but like Yiannopoulos he has a

history of softening the Alt Right’s ideology. In an interview with Mother Jones,

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Bannon infamously called Breitbart “the platform for the alt-right” (Posner, 2016),

but was careful to frame the movement as “‘nationalist,’ though not necessarily white

nationalist.” (Posner, 2016). He conceded that “there some people that are white

nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right”, but

indicated that such circumstances were coincidence (ibid.). On another occasion he

acknowledged the existence of racist “groups” in the Alt Right, but wrote them off as

“disparate”, saying they would “burn away over time” (Golshan, 2017).

Though Bannon has mostly shown his support to the Alt Right in qualified

statements, Alt Right and white nationalist figureheads have given him and his

leadership of Breitbart unqualified praise. One example is Andrew Anglin, founder

and owner of neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer, who made the following

comments on Nordfront Radio, a neo-Nazi program:

“Breitbart went hardcore when [Bannon] was running it … It really changed

from being this kind of basic cuckservative type website to being this, I mean,

the articles that they publish about blacks in America and about Muslims in

Europe, it’s basically stuff that you would read on the Daily Stormer” (Amend

and Morgan, 2017).

It is apparent that the actions of Breitbart have been successful in gaining the

admiration of hate groups. Bannon has even been acknowledged as a trendsetter;

former leader of the KKK, David Duke, has stated that Bannon is “basically creating

the ideological aspects of where we’re going” (Anti-Defamation League, 2016).

Although Bannon has not publicly identified with white supremacist or neo-Nazi

movements, it is clear that leaders within those communities are pleased with the

direction Breitbart took under his management.

Bannon considers himself a revolutionary figure. A self-declared ‘Leninist’, he

has proclaimed his desire to “destroy the state [and] bring everything crashing down”

(Sebestyen, 2017). He has predicted a populist “global revolt”, and stated that

32

Breitbart is “the voice” of that revolt (Golshan, 2017). It is clear from Bannon’s

remarks that Breitbart’s populist elements are not accidental. Ostiguy and Roberts

(2016, pp. 38–39) note that anti-establishment rhetoric, conspiracy-mongering, and

prejudice against the Other are common in right-wing populism. Under Bannon’s

leadership, and through leveraging other movements like GamerGate and the Alt

Right, Breitbart became a considerable populist force with a radical audience. They

went on to achieve legitimacy in the 2016 US Presidential election through the

personage of Donald J. Trump.

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Chapter four: Alternative Election

When Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, his speech

famously included the condemnation of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists

(Neate, 2015). From the beginning of his campaign, he demonised and mocked the

Other, and drew in crowds that either shared his prejudice or refused to acknowledge

it. Trump embodied the populist idea of a leader. Ostiguy and Roberts’ definition of

populism as an “antagonistic division of political space” (Ostiguy and Roberts, 2016,

p. 26) is particularly apt in reference to Trump, who made no attempt to conceal his

divisive approach to politics. This chapter explores how his campaign and presidency

correlate with Breitbart and its target audience, as well as showing the ascension of

Breitbart’s agenda to USA government policy.

Throughout Trump’s campaign, he maintained a positive relationship with

groups that likewise dealt in Othering. When his rhetoric and proposed policy drew in

extremists, he was slow to discourage their endorsement. When asked three times

whether he would condemn white supremacist David Duke—who had publicly

announced his support of Trump—he refused to answer, pleading ignorance of the

concept of white supremacy (Bradner, 2016). Trump did not condemn Duke’s support

until five months later, blaming a “faulty earpiece” for his previous answer (ibid.).

Throughout the election, Trump was a popular topic of discussion in white nationalist

and Nazi circles. This is demonstrated by Berger (2016, p. 10), who observed that

three of the top ten hashtags tweeted by both white nationalists and neo-Nazis were in

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direct reference to Trump (see Figure 9). Berger added that “white nationalists have

for months expressed enthusiasm for Trump’s candidacy” (ibid.). By comparison,

none of the top 10 hashtags for either group had mentioned Republican candidate Mitt

Romney during the previous election (ibid.). Malmgren writes that the Alt Right was

“fueled and empowered by the rise of Donald Trump” (Malmgren, 2017, p. 10). He

had a mobilising effect on those that had considered themselves outcasts, and his

campaign’s use of media reflects this: Black (2016), gathering data from the official

Trump campaign website, found that Breitbart was the most common source for news

items (see Figure 10).

Figure 9: Top white nationalist and Nazi hashtags during the 2016 US election (Berger, 2016)

Figure 10: Data showing the top outgoing links from DonaldJTrump.com (Black, 2016)

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Trump’s relationship with Breitbart is further indicative of his populist

agenda. In the same way Breitbart mobilised GamerGate, Trump mobilised the

disenfranchised among the American populace. The true causes of this perceived

disenfranchisement were not important; the establishment—the government and the

press—was to blame (Ostiguy and Roberts, 2016, p. 28). Trump ran for the US

presidency with this approach, with Breitbart as his close ally.

The Connections

Before outlining specifics of the relationship at large between Breitbart and the

Trump campaign—and later, the Trump presidency—it is first necessary to note some

connections on an individual and financial level.

Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire, is described by an associate as a

“libertarian [that] despises the Republican establishment … He thinks that the leaders

are corrupt crooks, and that they’ve ruined the country” (Mayer, 2017). In 2011, he

formed a business relationship with Steve Bannon (ibid.), and “it was $10m of

Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart” (Cadwalladr, 2017). Mercer

contributed to other Bannon-affiliated groups, including a data modelling firm named

Cambridge Analytica (Cherry, 2017). Mercer went on to become Donald Trump’s

single biggest donor, contributing $13.5Million to his presidential campaign

(Cadwalladr, 2017). His daughter, Rebekah Mercer, convinced Trump to recruit

Bannon as a chief executive in his campaign, thus leaving his post as Breitbart CEO

(M. Gold, 2016). After the election, Trump hired Bannon as his chief strategist, a

move which caused US House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to remark, “There must

be no sugarcoating the reality that a white nationalist has been named chief strategist

for the Trump administration” (Smith, 2016).

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The purposes of Cambridge Analytica make it a point of interest. Their “about

us” page contains the following claim:

“We collect up to 5,000 data points on over 220 million Americans, and use

more than 100 data variables to model target audience groups and predict the

behavior of like-minded people” (Cambridge Analytica, n.d.).

Cambridge Analytica professes to provide, with data, the logical extension of

Breitbart’s business strategy. Breitbart’s actions relating to GamerGate show the same

disposition of using developments in technology to affect targeted groups, reaching

people on a personal level and appealing to their emotions.

During the presidential campaign, Robert Mercer convinced Trump to contract

Cambridge Analytica. The campaign paid over $15Million overall for their services

(Gresseger and Krogerus, 2017), which consisted of using their data “to understand

people’s deepest emotions and then target them accordingly” with political

advertising (Cadwalladr, 2017). Their contributions are held by some as pivotal in

both the Trump Campaign in the USA, and the Leave campaign in the UK (Gresseger

and Krogerus, 2017; Albright, 2016a); the effectiveness of their methods is contested

by others (Condliffe, 2017; Bershidsky, 2016). Politico reports that Cambridge

Analytica is now “largely owned” by the Mercer family (Vogel, 2016). Before his

position in the Trump campaign, Bannon was vice president of the firm’s board; he

also held a large stake which, as of March 2017, he had not yet sold (Stevenson and

Protess, 2017). From Bannon’s own remarks, it is clear that he saw an opportunity in

the Trump campaign’s established practice of data gathering:

“I wouldn’t have come aboard … if I hadn’t known they were building this

massive Facebook and data engine … Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to

a massive audience. We know its power” (Green and Issenberg, 2016).

A deep analysis of Cambridge Analytica is warranted, but must be left to other

papers. For the purposes of this study, the firm is of particular importance in how it

37

relates to Breitbart; it correlates strongly with their methods and goals, and provides

another point of connection between the figures of Mercer, Bannon, and Trump.

The Campaign

Throughout his rallies and public appearances, Trump defined himself as an

anti-establishment, anti-mainstream figure (Ostiguy and Roberts, 2016). His language

was emotional (Robinson, 2016). He bullied dissenting parties (Andrejevic, 2016). He

appealed to prejudice and conspiracy (ibid.). His campaign used the community-

driven nature of Web 2.0—especially through Trump’s personal Twitter account—to

augment all of this, and in some ways, go further than Breitbart had done. The extent

of his opposition to the mainstream press is demonstrated in his campaign rallies, as

Alterman describes:

“Journalists were confined to ‘pens’ at political rallies and the crowd incited

to throw insults at them. Trump egged them on, describing the media as

‘scum’ and ‘among the most dishonest groups of people’. He would shout

from the platform: ‘We are living in a rigged system. And believe me, they are

a big part of the rigging, those people.’” (Alterman, 2016, p. 69)

Trump’s behaviour throughout his campaign is a matter of thorough public

record—a fact that was, in itself, a form of success for his agenda. Data Analytics

firm MediaQuaint calculates that Trump’s campaign received roughly $5Billion in

free coverage, over half of it online, naming his “bombastic and insulting statements”

as a factor (Harris, 2016). Pantelimon (2014), in writing on the new form of populism,

notes that it may be termed a ‘tele-populism’, and that a populist leader must make

use the media to fulfil his interests. Trump accomplished this in the very act of

deriding the media that he was exploiting.

Trump’s anti-press, anti-establishment statements also achieved wide

proliferation on Twitter. Two weeks before he recruited Bannon, he tweeted, “I am

38

running against the very dishonest and biased media”, (Trump, 2016; see Figure 11);

to date this tweet stands at over 25,000 retweets and 85,000 likes. The tweet

encapsulates his tendency to use emotional, anti-establishment language to attack and

equivocate individuals with broad concepts (“Crooked Hillary Clinton”, “biased

media”). From the day he announced his candidacy to the day he was elected, 273 of

his tweets contained the word “crooked” (Trump Twitter Archive, 2017a); of those,

252 included Clinton’s name (Trump Twitter Archive, 2017b).

With the many commonalities between Breitbart and Trump—and with

Mercer, the money behind Breitbart, and Bannon, its CEO, both becoming heavily

involved in the Trump campaign—it is a logical assumption that Breitbart coverage of

Trump was largely supportive. However, their actions in March 2016 show an

allegiance to Trump that held out even at the expense of their own employees. At a

campaign event, Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski physically assaulted

Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields (H. Gold, 2016a). In the days following, her claims

were corroborated by an eyewitness reporter from the Washington Post (Terris, 2016),

as well as an audio recording of the incident (H. Gold, 2016b). While the official

Figure 11: Trump tweet attacking his political opposition and the media (Trump, 2016)

39

response initially condemned Lewandowsky (Griswold, 2016), a follow-up press

release notably lacked any such condemnation (Nolte, 2016). Breitbart then published

a lengthy breakdown of the sequence of events, contradicting Field’s account and

defending Lewandowsky (Pollak, 2016). Internal memos were leaked that revealed

that staff had been ordered to stop defending Fields (Gray, 2016). Fields and several

colleagues resigned shortly thereafter, and her statement to the Washington Post puts

plain where she felt Breitbart’s priorities lay: “They were protecting Trump more than

me” (Kaplan, 2016). Among the resigning staffers was Breitbart spokesperson Kurt

Bardella. In a CNN interview, he cited “resistance from Breitbart in supporting

Michelle”, and asserted they were “looking for a reason to disprove” the claims.

When asked whether he was “saying [Breitbart is] lying”, he simply responded, “Yes,

I am” (Bardella, 2016).

In support of Trump, Breitbart continued to use tactics they had deployed in

defence of GamerGate and the Alt Right. When Republican political consultant Rick

Wilson criticised Trump, Bannon declared that Wilson had “viciously attacked the

grass roots” (Wilde, 2015), and he became the subject of a series of Breitbart

articles—one of which called him “Gollum-in-glasses” (Grove, 2016). As with the

targets of GamerGate, Wilson’s family became the subject of varied forms of online

and offline harassment, including prank calls, doxing, and rape threats (ibid.). A

Breitbart reporter also made “repeated calls” to Wilson’s employer, asking “when will

you fire Rick Wilson?” (ibid.) Again, Breitbart’s strategy lay in attacking individuals,

coordinating with their following to harass and undermine their political opponents.

Breitbart is currently under FBI investigation over “allegations that they

worked with Russian-backed operatives to disseminate stories favouring President

Donald Trump” (Worley, 2017). While findings are still pending on the matter of

40

deliberate co-ordination, Pentagon official Mike Carpenter has stated “Those stories

got amplified by fringe elements of our media like Breitbart” (ibid.). Jonathan

Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, performed a data analysis

of the “micro-propaganda machine” and visualised his results in a data map (Albright,

2016; see Figure 12). The larger nodes indicated “domains that were linked to the

MOST by the propaganda engine” and red nodes indicating “fake news, conspiracy …

and right-leaning misinformation sites”—Breitbart featuring prominently as the

largest red node (ibid.).

To audiences that Breitbart had cultivated, Trump held a special appeal in his

opposition to ‘political correctness’ and ‘SJW culture’. Despite his wealth, he was

portrayed an outsider to the establishment. His crude language and abrasive attitude

were celebrated. His loose relationship with facts and his lack of experience were

either not seen as important, or counted to be positive traits. He was both strongman

and underdog, and his internally inconsistent self-portrayal was part of his appeal; he

combined “cynical distance with full reliance on paranoiac fantasy” (Andrejevic,

Figure 12: Data map of incoming/outgoing links between websites and the “propaganda engine” (Albright, 2016))

41

2016, p. 653), building upon the sentiment of his infamous ‘birther’ claims against

Obama to question the legitimacy of two of his opponents in the Republican primary

(ibid.). There was a significant portion of the American populace that embraced

Trump not in spite of his tactics, but because of them. To the self-proclaimed villains

of the Alt Right he was, as Andrejevic terms it, a “figure of obscene enjoyment”

(Andrejevic, 2016, p. 653).

The Presidency

Days after the election results, “post-truth” was chosen as Oxford

Dictionaries’ 2016 word of the year; “Alt-right” made the shortlist (Washtell, 2016).

“Post-truth” is defined as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which

objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion

and personal belief” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). One reporter lamented, “Even fact-

checking perhaps the most untruthful candidate of our lifetime didn’t work; the more

news outlets did it, the less the facts resonated” (Glasser, 2016). Trump’s victory

showed that a focus on facts was no longer an effective political countermeasure.

Kloor notes that Trump’s victory was “predicated” on anti-science techniques

(Kloor, 2017, p. 60); he specifies his assertion by naming proponents of the Anti-

Vaccination movement:

“Just as Trump’s most ardent supporters live in a media bubble with its own

set of truths, so too do passionate fans of Kennedy and Wakefield. Both of

these bubbles foster disdain for establishment figures and institutions.

Objective facts cannot penetrate these enclosed worlds” (Kloor, 2017, p. 61).

As was the case with their anti-intellectual predecessors, Trump and

Breitbart’s political successes were an example of the power of manipulating the

conversation, both in terms of television coverage and internet sub communities.

42

After his election, Trump’s influence from Breitbart was manifest on a

governmental level. Stelter of CNN (2017) reported that Trump’s conspiratorial

accusation, that the Obama administration had marked him for personal surveillance,

was the result of a Breitbart article that reached Trump; that accusation launched an

investigation by the US justice department (Whiteside, 2017). Trump’s personal

connections to Breitbart affiliates also manifested through some of his more infamous

statements, such as when he declared several mainstream outlets to be “the enemy of

the American people” (Trump, 2017). Mayer of the New Yorker notes that Patrick

Caddell, an associate of Trump and employee of Mercer, had made a similar

statement at a conference in 2012 (Mayer, 2017). Trump’s populist language reflects

that of members of his inner circle, many of whom in turn have connections to

Breitbart. Meanwhile, Bannon “spearheaded” the attempted travel ban targeting

Muslim-majority countries; shortly thereafter, he was appointed to the National

Security Council (Beauchamp, 2017). Breitbart’s former leader was in a position to

influence foreign policy, a level of legitimisation that was reflected in the site itself.

As Breitbart received exclusive interviews with the new president (Seipel,

2017), the mainstream media received hostile treatment in private media summits

(Hensch, 2016) and public press conferences (Collinson, 2017). While Breitbart was

admitted access to the White House briefing room, some mainstream outlets were

refused (Borchers, 2017). As Breitbart continued to instigate harassment to silence

Trump critics (Whitehouse, 2017), Trump threatened to change libel laws in a tweet

directed at the New York Times (Kludt, 2017). As Bannon declared, the mainstream

media had become “the opposition party” (Gambino, 2017).

There are indications that, in spite of his election, Trump’s methods are not

endearing him to the American populace; after he failed to enact the American Health

43

Care Act, his Gallup approval ratings fell to 36 percent, bringing his average to 42%

in less than three months of his presidency (Newport, 2017). Likewise, Bannon

appears to be falling out of favour with Trump, being suddenly removed from his

position in the National Security Council (Buncombe, 2017). What is clear from the

above series of events, however, is that conventional approaches to politics and news

reporting are no longer an adequate means of interacting with the populace.

Understanding the state of the media, engaging the audience, reaching people on a

personal level—regardless of anything else that may be said of Breitbart and the

Trump campaign, these were strengths that lead to their successes. In order to

properly function in the new political landscape that Breitbart and Trump have helped

to shape, it is necessary for activists, politicians and news media to make use of those

same strengths.

44

Conclusion

This dissertation has shown how Breitbart’s populist business model has

proved immensely successful for them as a company, and as a political force. They

have helped to turn the western political climate into something akin to a battlefield,

where the use of the collective power of the internet is a decisive factor in success. By

strategically deploying information, and misinformation, they have effectively

mobilised the disenfranchised—whether said disenfranchisement is imagined or not.

Deepening divisions, perpetuating conflict, feeding paranoia and promoting their own

interests, Breitbart News manipulated their fanatical audience to the personal cost of

their supposed enemies.

To counter their influence, it is necessary to move past conventional politics,

understand the structure of the modern internet, and engage with audiences on a

personal level. Factual accuracy need not be compromised, nor personal attacks

instigated; by understanding and implementing the principles of openness, user

participation, and network effects, political parties and news outlets will be able to

counteract populist, post-truth politics more effectively.

By exploring the mentality and actions of members of GamerGate, this

dissertation has shown the difficulties of arguing facts with a reactionary audience

that hold facts to be of less value than emotion. The incident demonstrates how

contesting beliefs can cause audiences to disengage themselves from the offending

parties, using conspiracy as a defence mechanism.

45

In examining the relationship between Breitbart and Gamergate, the

dissertation has shown Breitbart’s populist business strategy in action. By comparing

their tactics to those of natural medicine outlets during the height of the anti-vaxxer

movement, the paper has identified Breitbart’s application of Web 2.0 principles in

exercising influence over an audience. It has also served to establish the importance of

such methods in the modern political climate.

Analysing the rhetoric of two Breitbart figureheads in relation to the Alt Right

movement, this dissertation has established how a populist business model can

radicalise an audience and attract positive attention from extremists. It showed how

appeals to racism and other forms of prejudice can serve to repel moderates and

enhance existing echo chamber effects in a community.

With an overview of the actions taken by the Trump campaign and ensuing

presidency, the dissertation demonstrated the effects of Breitbart’s strategy on a larger

scale in the political sphere. It showed Breitbart’s unique position of power and

influence in the US presidency, and how conventional politics have been undermined.

The importance of understanding the techniques of alternative media is

evident in the case of Breitbart. This dissertation has provided an important function

in the exploration of those techniques; it is also a call to further research. Due to its

recent emergence into the public sphere, little academic material exists on the Alt

Right movement which Breitbart has ingratiated themselves with, and the

movement’s ties to white supremacy and neo-Nazism. The concerns raised by the

practices of Cambridge Analytica, and their ties to Breitbart, the Trump campaign,

and the Leave campaign in the UK, merit further examination. The Alt Right and the

methods of Cambridge Analytica are of deep relevance to the state of modern politics,

and this paper thus calls for further study on both subjects.

46

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