Breitbart on Twitter tries to suggest Bannon defined alt-right as "millennial conservatives"

[highplainsdem]

Yeah, it was only their age that defined them. Uh-huh.

This was conveyed by @BreitbartNews

https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews

retweeting a Breitbart editor who took exception to Charlie Sykes tweeting this:

Link to tweet

Worth emphasizing: Steve Bannon bragged that he had turned Breitbart into a "platform for the alt right." He now works at the Trump WH

The Breitbart editor, Raheem Kassam of Breitbart London, had this comment, which the main Breitbart News account retweeted:

Link to tweet

Worth emphasising at that time "alt right" was being used to describe millennial conservatives, not white nationalists. Moron.

Mother Jones article from a year ago on what Bannon himself said about the alt-right:

"How Donald Trump’s New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists"

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news/

Last week, when Donald Trump tapped the chairman of Breitbart Media to lead his campaign, he wasn’t simply turning to a trusted ally and veteran propagandist. By bringing on Stephen Bannon, Trump was signaling a wholehearted embrace of the “alt-right,” a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee’s favor on social media. In short, Trump has embraced the core readership of Breitbart News.

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon’s target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon’s leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an “eclectic mix of renegades,” accusing President Barack Obama of importing “more hating Muslims,” and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of “political correctness.”

“Andrew Breitbart despised racism. Truly despised it,” former Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro wrote last week on the Daily Wire, a conservative website. “With Bannon embracing Trump, all that changed. Now Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website, with (technology editor Milo) Yiannopoulos pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers.”

-snip-

Bannon dismisses the alt-right’s appeal to racists as happenstance. “Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe,” he says. “Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that’s just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements.”

-snip-

So Bannon is essentially admitting the alt-right attracts bigots, but then he throws in the silly, meaningless defense that "certain elements" of the progressive left attract "certain elements."

You can pretty much guarantee they aren't the whte nationalist, anti-Semitic, homophobic elements attracted to the alt-right.

More:

A Twitter analysis conducted by The Investigative Fund using Little Bird software found that these “elements” are more deeply connected to Breitbart News than more traditional conservative outlets. While only 5 percent of key influencers using the supremacist hashtag #whitegenocide follow the National Review, and 10 percent follow the Daily Caller, 31 percent follow Breitbart. The disparities are even starker for the anti-Muslim hashtag #counterjihad: National Review, 26 percent; the Daily Caller, 37 percent; Breitbart News, 62 percent.

-snip-

On Thursday, in the Washington Post, Shapiro upped the ante, describing the alt-right as a “movement shot through with racism and anti-Semitism,” and Breitbart News as “a party organ, a pathetic cog in the Trump-Media Complex and a gathering place for white nationalists.” The reception he and another conservative Jewish Breitbart critic, Bethany Mandel, have experienced in the Bannonosphere is revealing: In May, when Shapiro, who became editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire after leaving Breitbart, tweeted about the birth of his second child, he received a torrent of anti-Semitic tweets. “Into the gas chamber with all 4 of you,” one read. Another tweet depicted his family as lampshades. Mandel says she has been harassed on Twitter for months, “called a ‘slimy Jewess’ and told that I ‘deserve the oven.'”

-snip-

Back at the RNC, Bannon dismissed Shapiro as a “whiner…I don’t think that the alt-right is anti-Semitic at all,” he told me. “Are there anti-Semitic people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. But I don’t believe that the movement overall is anti-Semitic.”

Their actions speak louder than Bannon's words.

And of Bannon's words there, by the way, I didn't see anything about how Bannon supposedly defined the alt-right as "millennial conservatives."

But in the wake of yesterday's violence, Breitbart is trying -- in vain -- to distance Bannon from what the alt-right revealed of its true nature in Charlottesville.