An explosive new video shows Jewish Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos singing 'America the Beautiful' in a Texas bar while white nationalists perform Nazi salutes in front of him.
The video, which was reported on by Buzzfeed, was taken in April 2016 at the One Nostalgia Tavern in Dallas. As Yiannopoulos sings, white nationalists such as Richard Spencer scream out "sieg heil". The video was filmed by Devin Saucier, who writes for the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance.
Yiannopoulos claimed in his defense that he has "extreme myopia", and could not see the Nazi salutes being performed in front of him. Yiannopoulos pointed out to the Independent that he frequently wears glasses and was not wearing any in the clip. “This is how my vision is without glasses. It’s worse in dark rooms," he told the newspaper. "I knew they were there, but I did not see them do this.”
The video was part of a wide-ranging investigation that Buzzfeed published which exposed Breitbart's ties to neo-Nazis and white nationalists. According to the report, Yiannopoulos was in frequent contact with white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, and often used their ideas and aims in articles he published.
For example, when Yiannopoulos needed material for an article he was working on about the Alt-Right, he emailed Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, who works as the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer's systems administrator, for help, asking him to "braindump some thoughts for me".
Yiannopoulos also allegedly used Nazi motifs as his email passwords. In a trove of leaked emails Buzzfeed received, Yiannopoulos told a coworker that his email password "began with the word Kristall" (likely referring to Kristallnacht), and used "LongKnives1290" as the password for another account. 'LongKnives' is the night that Adolph Hitler consolidated power over the Nazi party, and 1290 was the year the Jews were expelled from England.
Yiannopoulos responded to the allegation by claiming that it was all done as a joke. "I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about," Yiannopoulos told Buzzfeed. "But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I, of course, condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have.”