“Break the dam”: Kanye West, Milo Yiannopoulos, and the mainstreaming of American anti-Semitism

By Jonathon Van Maren

In case you need a summary of Donald Trump’s latest news cycle, it goes something like this: disgraced former commentator Milo Yiannopoulos got in touch with Kanye West through Alex Jones after West launched several public anti-Semitic tirades, brought in Nick Fuentes, the racist reptilian live-streamer who likes defending Hitler, and then they all went to dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump apparently loved Fuentes; West offered him the position of vice president on his 2024 ticket; and the news of Trump’s supper guests promptly ignited a media inferno. If you’re the sort of conservative who is sticking with Trump no matter what, get used to this sort of thing—defending his decisions and judgment all the time is part of your job. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Let’s back up a bit and survey the dinner table, as not everyone is familiar with the guests. Milo Yiannopoulos, for those who you who don’t remember, was the alt-lite provocateur who found himself banished from the conservative movement after comments defending sex between gay men and minors (please watch the video for yourself if you think that accusation was just a hitjob). I followed his career closely and reviewed his events at the time due to his growing popularity and toxic influence on the Right. After marrying a man in order to stay in the US (he’s British), he then announced he’d become ex-gay and was fundraising for a gay rehab centre in Florida.

We’ll likely never hear another word about that particular endeavour. As Lauren Southern (and others) have revealed, Milo is a serial grifter with delusions of grandeur, employing blackmail, deceit, and straight-up stealing to fund a lavish lifestyle, taking funds he’d raised for the underprivileged for himself. After a stint at Church Militant, an alternative Catholic media outlet run by Michael Voris where he hawked statues of the Virgin Mary and recordings of himself reading the Psalms, Milo spotted Kanye West’s anti-Semitic meltdown—and an opportunity. He got in touch with West, ingratiated himself, and like a vulture, secured a spot as West’s campaign manager, likely through flattery. That West is unwell is clear to everyone.

Milo promptly made things worse by bringing on Nick Fuentes as an advisor for West. “I suggested we bring in Nicholas as an enormous extra brain firepower that he is—the most extraordinarily brilliant commentator of his generation,” Milo told Tim Pool in a bizarre interview that resulted in West walking out after Pool pushed back on his anti-Semitism. (Milo, mindful of the moods of his political sugar daddy, scurried after him). At one point during the interview, Milo jumped in to defend West’s rambling, stating that the hypocrisy of those who say we can refer to the “black vote” but not call the Jews a monolith has resulted in a cognitive shift:

We were all wondering how this dam was going to break. Everybody in the country was wondering what is the root of this hypocrisy—why can people talk about white people a certain way, why can’t they talk about that group a certain way…well it turns out the one thing that was going to break the dam was the biggest star in the world, and it took the biggest star in the world to do it.

What “dam” is Milo referring to, that apparently “everybody in the country was wondering about”? Well, let’s take a look at Fuentes, whom he believes to be “the most extraordinarily brilliant commentator of his generation.” Fuentes wants a dictatorship in which Trump runs one more time, and then never leaves. He looks forward to the anti-Jewish pogroms coming and thinks “the Jews had better start being nice to people like us.” His views on women are…well, not great. Racism is actually his thing. And for those of you who want to defend him—don’t bother. He admits to all of this stuff himself. He calls himself anti-Semitic. I profiled Fuentes a couple of years ago—I could provide a few dozen more video clips of this sort of material just for starters.

This may seem like a tempest in a teapot with a couple of cancelled alt-right has-beens managing to attract a bit more attention by having dinner with the former president of the United States—and indeed, all of the reporting indicates that Trump did not know who Fuentes was when he showed up and that Milo invited him along to West’s scheduled dinner with Trump just to embarrass him—but there’s more to it than that. Milo and Fuentes aren’t just anti-Semites—they are unabashed in their views and willing to defend them publicly—and they have now managed to insinuate themselves into the company (and presumably onto the payroll) of a mentally ill billionaire who happens to be a global music icon with a massive following. Milo has his meal ticket and wishes to style himself as a modern-day Rasputin. He’s the devil on Ye’s shoulder, and he’s got company.

Milo hasn’t made clear what he means by the “dam breaking,” but considering the fact that he believes Fuentes to be a luminary—and that Fuentes’ Jew-bashing includes him advocating for Jewish people to “get the f**k out of America,” I’m not looking forward to finding out. “It’s real,” Milo told his followers on Telegram on November 25. “Everything you are feeling is real. It’s 2015 again and the best is yet to come.” As Dr. Jordan Peterson put it: “The anti-semites are truly starting to climb back out of hell’s sewer… appalling to observe.”