Milo Yiannopoulos tried to troll a Jewish journalist with Nazi symbols but it backfired on him
Alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos tried on Saturday, June 23, to troll a Jewish journalist with symbols used by neo-Nazis, but the journalist quickly turned the tables on him.
Yiannopoulos bragged on and that he鈥檇 sent $14.88 to journalist Talia Lavin, who鈥檇 just resigned from the New Yorker magazine. The is a combination of digits popularly used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis 鈥� 14 to represent the infamous 鈥�14 Words鈥� (a mantra about securing 鈥渁 future for white children鈥�) and 88 to represent 鈥淗eil Hitler.鈥�
Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who helped in its infancy, has often played his bigoted actions off as ironic jokes. But all too often he ends up showing sympathy for old-school racist ideas and other types of prejudice. Case in point: directing Nazi symbolism at a Jewish woman.
Lavin had become something of a popular target on the right. Earlier in the week, the New Yorker fact checker erroneously that an employee for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been photographed sporting a tattoo of a Nazi Iron Cross on his elbow. The tattoo, his agency later explained, was a "Titan 2" symbol of the Marines platoon with which he served in Afghanistan.
Lavin deleted her tweet and apologized to the employee. But her error became fodder for an array of conservative and far-right figures. The error was splashed across conservative media and Lavin was targeted by antisemitic trolls. An epithet-filled post about her on the racist Daily Stormer website eventually made it to the first page of Google search results for her name.
On Thursday, June 21, Lavin from the New Yorker over the matter. She also to her PayPal account because, as she put it, 鈥渟ending money to a fat unemployed Jew is an excellent way to piss off nazis.鈥�
Yiannopoulos took the bait, sending her $14.88 a short time later.
But Lavin quickly turned the antisemitic prank around on Yiannopoulos. She that she forwarded the cash 鈥� plus a penny of her own 鈥� to , an organization that helps immigrant and working class communities.
Yiannopoulos鈥檚 gesture also prompted at least a couple of people on Twitter to send Lavin small amounts of money that were symbolic of other things that might be hard for the alt-right to stomach: for the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany and for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Photo by Don Arnold/WireImage/Getty Images
