Two far-right operatives are locked in a bitter feud that has their fans at war and other prominent extremists picking sides.
Milo Yiannopoulos and Ali Alexander have been at odds since at least 2021, when Yiannopoulos accused the Stop the Steal architect of setting up people at the Capitol riot. But this week, the mud-slinging between the two took a dark and ugly turn. Each has lobbed serious accusations against the other.
Both insist the other is lying.
The latest round in the war between Alexander and Yiannopoulos appears to have been sparked by the presidential campaign of Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Both have had some involvement with Ye and the campaign in recent months.
Late last year, Ye took Nick Fuentes to a dinner with former President Donald Trump, inspiring a wave of negative press. Yiannopoulos later told NBC News that the dinner was intended to make Trump look bad. Fuentes denied it. Both men were then working for Ye’s presidential campaign.
Yiannopoulos subsequently left the campaign. The Daily Beast reported he was fired, but he characterized his departure as amicable. In Yiannopolulos’ wake, Alexander allegedly took over the campaign.
Last week, Ye renounced antisemitism, leading to doubts about white nationalist Fuentes’ future in his orbit.
The saga appears to have resulted in an alliance between Fuentes and Alexander, who both appeared on InfoWars during Ye’s much-covered antisemitic tirade.
It appears to have eventually reignited the conflict between Alexander and Yiannopoulos. The pair have spent much of the last few days lobbing bombs at one another online.
Yiannopoulos dredged up Alexander’s criminal record, which the Daily Dot reported on in 2020. He’s also accused Alexander of being a federal plant and posted screenshots he alleges are salacious DMs Alexander sent, accusations Yiannopoulos has been making since 2021.
Alexander says that Yiannopoulos is lying and fabricating the screenshots he’s posted as evidence to back up his claims. He posted his own screenshots of men claiming Yiannopoulos preyed on them and that he also attempted to bilk Ye’s campaign out of excessive funds.
Via email, Yiannopoulos told the Daily Dot that everything he charged Ye was “completely above board” and that he didn’t make any money from the campaign.
“I invoiced him for expenses and third party staff costs. When they decided to pay many of those costs directly, my invoice shrank,” Yiannopoulos said.
He further described Alexander’s allegations as “riotously defamatory and baseless.”
The saga has some online extremists taking sides and fans of either man trolling the other.
Jacob Wohl is Team Alexander. “Over the last 4+ years, I’ve known @AliAlexander as one of the most effective and loyal soldiers in all of the conservative movement,” Wohl wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
Jack Posobiec didn’t exactly take a side, but he did repost one of Yiannopoulos’ rants claiming that Alexander set up people who would go on to be arrested at the Capitol riot while Posobiec and others urged them to stay away.
QAnon influencer Terpsehore Maras also stopped short of claiming allegiance to Yiannopoulos but did come out against Alexander in a post about the “drama” involving him, Fuentes, and Ye.
Some observers are following the internecine, far-right conflict with the same energy as the GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.
Although he’s at the heart of the matter, Fuentes has stayed mostly out of the drama between Yiannopoulos and Alexander.
Disclosure: Yiannopoulos was the founder of the Kernel, a publication the Daily Dot acquired in 2014.
