The Atlantic

How <i>Breitbart</i> Destroyed Andrew Breitbart's Legacy

Politics is downstream of culture—and the website has shaped a culture on the populist right that has proven deeply corrosive.
Source: Joshua Roberts / Reuters

On the populist right, the late Andrew Breitbart, a man regarded as an influential hero, is best remembered for these words: “Politics is downstream from culture.” Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner that teaching that lesson was “by far the most important thing he did.” He quoted Breitbart:

The people who have money, every four years at the last possible second, are told, “You need to give millions of dollars, because these four counties in Ohio are going to determine the election.” I am saying, why didn’t we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in Hollywood, why didn’t we invest in creating television shows, why didn’t we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about America?

Now Steve Bannon leads the institution that Andrew Breitbart created. Prior to Donald Trump’s as a platform for the alt-right. As ran the artful prose of Kevin D. Williamson and the published the incisive cultural criticism of Andrew Ferguson, Bannon and

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