During the 2016 presidential campaign, Breitbart News emerged as a haven for far-right factions that actively pushed for the election of Donald Trump. Its executive editor, Steve Bannon, played an instrumental role as CEO of the Trump campaign, and was recently appointed chief strategist for the president-elect’s administration. Now, the controversial news site is turning its attention to France, where the far-right politician Marine Le Pen hopes to pull off a Trump-like upset in next year’s presidential election.
Last week, Breitbart’s US editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow, told Reuters that the site plans to launch in Germany and France, where far-right political parties have seen a resurgence in recent years. Sources close to Bannon told Reuters that the company wants to boost right-wing candidates in each country ahead of their respective presidential elections.
“We think that France is the place to be,” Bannon said in a June interview with Radio-Londres, adding that Breitbart aims to open a Paris bureau before the presidential election in May.
“almost exactly the same strategy as the alt-right”
The hope is that the expansion will help fuel another political upset in France, following the surprise election of Trump and June’s Brexit vote in the UK. (Breitbart launched a UK site in 2014, reportedly because Bannon saw a “business opportunity” ahead of Brexit.) In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Marlow said the site wants to reach an “underserved readership” that feels “ignored” in Europe. But experts say Breitbart will face competition from a slew of other French blogs that traffic in the same brand of xenophobia, misogyny, and anti-Semitism that fueled its rise in the US.