In my previous piece, I wrote about Milo Yiannopoulos’s ties to Nazis and, by extension, Steve Bannon and the Mercer family’s ties to Nazis. One of the things I referenced was Yiannopoulos’s night out at a Dallas bar where he sang karaoke while a group of notorious white supremacists honored him with the Nazi salute. The Dallas Observer tracked down the bartender who served them on April 3rd and then ultimately kicked them out.
“It was around 1 a.m. when [Yiannopoulos, Spencer and friends] came into the bar. It was very odd because they all had the same haircut,” Amiti Perry says. “I had no idea who Richard Spencer was. I had no idea that was Milo. In fact, I had no idea that was Milo until today.”
Yiannopoulos and his group were all dressed alike, Perry says, outfitted in the pastels and crew-cuts that can often be seen at alt-right gatherings. “They were very loud and abrasive in ordering their drinks — waving their money and pounding on the bar. I said ‘Oh, it looks like you boys are celebrating something,’ and they said, ‘Oh we just came from rally,’ Perry says. “I asked them if it was fraternity thing [because they were all dressed alike] and they said ‘You could call it that.’”
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“They got their drinks and didn’t tip,” Perry says. “Karaoke had ended, but they asked our karaoke hostess if they could sing a cappella because she was already shutting down her equipment. Then they asked our owner and he was like, ‘It’s not a big deal, sing something a cappella.’”
Usually when someone sings at the bar without the help of the karaoke machine, they sing something familiar, like a show-tune, Perry says. “We had no idea what was about to happen. They started ‘America the Beautiful,’ and I looked at my co-workers and said ‘This is odd,’” Perry says. “Then all of the sudden, halfway through the song, I see, from behind the stage, about 15 arms go up in the salute.”
Perry says she lost it and rushed the stage, grabbing the microphone from Yiannopoulos just as the song, and video clip, ended. “I said ‘Get the fuck out. You are not welcome here, at all,’” Perry says. “I was yelling at them, and, I remember this distinctly, they all came around me on the stage and were yelling things. Some were shouting ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,’ at that point it started to hit me who these people were, and then they started saying ‘Make America Great Again.’ Then I had people get in my face, it might have been Milo because he didn’t immediately go outside, he was kind of getting them aroused, and they were saying ‘Make America White Again.’”
It’s kind of overkill that these people were rude and didn’t tip. The important part, again, is that Steve Bannon and the Mercers cultivated Milo Yiannopoulos and turned him into a celebrity. They knew he was mixing with white supremacists and using them as editors for his Breitbart pieces. On April 3rd, Bannon was working in the White House as the president’s top strategist. His protégé was singing karaoke with Nazis and chanting about Trump and making America white again.