Left-wing activists plan to continue pushing an advertiser boycott against Breitbart, even after Stephen Bannon stepped down as chairman of the right-wing news outlet.
Sleeping Giants, which has led a campaign to pressure companies into pulling their ads from Breitbart’s website, indicated Tuesday that the group’s boycott efforts will continue despite Bannon’s departure. Sleeping Giants has been successful in pressuring companies who appear on Breitbart’s website, usually through a third-party ad company, to blacklist Breitbart from their ad buys. More than 3,700 companies have done exactly that, according to a list maintained by the group.
CONFIRMED: With impeccable timing, @TaskRabbit has blocked Breitbart from their media buy! Thanks so much!
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) January 9, 2018
Sleeping Giants’ pressure campaign against Breitbart has centered around two people: Bannon and former Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, whose associations with the alt-right were revealed when Buzzfeed published his emails in October.
“This Bannon news is obviously awesome. He’s a racist bigot that has done irreparable harm to this country. But this doesn’t change our mission,” the group said in a statement. “The top brass at Breitbart all rubber-stamped working with white supremacists. The work continues.” (RELATED: Left-Wing Activists Want To Defund Mercer Hedge Fund)
In November, Sleeping Giants considered joining a similar boycott effort against Fox News host Sean Hannity’s advertisers. Although the group decided not to join the attack on Hannity at that time, it claimed to “reserve the right to change our minds.” So far, Sleeping Giants has kept the identity of its operatives a secret.