UPDATE: This week's SF Breitbart meetup canceled

Breitbart founder, the late Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart founder, the late Andrew Breitbart. Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM, AFP/Getty Images Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM, AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close UPDATE: This week's SF Breitbart meetup canceled 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

UPDATE (3/16): A spokesperson from Breitbart has reached out to SFGATE, saying that they revealed their association with the website early on so as to be "respectful of your venue and not disruptive to any other guests you might have." Emails forwarded to SFGATE suggest that the Chapel was notified about Breitbart's identity as "a conservative news and opinion website," and its attempt to make it clear that the event was "NOT a political rally."

The spokesperson states that any attempt to portray Breitbart as "sneaky" is inaccurate.

---

UPDATE (3/14): The owner of The Chapel in the Mission tells SFGATE "We had no idea" that the group who had booked the Vestry for a meetup event was associated with Breitbart.

Stating that the event has been canceled, owner Jack Knowles says that the event organizers obscured the fact that they were associated with the site and rather told Chapel bookers that they were a group of Republicans.

"They were very sneaky," Knowles said. "I'm in favor of free speech, but this is not about free speech."

The owner went on to say that he supports political discourse and sometimes offers up the Chapel for partisan-leaning events ("Free speech can't just be what I want people to say."), but after becoming more familiar with the site, decided it was in the event of safety and security to cut ties with organizers. "I'm not about a culture of hate," Knowles says.

Extra security will be added on Wednesday to ensure there is no violence from potential protestors.

---

Breitbart, the self-proclaimed news network currently weathering an internal civil war over the alleged assault of reporter Michelle Fields, is holding a "first ever" San Francisco meetup this week.

The conservative-leaning site, which candidly backs the Trump campaign, is planning a get-together for area fans this Wednesday at the Chapel in San Francisco (an area ironically ranked as the most Bernie Sanders-friendly zip code in the United States).

Breitbart was founded in 2007 by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative publisher, author, and commentator for The Washington Times. Today it operates as an aggregator of news wire stories as well as a platform for right-wing opinion-based pieces.

"Had enough of Obama's trampling of the Constitution and squelching of American freedoms?" a Meetup San Francisco event listing reads. "Join like-minded conservatives and make new friends as we discuss and share ideas about liberty, politics, and culture."

Also attending the event is (recently de-verified) Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos, a key player in the discussion around verbally abusive behavior on Twitter and free speech. The writer's check mark was supposedly removed after he violated Twitter's abusive speech policy.

While there is no mention of the March 16 event on the Chapel's official calendar, the Meetup appears on a prompt upon entering Breitbart. SFGATE has reached out to the Chapel for comment.

here's what pops up when you go to the breitbart website from here in sf pic.twitter.com/1tPC9Oe6jw — alyssa pereira (@alyspereira) March 14, 2016

In recent weeks, the organization has been dealing with a media flurry following the report that Fields, one of Breitbart's own reporters, was assaulted by Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at the presidential candidate's rally in Jupiter, Florida.

Although The Washington Post published a firsthand account of witnessing the event, POLITICO posted audio of the alleged assault, and Fields herself tweeted a photo displaying the bruises on her arm, Breitbart is effectively denying that the Trump campaign had anything to do with the incident, claiming that Fields "misidentified" her attacker.

Reporters for Breitbart have also gone on both the defense and offense against each other, eventually resulting in the resignation of Fields, editor-at-large Ben Shapiro (who was subsequently "mocked" by Breitbart in a post written under Shapiro's father's pseudonym), and as of Monday, two other editors.

As to what specifically will be discussed at the Wednesday meeting (other than the vagaries of what constitutes liberty), we suspect that given their reputation as an "unaffiliated media super PAC for the Trump campaign," the gathering might just end up being an impromptu rally. Ready to Make America Great Again?