Updated 8.25pm
YESTERDAY, COMMENTS THAT right-wing pundit Milo Yiannopoulos made about child abuse led him to being dropped from a major Conservative conference.
Now a book deal that he had with high-profile publisher Simon & Schuster has been terminated and he has stepped down as technology editor for the right-wing website Breitbart.
The book, called Dangerous, was due to be published by the imprint Threshold Editions.
PR agent for Simon and Schuster Adam Rothberg made the announcement yesterday:
Some have questioned why it took until now for the publisher to cancel the publication, given Yiannopoulos’s previous comments about women, feminism, gay men, Islam, and people of colour.
Addressing his decision to leave Breitbart, Yiannopoulos said he would be wrong “to allow [his] poor choice of words to detract from [his] colleagues’ important reporting”.
He was banned from Twitter last year for his role in encouraging the online abuse of Leslie Jones, one of the stars of Ghostbusters.
Yiannopoulos had made the controversial comments about child abuse in an online interview, but later said in a Facebook post that he does not support paedophilia, which is “a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the worst”.
His invitation to the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference was rescinded yesterday, though earlier the American Conservative Union – which runs the event – had said that free speech includes “hearing Milo’s important perspective”.
But Yiannopoulis said on Facebook that what happened will not “defeat” him:
With reporting from Sean Murray
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