Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned as senior editor at Breitbart News and apologized after a coming under fire over comments that appeared to approve paedophilia.
The conservative writer said in a statement his “poor choice of words” was detracting from his colleagues’ work, so he was quitting immediately.
Milo Yiannopoulos, 32, had already lost a book deal and a speaking engagement over the row.
Videos surfaced of him discussing the merits of gay relationships between adults and boys.
However, Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor, denied he had endorsed child abuse and said one video had been edited to give a misleading impression.
At a press conference on February 21, he explained that he had been referring to his own experiences as a victim of child abuse.
He said that two men, including a priest, had touched him inappropriately when he was in his young teens.
Image source Flickr
“I haven’t ever apologized before, and I don’t intend on ever doing it again,” he read to a room full of reporters.
“To be a victim of child abuse and at the same time be accused of being an apologist for child abuse is absurd.”
However, Milo Yiannopoulos’ mea culpa came too late to save him from being axed in the line-up at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland.
The CPAC said his response had been “insufficient”.
Publisher Simon & Schuster also cancelled Milo Yiannopoulos’ forthcoming book, Dangerous.
During his press conference the British writer claimed to have received interest from other publishers, and vowed to set aside 10% of the book’s profits to donate to charities that support victims of child abuse.
He appears to thrive on controversy and is accused by some of being a peddler of hate speech.
Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter after provoking online harassment of a black actress, Leslie Jones, from the Ghostbusters remake.
He has also been widely criticized for comments he has made about feminists, transgender people, Muslims and Black Lives Matter protesters.
The University of Berkeley in California earlier this month canceled a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, following violent student protests.
Milo Yiannopoulos is a British writer and editor, currently living in the US.
He was born in Greece to a Greek father and British mother, he grew up in Kent in the south of England.
In July 2016, Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for what the social media company referred to as “inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others”.
It came after the writer took aim at Leslie Jones, a black actress in an all-female Ghostbusters reboot, and she received a barrage of abuse from other Twitter users.
Milo Yiannopoulos has also been widely criticized for comments he has made about transgender people, Muslims, Black Lives Matter activism, feminists and gay people, even though he is openly gay.
Image source Flickr
He co-founded online tech magazine The Kernel in 2011 and sold it in 2014, after running up large debts and encountering legal battles with writers who sued for unpaid earnings.
In 2015, Milo Yiannopoulos was appointed as a senior editor at Breitbart News, a right-wing website that has been criticized for racist and misogynist content.
He has written columns titled “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
When Hillary Clinton read those headlines out disdainfully at one of her rallies last year, he considered it a win.
This week, footage of a year-old podcast was unearthed, where Milo Yiannopoulos appears to condone paedophilia.
He said relationships between “younger boys” and older men could be a “coming-of-age relationship … in which those older men help those younger boys discover who they are”.
Milo Yiannopoulos has denied the allegations on his Facebook page, blaming the way the clips were edited and his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication he supported paedophilia.
“It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst,” Milo Yiannopoulos said.
Breitbart News has close ties to the Trump administration. The website’s chief executive, Steve Bannon, first headed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and was later appointed as his chief strategist in the White House.
Milo Yiannopoulos is an avid supporter of President Trump, whom he calls “daddy”.
His regular public speaking engagements often lead to protests on university campuses.
Milo Yiannopoulos went to Simon Langton Boys Grammar School in Canterbury, and dropped out of undergraduate courses at the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge.
However, he came to prominence by playing a key role in an online troll war, known as Gamergate, about misogyny in the video game world.
Milo Yiannopoulos built up a following by being a “troll king”, according to tech magazine Wired.
His YouTube channel now has more than 500,000 subscribers.
Milo Yiannopoulos is regularly associated with the alt-right, a disparate nationalistic group, which is outspoken against so-called political correctness and feminism. It includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.
He says he does not consider himself part of the alt-right, although he has called it “energizing and exciting”.
During an appearance on TV show Real Time on February 17, he joked about not being able to fit in as he is a “gay Jew who never shuts up about his black boyfriend”.
Milo Yiannopoulos had a Jewish maternal grandmother.
On the same show, hosted by Bill Maher, he equated feminism with a disease (again) and said transgender people was a disorder comparable to sociopathy.
Milo Yiannopoulos’ autobiography, Dangerous, had been due for publication next month.
When the book deal with publisher Simon & Schuster was announced in December 2016, it caused an outcry among his critics, who accused the company of promoting and funding hate speech.
On February 20, Simon and Schuster announced it was cancelling the publication of the book, after more than 100 of the publisher’s other authors had protested against it.
Milo Yiannopoulos reportedly received a $250,000 advance for the book.
In protest at the deal, the Chicago Review of Books had already announced it would not review any Simon & Schuster books in 2017.
Milo Yiannopoulos will no longer speak at a conservative conference and his book deal has been canceled after videos surfaced in which he appeared to approve paedophilia.
The footage showed the ultra-conservative writer discussing the merits of gay relationships between adults and boys as young as 13.
On Facebook, Milo Yiannopoulos denied ever endorsing paedophilia.
The writer said one video had been edited to give a misleading impression.
However, the American Conservative Union, which runs the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where President Donald Trump is due to speak on February 24, said the apology was not enough.
“We urge him to immediately further address these disturbing comments,” Matt Schlapp said in a statement.
Image source Flickr
Book publisher Simon & Schuster said it had canceled the publication of Milo Yiannopoulos’s book Dangerous, which was due out in June, after “careful consideration”.
In the footage, Milo Yiannopoulos – a passionate supporter of Donald Trump and an editor at right-wing website Breitbart – seems to suggest the determining factor for paedophilia is whether the younger partner has gone through puberty.
However, at another point in the video the writer says the US age of consent, which is 16 to 18 years old depending on location, is “about right”.
In his Facebook statement, Milo Yiannopoulos said: “I find those crimes to be absolutely disgusting. I find those people to be disgusting.”
Milo Yiannopoulos, who is openly gay, said he regretted using the word “boys” instead of young men while discussing gay relationships with large age gaps.
He blamed “sloppy editing” and “usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor” for creating the wrong impression.
He also claimed that he himself had been a victim of child abuse.
Milo Yiannopoulos is regularly associated with the alt-right, a disparate nationalistic group that is outspoken against so-called political correctness and feminism. It includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.
He says he does not consider himself part of the alt-right, although he has called it “energizing and exciting”.
Milo Yiannopoulos revels in courting controversy, and has written columns titled “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”
Earlier this month the University of California at Berkeley cancelled Milo Yiannopoulos’ speaking engagement there after violent protests broke out.
President Donald Trump – whom Milo Yiannopoulos refers to as “daddy” – threatened to cut the university’s federal funding in response.
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