And white nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from Breitbart amid widespread outrage over his comments appearing to endorse pedophilia. On Tuesday, Yiannopoulos announced his resignation at a press conference in New York City.
Milo Yiannopoulos: “My employer, Breitbart News, has stood by me while others caved. They’ve allowed me to carry conservative and libertarian ideas to communities that would otherwise never have had them. They have been a significant factor in my success, and I’m grateful for the freedom and for the friendships that I forged there. But I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important job, which is why today I’m resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately.”
Milo Yiannopoulos’s resignation comes after Simon & Schuster canceled the publication of his book “Dangerous” and the American Conservative Union rescinded an invitation to speak at its upcoming annual CPAC conference over his comments discrediting age of consent laws and promoting relationships between “younger boys and older men.”
Milo Yiannopoulos: “This arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally destroys, you know, the understanding that many of us have of the complexities and subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships. … Some of the most important, enriching and incredibly, you know, life-affirming, important, shaping relationships, very often between younger boys and older men, can—they can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys.”
Milo Yiannopoulos has long faced opposition, led by women of color and transgender activists, over his history of making racist, sexist and xenophobic statements. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, for example, he outed and mocked a transgender student, showing her name and photo on screen in December. Best-selling author Roxane Gay, who canceled her book deal in January with Simon & Schuster in protest of its now-canceled deal with Yiannopoulos, wrote, “as someone who endured a bit of [his] harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty.” She said she will still not publish her upcoming book with Simon & Schuster, saying the publisher “should have never enabled Milo in the first place.”