Milo Yiannopoulos, the conservative, polemical editor whose endorsement of paedophilia instigated outrage over the weekend, on Tuesday resigned from his position at Breitbart News, the hard-right news and opinion website.
“I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues’ important reporting, so today I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately,” Yiannopoulos said in an announcement. “This decision is mine alone,’’ he said.
Yiannopoulos’s resignation followed days of tumult that intensified over the weekend after a conservative group called the Reagan Battalion revealed a video that showed him condoning sexual relations between men and boys as young as 13 and jokingly dismissing the gravity of paedophilia by Roman Catholic priests.
On Monday, the organisers of the Conservative Political Action Conference revoked their invitation for Yiannopoulos to speak this week, and the publisher Simon & Schuster also said it was cancelling the publication of his book, Dangerous.
Yiannopoulos attempted to explain his comments in posts on his Facebook page, saying he was a victim of his own "British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humour," but his explanations appeared to have little effect. On Tuesday, Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart, called Yiannopoulos's comments about paedophilia "indefensible" and "appalling".
But Marlow, speaking on Breitbart’s daily radio show, also defended Yiannopoulos, saying there was no evidence Yiannopoulos had acted as a sexual predator and that he had been a victim of a “co-ordinated hit” by liberal groups intent on hurting his ascent.
“There seems to be growing evidence that this was all co-ordinated to wait for a peak moment when Milo was red-hot,” Marlow said. “They sat on this story and they held it for maximum political damage.”
This is not the first time Yiannopoulos, a staunch defender of the so-called alt-right and an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, has provoked outrage. His provocative, critical statements about Muslims, transgender people, immigrants and women's rights have ignited backlash from liberals and conservatives alike, and his lectures on college campuses have been met with protests that have at times turned violent.
Several weeks ago, his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley, was cancelled after rioters set fires and smashed windows. (The cancellation, in turn, prompted a debate about free speech while also drawing a rebuke from Mr Trump on Twitter.)
But with the disclosure of the paedophilia comments, Yiannopoulos appeared to have crossed a line for even his most ardent supporters. The board of the American Conservative Union, which decided to rescind Yiannopoulos's speaking invitation, denounced his comments on Monday, calling them "disturbing".
At Breitbart, where Yiannopoulos has become a star contributor, there was debate within the staff about whether he should be allowed to remain.
“It was something that was a total surprise to people in the Breitbart organisation,” Marlow, the Breitbart editor, said on the radio programme.
New York Times