Milo Yiannopoulos has resigned from his position as editor-in-chief of ultra-conservative publication Breitbart after a video surfaced of him condoning sexual behavior with boys as young as 13. He’s also lost his controversial book deal with Simon & Schuster. While at first, the video only caused Yiannopoulos to lose a speaking engagement at the Conservative Political Action Conference, it looks like that was just the start of a domino effect.
Many conservatives have defended Yiannopoulos through thick and thin. But, The New York Times reports, “endorsing pedophilia, it seemed, was more than they could tolerate.”
Simon & Schuster received heavy backlash upon their announcement to publish Yiannopoulos’ book in the first place, due to his history of xenophobic and misogynistic comments. Yiannopoulos is a member of the alt-right conservative movement, and has used his right to free speech to call the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist organization and compare modern feminism to cancer. Roxane Gay even pulled her book from Simon & Schuster upon finding out about their deal with Yiannopoulos. The company even gave Yiannopoulos an extension on his book so he could write about student protests and riots against his speaking engagements at UC Berkeley.
In a statement, Yiannopoulos said: “The people whose views, concerns and fears I am articulating do not sip white wine and munch canapĂ©s in gilded salons. And they will not be defeated by the cocktail set running New York publishing. Nor will I.” But in another statement, regarding his resignation from Breitbart, he said, “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.”
While the decision is finalized Yiannopoulos’ literary agent, Thomas Flannery Jr., did say they plan to find another publisher.
And Roxane Gay has given another statement, explaining why she won’t be going back to Simon & Schuster now that they’ve dropped Yiannopoulos’s book. “My protest stands,” she wrote. “Simon & Schuster should have never enabled Milo in the first place. I see what they are willing to tolerate and I stand against all of it….There are some who will spin the cancellation of this book contract as a failure of the freedom of speech but such is not the case. This is yet another example of how we are afforded the freedom of speech but there is no freedom from the consequences of what we say.”