Milo Yiannopoulos book deal canceled following remarks on pedophilia

Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial conservative author and a leader of the alt-right movement, has had his book deal with Simon & Schuster canceled.

Simon & Schuster was set to release “Dangerous” later this year.

RELATED: The American Conservative Union released a statement about Milo Yiannopoulos keynoting CPAC

The cancellation of  the book's publication comes on the heels of several interviews Yiannopoulos gave in which he seems to validate pedophilia. Yiannopoulos has adamantly denied that he is pro-pedophilia in a series of Facebook messages. Despite his denial, Yiannopoulos’ upcoming keynote address at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference was canceled. In one of the videos, Yiannopoulos jokes about his own experience as a victim of sexual abuse and implies that there can be a healthy relationship forged between older men and little boys.

“In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationship — those relationships in which those older men help those young boys discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable, sort of rock, where they can’t speak to their parents,” Yiannopoulos said.

He later took to Facebook to defend himself.

“I would like to restate my utter disgust at adults who sexually abuse minors. I am horrified by pedophilia and I have devoted large portions of my career as a journalist to exposing child abusers,” Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook on Monday. “I’ve outed three of them, in fact — three more than most of my critics. And I’ve repeatedly expressed disgust at pedophilia in my feature and opinion writing. My professional record is very clear.”

I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim. 
I would like to restate my utter disgust at adults who sexually abuse...

Posted by Milo Yiannopoulos on Monday, February 20, 2017

Despite his denial that he condoned pedophilia, Yiannopoulos lamented that he knew how the situation looked from the outside.

“But I do understand that these videos, even though some of them are edited deceptively, paint a different picture,” he wrote.

“I’m partly to blame. My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous. But I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, “advocacy.” I deeply regret that. People deal with things from their past in different ways.”

In late December, Simon & Schuster had the following to say when the defended the decision to publish Yiannopoulos' writings, and give him a quarter of a million dollars to do it.

"We do not and never have condoned discrimination or hate speech in any form," the company said.

“At Simon & Schuster we have always published books by a wide range of authors with greatly varying, and frequently controversial opinions, and appealing to many different audiences of readers. While we are cognizant that many may disagree vehemently with the books we publish we note that the opinions expressed therein belong to our authors, and do not reflect either a corporate viewpoint or the views of our employees.”

On Friday, Yiannopoulos gave an interview with TV political commentator Bill Maher in which he tried to paint himself as a type of free speech warrior.

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