UPDATE: Feb. 20 ― Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos has been disinvited from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week “due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia,” according to a statement CPAC released Monday.
Over the weekend, a video surfaced online of the far-right agitator appearing to defend sexual relationships between adults and 13-year-old boys.
American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp urged Yiannopoulos to “answer the tough questions” and “immediately further address these disturbing comments.”
In a post on Facebook, Yiannopoulos acknowledged he was “partly to blame” for how the comments were perceived.
Original story:
Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos and his racist, sexist and transphobic positions have been invited to the stage of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland next week.
He’ll be given a prominent speaking slot at the influential confab, set to upstage stodgier conservative speakers like Vice President Mike Pence and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), The Hollywood Reporter noted. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and top President Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a former Breitbart executive, are also speaking.
The invitation is the latest example of Yiannopoulos successfully insinuating himself into the more mainstream conservative movement in the U.S. as he relentlessly pushes his provocative personal “brand.”
It comes on the heels of his Friday night appearance on “Real Time,” in which host Bill Maher tossed a few softball questions at him and the two generally got along famously. Yiannopoulos attacked “mental, horrible” liberals like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, who he said had been “infected” by feminism. Later on in “Overtime,” he said transgender people suffer from a “psychiatric disorder” — again — and comedian Larry Wilmore told him: “Go f**k yourself.”
Matt Schlapp, chairman of American Conservative Union, which is CPAC’s sponsor, addressed the impending criticism.
“We realize that this invitation will be accompanied by controversy which we think the conservative movement and our CPAC attendees can handle,” Schlapp told The Washington Post. “We look forward to hearing Milo’s message,” he said, and having Yiannopoulos “answer some tough questions ... at a time when political correctness is properly being discarded.”
Schlapp told The Hollywood Reporter that Yiannopoulos has an “important perspective.”
Yiannopoulos’ “important perspectives” include leading a Twitter attack against “Saturday Night Live” and “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones that was so viciously racist that he was permanently banned from the social networking site.
He was not so welcome on the University of California, Berkeley campus early this month when violent protests shut down a planned appearance there. Trump, whom Yiannopoulos calls “Daddy,” then threatened to cut off funds for the university system. (Berkeley police on Saturday released photos of protesters, appealing to the public to identify them for arrest.)
Yiannopoulos and writer Allum Bokhari are responsible for a kind of alt-right manifesto that was published last year on Breitbart, a site that regularly airs white nationalist viewpoints.
In the manifesto, they boasted that the so-called alt-right movement is “more intellectually vibrant than skinheads.” Unlike “traditional conservatives” more concerned with making money, alt-right “natural conservatives” aim to preserve their white male nationalist culture. “The conservative instinct ... includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity ... and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism,” the men wrote.