Milo Yiannopoulos says he has investments of $12m for new media venture
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 29: Milo Yiannopoulos reacts during a press conference on arrival at the Sydney International Airport on November 29, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. Yiannopoulos is in Australia for his Troll Academy Tour. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
Far-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos could be making a return as reports suggest he has found backers to a new venture to the tune of $12 million.
According to Yiannopoulos, Milo Inc., his new company, which has backers he has protected the identity of, as confirmed by Vanity Fair, isn’t “some vanity nameplate on a personal blog.”
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, the former Breitbart tech editor said he has hired a “seasoned media executive” and a 30-person team based in Miami.
He says he is still working on a new book and will film a YouTube show filmed in a rented mansion.
“Obviously, I’ve done a lot of soul searching over the past few months and I’ve come to a conclusion: I’ve realised that I’m really, really important,” he tells the Hollywood Reporter.
“There’s a war being waged out there for free speech, and I’m the only one who can win it for the forces of light.”
The extremely controversial figure is also organising a ‘Free Speech Week’ at UC Berkeley where he previously had to call off a speech due to angry protesters.
“This isn’t some vanity nameplate on a personal blog,” he adds of his new company.
“This is a fully tooled-up talent factory and management company dedicated to the destruction of political correctness and the progressive left.”
He added: “I will spend every waking moment of the rest of my life making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists and other professional victims a living hell.”
A conservative publishing house is rumoured to be buying his first book, Dangerous after he lost a book deal due to various outbursts.
Major publisher Simon & Schuster had originally commissioned the book from Yiannopoulos, offering him $250,000 for the rights.
However it canceled the deal “after careful consideration”, when controversial video footage emerged of him allegedly defending men who have sex with underage boys.
Other authors had also threatened a boycott of the publishers after offering Milo the deal.
Now Regnery Publishing, a conservative imprint that has released books from other right-wing authors, is rumored to be in talks to publish Dangerous.
“They’d be mad not to, wouldn’t they?” Yiannopoulos told BuzzFeed News in an email.
“You won’t embarrass yourselves by running it,” he added.
Regnery declined to comment when asked by BuzzFeed about Yiannopoulos’s book.
Yiannopoulos released a written statement and a video after he lost his job at Breitbart news and his book deal, following his remarks about child abuse, saying he is “partly to blame”.
He says that it was a “blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor” which brings him to “regret”, any understanding.
Going on, he added: “I do not advocate for illegal behavior. I explicitly say on the tapes that I think the current age of consent is “about right.”
“I do not believe sex with 13-year-olds is okay. When I mentioned the number 13, I was talking about the age I lost my own virginity.
“I shouldn’t have used the word “boy” — which gay men often do to describe young men of consenting age — instead of “young man.” That was an error.”
But he admits that he is “certainly guilty” of using “imprecise language”.
The far-right figure and internet troll is already deeply controversial, previously claiming he would ‘cure’ himself of being gay if he could, describing trans people as “mentally ill gay men dressing up for attention”, and using a university lecture to single out and bully a transgender student on-stage.
In the original clip Yiannopoulos is heard bragging about his sexual activity under the age of consent, defending a priest who he had sex with.
When others present protest that his comments “sound like child molestation”, Yiannopoulos insisted: “I’m grateful for Father Michael, I wouldn’t give such good head if it wasn’t for him.”
Pushed on whether he was defending child molestation, he said: “You’re misunderstanding what paedophilia means.
“Paedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature, paedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty, who don’t have functioning sex organs yet, who are too young to be able to understand the way their bodies work. That is not what we’re talking about.”
Yiannopoulos responded in a Facebook post titled ‘A note for idiots’.
Referring to the unedited five-minute tape of his comments, he said: “There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a co-ordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject.
“If it somehow comes across (through my own sloppy phrasing or through deceptive editing) that I meant any of the ugly things alleged, let me set the record straight: I am completely disgusted by the abuse of children.”
He added: “The videos do not show what people say they show. I did joke about giving better head as a result of clerical sexual abuse committed against me when I was a teen. If I choose to deal in an edgy way on an internet livestream with a crime I was the victim of that’s my prerogative. It’s no different to gallows humor from AIDS sufferers.
“I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That’s perfectly true and every gay man knows it.
“But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys.”
Despite branding the age of consent an “arbitrary one-size-fits-all policing of culture” in the interview, he pointed to separate comments in the same clip describing current laws as “about right”.
