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Milo Yiannopoulos is an alt-right British journalist and social media personality who was kicked off Twitter in July after leading the harassment of Saturday Night Live star Leslie Jones, who temporarily quit the platform as a result of hateful abuse.
Yiannopoulos has also called transgender people “mentally ill”, described feminism as “a cancer” and said that the Black Lives Matter movement is a “hate group” – which is why many are outraged that publishing company Simon & Schuster just offered Milo a book deal worth $345,000 for Dangerous, which will be about the “populist, nationalist Trump phenomenon”.
Image: Milo Yiannopoulos via Instagram
Comedian, actress and author Sarah Silverman has led the public outrage at Simon & Schuster for supporting Yiannopoulos.
“The guy has freedom of speech but to fund him & give him a platform tells me a LOT about @simonschuster YUCK AND BOO AND GROSS” she tweeted on Friday, her update receiving more than 5,000 likes and more than 1,000 retweets.
Carolyn Kellogg, the book editor of the Los Angeles Times, agreed, tweeting:
“If you approved a [USD] $250K book deal for the troll promoting racist, sexist views so extreme he got thrown off this platform – we need to talk.”
The Chicago Review of Books went so far as to announce they would not cover any Simon & Schuster titles in 2017.
Image: Leslie Jones via Instagram
“I’m more powerful, more influential, and more fabulous than ever before and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream,” was Yiannopoulos’s response.
After being bullied with racist vitriol by Milo and his fans on Twitter, Ghostbusters star Leslie said she was “trying to figure out what human is”.
Despite the backlash, Simon & Schuster is pressing ahead with the book’s release, which is due in March.
